Forget Dracula. The Bush Economy Sends Chills up Our Spines

by Tula Connell, Oct 31, 2008

This Halloween has to be the scariest ever. And not because of the costumes.

* The Washington Post, long in denial about a U.S. recession, today runs an item on tanking consumer spending leading to a decline in the U.S. gross domestic product by saying:

The freight train of American consumption has been derailed.

* AIG, bailed out twice with taxpayer money—despite reports that its top executives spent the money, in part, on a lavish California retreat and fox hunting in the English countryside—already has used three-quarters of the $123 billion we loaned it.

* The total numbers of jobs lost this year stands at 684,000, with October’s jobless figures likely to make the total much worse.

* The number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more reached 2 million in September—21 percent of the total unemployed, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required for this one).

* More and more of America’s children are homeless.

* More than 3 million homes are expected to be foreclosed on by year’s end, more than 1 million more than even the most dire of predictions. Says RealtyTrac Senior Vice President Rick Sharga:

In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined that the market could have gotten this much worse, as bad as it was last year.

* Looking for the Joker in the Halloween crowd? Exxon Mobil raked in nearly $15 billion in the third quarter, again beating its previous record for the highest quarterly earnings for a U.S. company.

* Wait. There’s a run on Joker outfits. Seems U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has charged taxpayers for his personal weekend getaways, to the tune of $155,000.

But America’s working families aren’t laughing. In fact, nine of 10 workers are losing sleep because of financial worries.

This list could go on for pages. So, here’s the Halloween bottom line.

Trick: Eight years of Bush economic incompetence and tax breaks to the wealthy.

Treat: Getting out the vote for Sen. Barack Obama so we won’t suffer through four more years of the McSame.

__________________________________________

Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (0)