There Will Be No Economic Miracle

There are many more leaden shoes left to fall on this economy.

• The current bank bailout is failing because the money is being diverted into bonuses for bank executives as personal greed trumps the common good.
• Unemployment has only started to appear in the statistics. We will have at least another year of declining employment.
  
• Regressive state and local tax increases (California's Republican governor wants to increase state sales taxes. In many regions of the state sales taxes will exceed 9%.) will erase any stimulus the federal government will attempt.
• This Christmas will be the worst for retailers in decades putting many more people into bankruptcy.

President Obama will not be able to wave a magic wand and repair in a few weeks the damage George Bush took eight years to generate. It will take time.

Don't ask what your country can do for you. Ask how you can help your neighbor. There is little the government can do to help quickly although we will do everything we can and probably a little more. In this year of crisis we Americans have to work together. We have to help each other. Let us show ourselves and the world, let us show the doubters and the cynics, that it is now that the best of America comes out. We can rise out of this morass by helping each other. We can do that and we will do that.

If I were a speechwriter for President Obama this is what I would have him say.