The Economy Will Not... REPEAT NOT... Rebound This Year

By Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL

Originally published June 5, 2009

There are preposterous and irresponsible predictions circulating around the moronic news channels and daily newspapers these days that the so-called recession (or as I more accurately describe it, Depression) will be over by the end of this year.

It will never happen.

The sources for the forecasts are the puffed-hair (and in at least one instance no-hair) financial pundolts on CNN and Fox, along with the fools that have now been put into place to run the U.S. Treasury and government commissions.

These prognostications may be just limp-wristed attempts to lift our morale, but in the end the efforts will simply make the pain more unbearable when no relief comes by Christmas? And the great danger, of course, is that with this false hope we will do nothing; or to be more precise, not push our elected representatives to do anything to end the depression within a realistic time frame. For example, we’ve already lost nearly a year since the price of gasoline declined from the impossible point it was at last summer. For the past several weeks the price has begun to climb again, and again there is no reason for it to happen outside of greed on the part of OPEC and the oil companies. The oil pirates see that nothing has changed in Washington; there are no plans to curtail our reliance on gasoline; so the price of gasoline is going back up.

The reason I say that the depression will NOT end this year is because there is no reason for it to do so. For the financial picture to change we need a stimulus…no not the kind of stimulus where we hand out trillions of dollars to someone’s second cousin’s best friend, in the way that the incompetents in Congress have been doing. This just sustains the pattern of malfeasance and misconduct on Wall Street and in the banking community that we’ve become accustomed to.

We need real stimulation that actually gives consumers and large scale-users new technologies and products that will truly make their life more efficient, economical, and healthier; while creating significant well-paying jobs. The new technologies and products could come in a variety of different fields, i.e., communications, medical or electronics. But the only sector that can currently offer anything promising in the relevant future is alternative energy and fuel. Real progress in this area is our only salvation, and even then it will not end the depression by this year’s end.

Last August, during his run for the Democratic nomination, Barak Obama made some big statements in his nationally televised energy speech, which included bold moves into alternative energies and fuels. However, since coming into office he has done nothing, except for an insipid panty-waist change to the CAFE standards, to back up his promises. In fact, in cozying up to our enemies in the Middle East (who just happen to control the oil/gasoline industry), you know that Obama will not do anything to upset them, such as placing prohibitions on the use and sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles.

So instead of a JFK-style “we-will-land-a-man-on-the-moon” national mandate, we have a great big nothing. We are set to only experience financial recovery when things get so bad that they just can’t get any worse; and that bottoming out point is probably still two or three years away, which would make a serious recovery at least four or five years in the furure. In the meantime, and for many, many years to come, we will continue to be addicted to oil and to be subjected to unreasonable price fluctuations.

If you’d like to know what could and should be happening read the paper I published in June 2008: NO NEW GASOLINE-POWERED VEHICLES IN THE U.S. BY 2014...Can It Be Done?