Where Is the Economy Going?

Bush is out of office and Obama has been in office for almost two years, but the economy is not getting any better. Of course, we have to view it from another angle: Bush left Obama with a huge mess to clean up. While those supporting the Republicans will claim the recession was caused by Democrats, one can only wonder how that can be when the recession began when there was a Republican president and the Republicans had the majority of seats in Congress. Of course, there have been economic problems when the Democrats have been in office as well, so we can't entirely blame unemployment on the presidential administration.

When did the problems begin? Some of them we saw following the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. When air traffic was halted for several days and people who worked at the World Trade Center lost their jobs, it took a toll on the economy. Since that time several airlines have gone out of business or been forced to file bankruptcy, most likely directly related to the economic struggles they facing following 9/11. When you add these figures to those of the people who worked in the World Trade Center and suddenly found themselves unemployed, there is little wonder why the economy is in such poor shape.

If the recession began with 9/11, how does that make it a problem created by the Bush administration? Clearly the event was caused by the president making enemies throughout the world. If you read the Executive Summary of the 9/11 Commission Report that was published, you will gain some insight into what many believed happened to instigate the attack including alleged emails warning the president of the impending attacks. Unfortunately nothing was ever proven because the emails were never located, but it certainly affected the credibility of the Bush administration. Whether there was a conspiracy preceding 9/11 is irrelevant; however, there is no doubt it was the beginning of the current economic downturn.

Last year economists made predictions that we would begin coming out of the recession in 2010--some states earlier than others. The prediction was that Delaware where I live would ease out of the recession by the last quarter, but here it is the end of the 3rd quarter and unemployment is still over 9 percent. For such a small state, that's a tremendous amount of people unemployed, but we can blame some of it on the fact that we saw the shut down of both the Chrysler and General Motors plants thus eliminating thousands of jobs in the state. Foreclosures and bankruptcies are at an all-time high throughout the state and surrounding areas with little relief in sight. Even collection agencies are going out of business because people do not have the money to pay even after their debts are turned over to third parties.

As a freelance writer I have seen the economy hurt writers as well. People are cutting back on the number of books they buy thus forcing publishers to take on few new contracts and book stores are closing their doors. Of course, the electronic publishing industry has some effect on the reduction in print book sales, but the economy is the major problem. People are buying few print books and relying on borrowing from friends or the library and finding free versions of the books online. While I have nothing against e-books personally, I prefer print books for my pleasure reading and hope the current trends will never render them obsolete.

With unemployment still so high throughout the country and even the world, we are seeing retail stores suffering from slow sales. With the Christmas season coming up soon, it is likely the sales will continue to slump, at least from previous years. President Obama is talking about creating some government jobs to help with the sagging economy, but is this the answer? Do we really want jobs that will just keep people busy and provide a paycheck or do we need something that will make them feel they are worth something? The real question is: when is the economy going to recover? Unfortunately even if we begin to see changes in the next 30 days, it will take years before we see the economy return to its pre-9/11 status and even longer before it returns to a healthy state. I'm almost glad to be only three years from being old enough to collect Social Security; I will at least have a small amount of money for certain each month instead of struggling to find writing gigs and even a regular job.