Reply #53: I Have No Expertise, Believe Me

[Demeter]

I'm just a student of the subject, as all are on this thread, looking for answers and trying to cut through the lies, puffery, and delusion that we are force fed by mass media and the corporate masters.

It's hard to say who is to blame for our current economic catastrophe.

My personal choice would be Alan Greenspan, who destroyed the savings cycle in this country.

When Greenspan came in, we had all been put through the wringer by Paul Volker's inflation-fighting policy of cranking up the interest rates until ones eyes and ears bled. This was a fantastic incentive for people to save for retirement in IRA accounts, and a lot of people did. The banks had stable deposits to lend out, and everything was going quite well.

Well, Reagan wanted his tax cuts for the rich, and Greenspan doubled the economic fallout by dropping interest rates into the cellar. Suddenly all this money had no place to go. So people went into the market in search of capital gains, and business went into building bigger, more expensive, and far too many homes using the easy credit.

As for Fort Knox, I have an open mind. I wouldn't put it past the recent governments to have emptied out all the gold and sold it or lent it. On the other hand, if such a thing had happened, I expect somebody would have blown the whistle by now...because that's just about the only way we find out anything about our government's crimes, these days. And there are still a few people whose sense of right and wrong (or revenge) cannot tolerate and ignore official wrong-doing.

The rest is misery.

Until the interest/saving cycle is restored, I don't think we are going to be much of an economic power. When people say "Americans are saving again" they are really saying that we are not borrowing as much as before, paying off and closing credit cards, losing homes to foreclosure, etc. That's not saving.