Patrick's Rants

• The housing market is crumbling, but we’re not in a recession.¹
• The financial markets are crumbling, but we’re not in a recession.
• Interest rates are at an all time low (except that doesn’t translate to lower credit card or home mortgage rates), but we’re not in a recession.
• More American citizens have fallen out of the middle class and are now below it and the increase in living standard has stagnated during Dubya’s reign.
  

  Essentially, for as long as we have records, when there have been economic expansions people have gotten raises, which is to say their pay has increased more quickly than inflation; their buying power has grown. That’s happened in every economic expansion since World War II, until the current one, or the now past one. Between 2000 and 2007, the typical family did not actually get a raise.

  ²

• The government is spending billions of your dollars to entice you to spend, but we’re not in a recession.
• Several airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection with most just stopping all services, but we’re not in a recession.

Remember, everything that the government tells us (epitomized by the movement of Dubya’s mouth) is true; Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Saddam personally funded Al Qaeda, we’re winning the war against terror, I showed up for all of my National Guard service, the country’s not in a recession.

1. Housing, in general
2. Middle Class survey story