Our ‘Blood-less' Economies

Given the inept clods who are currently in charge of our economies, it would be a doubtful proposition for them to “fix” things, even if they actually knew what the problems were. The fact that our “leaders” display not the slightest comprehension of the real, structural problems which exist in our economies obviously means zero possibility of (real) improvement.

In this respect, a simple analogy is in order. If our problems are explained to the people first, then maybe they can explain them to our “leaders”. There is no better analogy to use in “diagnosing” our economies than to equate the wealth in our economies with the blood in our bodies.

The parallels are many and obvious. Indeed, economists talk about wealth “circulating” through our economies in much the same manner that doctors speak of blood circulating through our veins and arteries. Framed in this manner, our “problem” becomes simple to identify: there is very little wealth “circulating” in our economies – mirroring the situation when our bodies have too little blood being pumped through our circulatory system.

Just as blood-deprived humans become weak and anemic, and perform far below their potential versus when they are healthy, so too our wealth-deficient economies are also performing far below potential. The “symptoms” of this problem are too numerous to list, and are most apparent in the U.S. economy – where this “anemia” has been allowed to progress to a “life-threatening” level.

Shopping malls continue to shrivel-and-die. Retailers continue to go bankrupt. House prices continue to fall. Government revenues continue to shrink, and always come in way below forecasts.  And in the “real world” the U.S. economy continues to lose jobs, with the serial-fraud of the Bureau of Labor Statistics not fooling anyone with an “IQ” in excess of their shoe size.

If there was one, single statistic which epitomizes the chronic (terminal?) anemia of the U.S. economy, a chart on U.S. “food-stamp” usage will suffice nicely.

Looking at that chart, we see a tiny bulge in 2008: this is when the U.S. government told the sheep that the U.S. economy had “bottomed”. The near 50% increase in food-stamp usage since that time is what has occurred during the mythical “U.S. economic recovery”. Not only does that chart prove unequivocally that there has been no “recovery” in the U.S. economy, but it also fits in well with our analogy.