Newt Gingrich said Bush should have allowed terror attacks

Who Will Rescue Us?

No One Seems To Know Or Be Willing To Say How Bad Things Are

By Danny Schechter

March 02, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -Pilot Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger has been given his own Facebook page which may be the equivalent these days to being inducted in some heroes hall of fame. He became the rescuer who knew where he was, saw where he was going, and touched his huge plane down into what he calculated correctly would be a safe landing on the Hudson River.

Will President Obama be able to rescue us from the ongoing economic collapse that has put the country and his plans at risk? Is he flying blind or does he know how to achieve a safe landing even in the absence of flight controllers and people who know what is going on. Is he going far enough?

Does anyone even know how bad the economy is, or how much worse it will get? Can anyone see the “bottom” the way Sully saw the water rushing up at him in the cockpit of his distressed aircraft? He handled his crash; can we handle ours?

On Friday, after a crisis that’s been going in full panic mode since August 2007, the people who are supposedly in the know don’t “seem” to be. This AP report from late last week made that clear:

“WASHINGTON – The economy’s downhill slide at the end of last year was likely much steeper than the government initially thought and it is probably doing just as poorly now — if not worse — as a relentless slew of negative forces feed on each other, pushing the country deeper into recession.”

Reread the sentence and you can see, as a famous Hollywood Screen writer wrote years ago “nobody knows nothing.” The operative phrases are “likely much steeper than the government initially thought” and “it is probably doing just as poorly now.” What? Duh?

The self-styled experts had what they call a “revision” of the numbers. At first they thought the economy only dropped or “contracted” by 3% but when they looked again, it had more than doubled to 6.2%. Oops! These new fourth-quarter figures showed the economy shrinking at the fastest rate in a quarter century, were far worse than expected.

There is a reason economics is called “the dismal science” although the science part of all this is very shaky and may have to be separated from the “dismal” part. There were economists like Nouriel Roubini forecasting these trends but he was marginalized by agencies that thought they were so much smarter than the man they called “Dr. Doom.”

Someone needs to take a deep breath and figure out what all of economic stimulus efforts are stimulating, General Motors and many banks have received and lost billions. Insurance companies are lining up for more moolah. Fannie Mae needs another $15 biliion.

.............................................We don’t need more neo-cons or for that matter, neo-coms.

Wake up: government funding and private control do not socialism ....................