How I Knew Our US Economy Is In A Mess - Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips - 2008

How To Figure Out If America Is In A Mess Or Not -
2008 Cricket Diane C Phillips

Now look, this is simple. For every home foreclosed in America, it impacts a minimum of three people - doesn’t matter if it was an “investor” or not. It changes the buying power of at least 3 people.

Take the total number of homes in foreclosure or where the foreclosure has already occurred over the last two years and multiply by 3. That is a conservative estimate of the immediate and specific impacts of those events.

Then, put that number under the heading, “Foreclosures - losses”. Next, make a column for “Foreclosure - ripple effects”. Take the mean average of interactive positions affected by each of those 3 people. This means they aren’t giving at church anymore, or buying groceries where they used to live nor attending school, soccer or scouts, etc.

Multiply the first number by 25. This is not the accurate mean average. It is a conservative estimate which includes drug stores, discount stores, auto repair businesses, dry cleaners, sports activities, restaurants, malls, gas stations, little league and others. Make a list of these, if you want. It really is a conservative estimate.

Therefore, column one has the conservative “real” number of immediate real lives affected and column two has the conservative estimate of the “real” impacts to the buying power lost to businesses and surrounding community services, organizations and churches across the United States.

Then, take the number (as close to actual as possible) of jobs lost over the last 2 years, (not unemployed because those numbers are fudged). Using this number, multiply by 4. This is the average number of people affected by a job loss. This goes in column four under the heading, “Jobs - losses”. It represents a conservative estimate of the buying power lost when one single job is removed from the family it was supporting or helping to support.

Now, take an average mean of the impacts in dollars no longer available to use to buy things. Use an average base that is conservative. Lest we forget, these numbers and multipliers are the highest probability of assured impacts because the estimates are on the conservative side. The real impact numbers are much greater and amplified to an extreme that can only be imagined using these charts.

So, using the conservative dollar estimate of $500 / week or $12,000 per year - whichever makes you feel better about it - multiply the job losses number by either (or both) of these numbers. Enter this amount in a column title, “Job losses - ripple effects @ $500/wk” or put in the $12,000 per year number, instead, whichever was used. This represents the absolute minimum amounts of buying power that has been lost by these job losses.

Now, if you’ve done this right, all these numbers will represent the same time period, (2 yrs); and the same basic conservative estimation process used on all of them to derive a clearer picture of the problem that has occurred across the US.

When comparing this chart to any other derivations of impacts and losses, - remember this, they don’t mix. It is nearly impossible to get a true picture of how other impact charting was done and whether their figures mixed apples and oranges. Or, whether the statistics and studies used narrowly defined, targeted, select denigrations of totals to use for the derivations and base totals because of bias, intent or ignorance.

The close to damn accurate chart you’ve just made starts to show a clearer picture of the real problems we face in this historic time of national crisis. It explains why our businesses are failing in record numbers, our towns and cities are being heavily impacted financially and otherwise, housing developments sit empty and a host of other services are going bankrupt.

It isn’t what can or can’t be put on credit or borrowed that signifies the greatest and most severe part of our economic crisis. It is the true loss of buying power in the consumer base that supports all of it. These columns of numbers are conservatively generated to supply a realistic assessment of cause and effects relationships in our economy. It evidences a severe problem, even in its most conservative derivations.

Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 06-24-08
Cricket House Studios, USA1 - 2008 -
“Creating the Tangible from the Impossible every day and the Impossible from the Tangible as needed.”

If its broke - fix it - US policy makers - It is broke - FIX IT - Thanx - Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips - 2008

Why are we using levee technologies from 150 years ago in America? How is it possible to believe that over a million tons of turbulent waters will be held in place by earthen levee systems? Reliability has failed, reality has shown that it doesn’t work and we have paid a huge fortune for research, research, research, study, study, study - but none of these efforts have resulted in substantial changes in the corps of engineers’ approaches nor in better systems for levees, dams, bridges, flood recovery after systems collapse nor useful updated systems. After 1993 flooding in the Midwest, how could the levee systems have not been recreated and restored to something that would work to prevent their collapse in 2008? Who decided the manner in which it was done and is about to be re-done the same way which will fail next time?

I also would like to know what specific individuals at FEMA were responsible for stopping those new goods in the warehouses from being distributed to Katrina victims in a timely manner. And, what specific individuals and chain of command decided to mark them as surplus, why the FEMA decision-makers and others in our government judged these supplies to be un-needed, and who specifically made that decision. It is our right to know why and how these decision-makers can be so completely “off”. Are they all doing drugs? Have they created a process by which they cannot make accurately based decisions? Do they not watch the news? Do they not go “on-site” before making these determinations? Are they living in some other country most of the time? Do the chain of command systems at FEMA and at the Corps of Engineers (and other agencies) form the basis for criminal negligence on a consistent basis?

Also, there was a show that described a man’s thirty years of efforts to make liquid gas from coal and he has created a proven process and method for this - why aren’t we seeing this man’s work be brought into the marketplace to solve some of the gas and diesel fuel problems? Why isn’t the man’s efforts, also shown on public broadcast, to create an algae based farming for ethanol fuels being given to distribution for the marketplace and whatever is required to do that made available to him? Where are the total electric cars that were successfully created by our automakers and why aren’t we supporting these companies, including the tesla car - to get these cars into our hands right now/ immediately? They’ve already been created, they do work, they do solve the problem and they can be made affordable for us - what is wrong with doing whatever it takes to get these to us?

Our government bias to speak for oil companies that are using our national resources to make their profits - must change. It isn’t thirty years from now to get these things done with the studies, research and alternatives that have been being designed for over thirty years back from here. The status quo isn’t a practical alternative for thirty more years, not for even two more years and in fact, not even for six more months. The speculators are engaging in illegal and criminal gambling practices at our expense and the oil companies have over three hundred percent profiteering practices which is also illegal (considered gouging, opportunistic profiteering beyond what we allow to any other business or industry or companies of any size, and they’re using natural and American taxpayers’ resources and moneys to make these profits). Our US government leadership, decision-makers from all positions are engaging in favoritism, conflicts of interest and self-serving abuses of their power and position to further the agenda for oil companies and others that are fully capable of competitiveness without these unfair advantages.
Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 06-23-08, USA, Cricket House Studios, 2008

To Our News Broadcasters - Cricket Diane C Phillips - 2008 -

I do understand that your news group is a profit-driven and profit rich organization. What I do not understand is this:

Since many groups of people are doing no further examination of things than the quick feeding of information from you, why on the shows you produce are we seeing “experts” who are choosing to lie? They must know the truth of the situation because of their knowledge base and background. What are they doing? - propaganda? - intentional “framing” of the situation in terms they believe will create “confidence” where it is no longer merited? - do they believe lies? What is it that would cause otherwise knowledgeable individuals to pretend something is so that is not?

I would like to see both sides of the issue, too. That seems to be the rationale for giving airtime to contributors that as experts, especially on economics and business projections, are essentially disseminating false interpretations of the facts, knowingly. But the job of news is to accurately portray the facts and what these facts indicate truthfully. We are all capable of forming our own opinions thereafter.

The Great Depression

In October 1929 the stock market crashed, wiping out 40 percent of the paper values of common stock. Even after the stock market collapse, however, politicians and industry leaders continued to issue optimistic predictions for the nation’s economy. But the Depression deepened, confidence evaporated and many lost their life savings. By 1933 the value of stock on the New York Stock Exchange was less than a fifth of what it had been at its peak in 1929. Business houses closed their doors, factories shut down and banks failed. Farm income fell some 50 percent. By 1932 approximately one out of every four Americans was unemployed.

The core of the problem was the immense disparity between the country’s productive capacity and the ability of people to consume. Great innovations in productive techniques during and after the war raised the output of industry beyond the purchasing capacity of U.S. farmers and wage earners. The savings of the wealthy and middle class, increasing far beyond the possibilities of sound investment, had been drawn into frantic speculation in stocks or real estate. The stock market collapse, therefore, had been merely the first of several detonations in which a flimsy structure of speculation had been leveled to the ground.

The presidential campaign of 1932 was chiefly a debate over the causes and possible remedies of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, unlucky in entering The White House only eight months before the stock market crash, had struggled tirelessly, but ineffectively, to set the wheels of industry in motion again. His Democratic opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, already popular as the governor of New York during the developing crisis, argued that the Depression stemmed from the U.S. economy’s underlying flaws, which had been aggravated by Republican policies during the 1920s. President Hoover replied that the economy was fundamentally sound, but had been shaken by the repercussions of a worldwide depression — whose causes could be traced back to the war. Behind this argument lay a clear implication: Hoover had to depend largely on natural processes of recovery, while Roosevelt was prepared to use the federal government’s authority for bold experimental remedies.

The election resulted in a smashing victory for Roosevelt, who won 22,800,000 votes to Hoover’s 15,700,000. The United States was about to enter a new era of economic and political change.

Taken from The Great Depression Overview
Found - http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/overview.htm

The idea that the Great Depression in the United States would have righted itself without any intervention is only a theory and is not supported in the economies around the World historically that have endured depressed economies for any extended length of time. It doesn’t matter what Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals think about that. The facts are still the same and so are the outcomes. Theory and opinion are not facts.

Nor can opinion and theory alter the facts which will become obvious sooner or later. No matter how the facts are, no matter what they are, no matter why they are –> these will remain constant, regardless of our opinions and theories about them.

There are an obvious group of questions that indicate this truth - )( in economics)(.

1. What happens when everyone is selling and very few or no one is buying?

2. How many people stop purchasing when their (one) job disappears and they can’t get another job within a month or two? Is it the members of their immediate household that stop purchasing or also their church, scouts, civic clubs, local government services, schools, and every business they had been using locally?

3. If 66% of those in the US who want to work are working (as described by a news channel a couple days ago), what has happened to the other 34% of those who want to work? Are they homeless now? How many individuals and families is that?

4. When demand goes down, as with many grocery items, stores and commodities such as gasoline, but prices go up - is it obvious these companies are trying to maintain the same profit margins? If an analysis comes from any business or economics book’s information, what happens at some point by doing this? Doesn’t it eventually undermine the sales and stability of company assets, bankrupt the company and further destabilize other things around them?

5. During the Great Depression, the rosy optimism of Republicans failed to meet the measure required to restore faith nor solved the problem. Why would it appear to them as the proper choice to make today, to use after that dismal failure of the same tactic?

6. What happens when over 60% of the physical properties that could be used as a potential residence cannot be afforded by the majority of the population requiring it?

7. What does it mean in the greater scheme of capitalism when all competition for a market position is thwarted and is not accessible - such as the case with any competition for other fuel sources to power homes, cars, airplanes, trucks, ships, farm equipment, boats, trains, etc.?

We have alternatives researched ad nauseum already and prepared to go into the market - why are they denied opportunities to be there available to us? Oil and gas, natural gas, heating oil and electricity have been subsidized for many years, why do we stay our hand now, declining support for those who would compete with them? Our subsidized research to these existing commodities, utilities and oil companies for their geological surveys, for equipment, business incentives, tax breaks and every other avenue of subsidy and support has given an unfair advantage that we funded and yet we have not extended those aids to other forms of energy, power and fuels that would compete with them. Now what?

Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 2008
Cricket House Studios USA1 - 06-07-08

What do I want the American people to do? - Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips - 2008

What do I want the American people to do?

2008 Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips

Cricket House Studios, USA

Stop. Look around. Listen to the real sounds of the real world. Take note, stop worrying, fix what is broken and implement workable solutions that hold possibility of working. Get on it - Let’s work this:

1. We are going to have to make our own jobs.

2. We are going to have to engage in horse trading to get what we need.

3. Use our ingenuity & resourcefulness.

4. Use our talents, skills & knowledge.

5. Create workable solutions to our problems, issues & circumstances.

6. Feel the feelings we have about it all and let go of them once experienced.

7. Be innovative, inventive & creative.

8. Play hardball when necessary.

9. Recognize common needs to fill for the money we need.

10. Rejoice in rebuilding our America.

Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 2008

“Creating the Tangible from the Impossible every day.”

“Illuminati of One.”

05-28-08 USA1 - USAX1 - Atlanta, Ga, USA