A Call for Financial Amnesty
As our nation moves into its fifth year of the Great Recession, our nation shows no strong signs of recovery. Which is easily confirmed with the current grim statistics: 15 million Americans unemployed; 50 million Americans either have lost their homes or are currently in foreclosure; with as many as 50 million Americans without proper healthcare; with a real unemployment rate of about 30% when you factor in the underemployed, those who have exhausted their benefits, and Americans who do not qualify for unemployment benefits. As a nation what we are guilty of is not recognizing the faces of these victims of financial terrorism. The faces behind these numbers of the unemployed are the result of decades of poor economic planning and leadership by both our government and Wall Street. What we are experiencing in economic terms is a simultaneous market and government failure. Our economic failure should not be a surprise when you look at it in terms of our nation’s loss of competitiveness. Since the year 2000 we have lost 42 thousand factories- resulting in a 32% loss in manufacturing jobs, one in four construction jobs have been lost, China now outpaces the U.S. in patent filings, academically we are 26th in the world, in average wealth per adult we have slipped from number1to number 7 by 2010, by 2008 we were number 7 in prosperity among all industrial nations, not included in these numbers is the millions of jobs lost via outsourcing.
What will soon contribute to preventing a recovery is the abandonment of the 16 million unemployed who will wind up financially crippled. With unemployment comes home foreclosures, repossession, loss of credit cards, excessive healthcare costs, which with destroy their credit for life. In essence, we have eliminated 30% of our nation’s purchasing power which is required to fuel a recovery. Many today are faced with excessive school loans they are unable to service as a result of our nation’s inability to create jobs. Currently more then 7 million college graduates are working in jobs that do not require a college degree-many working in jobs that pay $8-9 an hour. Adding to this economic debacle is the millions of baby boomers who have had their life savings, and 401k wiped out at retirement age. This will force more “retired” back into a shrinking job market.
To help resolve this problem, we should actively urge our elected politicians to lobby for financial amnesty for all Americans who have become victims of financial terrorism. Amnesty in the form of having bad credit removed from their credit report, once they are gainfully employed and restructure their debt load. Washington was quick to bail out Wall Street via American Taxpayer dollars; though has done nothing to provide a safety net for the middle class. If they are truly committed to improving the quality of life for their constituents, they should enact laws to bail out Main Street. For if not, this would be a testament that the bottom 98% of Americans are paying for the sins and greed of the top2%. Now ask yourself, “How is Laissez Faire Capitalism working for you.
Dr. Richard Cirulli is a professor of economics and business, business consultant, and hosts a weekly cable show, The American Condition, that deals with current economic issues. He can be reached at profcirulli@optonline.net
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.
