The Great Recession tests the Charlotte and American Character

We are going to have a hard time no matter what plan wins this weekend. The issue re times is, will the plan ensure long hard times.

I wrote those words amidst the credit crunch last September when Charlotte’s unemployment rate was under 6%. It now stands at over 10%. Friends and business associates lose their jobs every week and nearly all live in constant worry about their future.

No matter which TARP plan had been adopted by Bush’s Paulson (pictured above with Bernanke), Obama’s Geithner (pictured below), or whomever McCain would have imposed, America was going to have a hard time given the mistakes in policy I document below in a re-print of my column foreshadowing the likely generational test of American character we were about to endure.

The enduring has begun and I am now convinced that the recession is, indeed, accurately titled by Examiner.com in our network-wide accounting of same taking place today, as The Great Recession.

Any chance that the hard times could be limited was lost with the election of Barack Obama and his massively irresponsible policies that have will keep investors on strike for years to come and that promises to destroy America’s currency.

The new president and Democrat majorities (Speaker pictured with President above) had a chance to limit the recession to post-WWII averages but forfeited that chance with a stimulus bill that only stimulates government growth. The only reason the economy hasn’t plummeted faster and that the stock market has had a mini-rebound is due to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s printing press stimulus.

From September:

Many Americans are now in the midst of a year-long hard time born of skyrocketing energy prices and/or the housing/credit crunch. It has been nearly impossible to get small business loans for many months and home loans for all but the top ten percent of credit risks for many more months.

This column has long chronicled the Democratic Party’s explicit policy of energy self suicide since 1978 in restricting access to expanded oil drilling and their regulations (especially including the Endangered Species Act and environmental lawsuits) making the building of oil refineries and nuclear power plants nearly impossible.

Below, I discuss the artery-hardening diet the Democrats have force-fed the credit markets since 1998 that is the cause of the present crisis. But before we look at what got us to this precipice, let us look at where we are.

Bush Debt vs Obama Debt (see chart and recounting of September crisis in original article at Examiner.com)

April 2009
We now know that they were not held accountable in 2008. They must be held accountable in 2010 and if we want to limit the damage that will cause more real hard times and that will have to be repaired after 2010, Tea Party-inspired Americans must let their representatives in Congress hear their voices NOW so that they will stop:

Cap and Trade or EPA regulations that will devastate the poor, lower and middle income families, large and small businesses, and the over all American economy with the higher energy prices Obama said we needed to be taught a lesson and to bankrupt the coal industry;

The $3.6T budget that will devastate the US Dollar, bankrupt the nation and mortgage the future of America’s next generation to foreign bondholders; and

Socialized medicine.

They must be held accountable politically. Their policies must be rejected economically.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Examiner.com columns
Legal Editor for The Minority Report
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson