Soft Spot? Maybe in Our Heads, But Not in Our Hearts

Dolors & Sense

by Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—6/6/11—An unproductive debate is raging over whether the economy’s current woes are just a “soft spot” or the beginnings of a new recession.

One thing is clear: if our hearts had been soft enough and our heads hard enough, there would be no soft economic patches.

Nor the prospect of worse. Not at this time—when, just out of a tough recession, the economy has in the past expanded at three times the current clip.

The economy is growing sluggishly or not at all because the consumer won’t spend.

The consumer won’t spend because confidence is weak.

Confidence is weak because the world is topsy-turvy.

The average person thought he had a government that could be counted on to help “level the economic playing field.”

But that hasn’t happened.

The distribution of income promises to become even more skewed than in the past, as the rich preserve their tax gains and state and local authorities cut expenditures for the education that might enable the jobless to acquire needed job skills.

The average person thought he had a government that would correct its own mistakes.

But that hasn’t happened.

The government created the recession by first flooding the economy with money and then failing to monitor the lending of that money by institutions it allegedly supervised.

Most of the same institutions that squandered the money have received additional money, post-crisis, to prop them up. But those who really suffered from indiscriminate bankerly open-handedness—the hapless mortgagors—have not been similarly favored.

The average person thought he had a competent government.

But that wasn’t the case.

The government intensified the financial crisis by vagarious decision-making—saving some businesses, allowing others to fail, and then reverting back to the savior mode, without apparent clarity of judgment and with a suspicion of vindictiveness toward some—e.g., Lehman Bros.

The average person thought he had a compassionate government.

But compassion seems shrewdly absent.

The political discourse is dominated by only a small part of the government that tells the average person with remarkable callousness that he must tighten his belt and reduce spending while expecting less Social Security support and medical attention in the future.

Recently, a medical research group attempted to project the consequences for the suicide rate of a prolonged economic slowdown, using data extrapolated from Japan. It found that the USA should expect an increase of about 12,000 suicides a year as a result of our economic woes.

The combination of hard hearts and soft minds kills.