This news is disastrous. The recent history had employees' wages losing only about 1% annually to inflation (at least the offically reported inflation) when current wages were compared to current prices. This report shows that real wages fell by 0.7% for just the one month of August. Extend such "good news" out over a year and see how cheery the electorate might be.

Conditions are ripe for another world wide depression. It's now over 75 years since the last one. Few alive today remember it with it's bread lines, hobo camps and children starving while the government bought produce and dumped it into the ocean trying to get the price above production cost.

Will this one be avoided? The Republicans back then insisted that tax cuts was the way to stimulate the economy and thus get out of it, trickle down from the ultra wealthy to all others. Well, they got their tax cuts 25 years ago and have added significantly to them during the Bush administration.

Would Democrats increase taxes? Would they end the sucking of good paying jobs offshore? We can also ask will they assuming they get elected. The two remaining auto makers are now poised to eliminate the union. I think that's the end of good paying, low-skill, no-skill jobs. Will Democrats try to legislate that away?

The last D came as a result of the kneejerk reaction to identical conditions. Protectionist legislation that stubbed trade is the accepted cause of the last great depression that led to the fierciest war in history. That's not related to taxes. It is related to the producer earning enough to purchase what he produces. Is Ford eliminating the sale of 40,000 automobiles by cutting 40,000 jobs?

I watch the commodity market. Farm products are now selling below production costs. Yes, the consumer will enjoy cheap price for a while. That's like selling the house and throwing a big party at the Holiday Inn with the money. There's no place to go home to when the party ends and the party will end very soon.

It's a complex problem that crosses international borders without a passport. I don't think either political party has the final solution to the problem. There probably is no fixed solutiuon. It's a moving target so the aim has to be continually readjusted. Perhaps the time to limit the suck is here and then it might just be the trigger that sets off the coming great depression. Could the biggots that want to limit imigration be triggering it already? For sure they are the cause of the housing slow down. Who wants to buy a house and then get deported? Will the civil war ever end?

the sensitivity of the price of oil continues to increase in a bad way. They won't talk about that though... better to focus on the immediate numbers and the trend over the last month. "Look, the price of oil is down. Now nobody sneeze or you'll ruin this magic moment!"

And the amount of turbulence needed to jack prices back up gets smaller and smaller every month.

Once they've destroyed the economy beyond any hope of "dressing it up" and concealing it, the hardcore of the Conservatives will probably try to pull a rabbit out of their hat and declare they've discovered that America is under covert economic terrorist attack from China.

That White House press conference had a very important element, GW letting it slip out that the reason for going into Iraq was to prevent unfriendly powers from taking over the region and punishing the US by withholding oil. I trust that the transcript of the press conference will be reviewed and that little snippet given the play that it deserves. He did not directly say that oil was the reason for the invasion, but he did point to oil as the central reason for his view that the US cannot withdraw from the region. He also did not say that underlying all of that was his commitment to the big US oil companies to continue their domination of oil resources in many regions.
Again, to understand what are the real reasons for any political activity one must assess who is benefitting. Oil company profits trump everything else.

Channing
Ventura CA USA