Countdown to the "d" word

President Obama said today that any economic stimulus package must be broad in scope and swiftly executed if we have any chance of staving off the coming economic crisis. Well, he may not be technically President yet, but he has already taken over Capitol Hill two weeks early. As it turns out, though we are 1 year into this recession as proclaimed by the Economic Board, we are actually much closer to the beginning of the crisis than we realize. We are not turning any corner any soon; we are not on our way out of it, we are still on our way in.

All of the Government's efforts to avert a disaster have only delayed it. When the final numbers of 2008 start to roll out momentarily, they will be worse than we thought and the worst is yet to come. It appears that a depression is imminent and the truth is that all of the Government action thus far was not to minimize a recession to keep it mild and/or shorter, it was an attempt to derail a depression and unfortunately that train is still barreling towards us like bullet. Furthermore, all that money that the taxpayers funneled into the financial markets went onto the books of the same greedy folk who helped us into ruin and all they cared about was helping themselves.

The economy needs another helping of funds, even more than it did the first time; a fact that was accurately predicted by many and now the makers of that plan have fallen into sudden obscurity. Have we heard anything from Paulson or Bernanke this year? Not a peep. This awakening will be oh so very, very rude. We are already in a depression; let's see how long it will take for the media to pop out the "d" word.

Maybe we'll get some truth back into the system. I would rather know exactly what I'm dealing with instead of being lulled into a false sense of security that things are better than they really are; that is a damning position to be in; planning for the wrong situation completely. The have been telling us to plan for the worse and hope for the best when in truth we need to plan for disaster and hope for the worst; full survival mode is required.