On Recessions….

<rant>

Heard on the news that we’re in a recession.  No fucking shit.  Nice of the economists to finally break down and tell us something that anyone who’se been shopping has known for a year now.

What a lot of people don’t know is the root cause: Here’s how recessions happen:

An external stimulus causes people to become afraid and withhold spending.

Lately a large and recurring cause of this fear as been…..

Drum roll please…..

Elections.

Now before everyone gets in my face screaming that “Our guy won! – that can’t be the true this time” let me clarify something:

It has nothing to do with who wins, loses, ties, or self-distructs on National TV. (my apologies to John Edwards)

It has everything to do with fear because elections themselves have everything to do with fear.  There has not been a political campaign in decades that didn’t involve fear.  Fear is how you win/lose elections.  You win if you convince 51% of the country to fear the other guy more than you, while the other guy convinces 49% of the country to be afraid of you.

In the end, 100% of the country is afraid.  And fear causes recessions.

In 2001 I wrote an article called “Anatomy of a Recession” pointing out that the 2001 downturn was caused by Bush/Cheney scaring all of the trailer trash into thinking that a recession was coming.  How did they do this?  They went out and told them this was going to happen.  And the weak minded sods believed it.

Same thing is happening now.  Only we have the added weight of the Mortgage mess.  (Caused, thank you very much, by deregulation in the mortgage industry)

So people are afraid.  They’ve been told many times on national TV that no matter who wins life is going to get difficult.  The republicans are panicking because they believe that their taxes are going to be higher, the democrats are panicking for whatever it is democrats panic about…

So what happens is maybe we’ll wait on the new purchase.  Maybe we won’t buy the new car but instead make this one last a few more years.  Appliances, etc.  We hold back fearing the layoffs that might come.

Here’s a news flash for the mental midgets.  Holding back causes the layoffs.  IT’S A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY.  If you held off on a major purchase this year out of fear.  You contributed to the resulting layoff.

Hell I contributed to it myself.  When the lease came up on my Chrysler I extended it instead of turning in the car.

What I am sick of hearing is this:

“We don’t know what causes recessions.”

We do know what causes recessions.  We have but to look in the mirror.

</rant>