Our Slump

Here is a short list of a few elements that put us in this economic crisis:

Housing Industry, -->Today’s Topic
Mortgage Crisis,
Banking Decisions,
The fall of the Dollar,

Many people would say it was the housing industry that started and solidified this economic slump. One of the ways economists can watch an industry is by job gains/losses, and since a large majority of the house building industry consists of undocumented workers, keeping track of this is nearly impossible. For quite some time, the builders could see that the industry was in a slump. When America finally noticed the housing starts were down, many builders were already considering closing up shop.

According to http://www.census.gov/ “Privately-owned housing starts in January were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 466,000. This is 16.8 percent (+/- 11.0%) below the revised December estimate of 560,000 and is 56.2 percent (+/-4.4%) below the revised January 2008 rate of 1,064,000.” It was also just announced that housing starts are at an all time low. People are surprised to read these statistics when in reality, builders could have told us this is where we were headed for years. America feels the slump now, builders started to feel it five years ago.

If people started to notice the beginning of this slump five years ago, it could have been traced to the unethical mortgage industry then. We are now playing catch-up, trying to solve the problems of yesterday by giving handouts to the same banks that gave these mortgages to anyone that walked in their offices. Now don’t go blaming Obama for these problems, he is only doing exactly what he said he would do: More restriction, more handouts and more taxes.

It seems like the only way to have a voice to the government is to have a lobbyist, when in reality the government should the corporation’s voice to the world. In the future, America could avoid these problems by simply asking each industry how they are doing, and what are their largest problems? But that might be asking too much from our hard working, underpaid, under-thanked government.