The same four words were successfully used by President Clinton’s chief strategist in the run-up to his first election, but I have reversed their order to more accurately describe the aftermath of several years of market manipulation from those in government. Since the New Deal, the political class inherited the right to push the economic buttons, while making promises that we will all live happily ever-after - - just elect us. Well-intentioned and self-correcting as it was in the 1930s, the unintended consequences of this top-down approach today is a whole different matter.

In the Reagan years it was supply-side economics that energized markets with tax cuts that were to trickle-down to the average citizen. Of course following the fiscal train wreck of the Carter years where interest on home mortgages hit 18%, and nearly strangled the economy to death, anything was a vast improvement. Reagan spent huge sums on a military buildup aimed at ending the cold war and opening world markets, and it worked - - for a time.

The current President Bush and President Clinton followed a continuous 15 year path to a system of largely unregulated world trade and unrestrained free market job exportation that industrialized and commercialized the world at an unprecedented rate. The value of this effort doubled over itself many times in the last two decades. When some cautioned that open-ended global growth was not the best course for our own economy, our national priorities and quality of life, the response was “A rising tide lifts all boats”. We are learning rapidly that many of those boats are shipping the nucleus or our efficient and productive society out of this country. That now includes not only the physical plant of industry at all levels, but the employment opportunity for the middle class in unprecedented numbers.

From both of the Clinton terms and through the current Bush years, any thought that planning for stabilizing the home economy was cast aside. From the President on down, everyone was selling that foreign investment in any form made just as much, if not more sense than domestic pump-priming. Cheap T-Shirts and all that followed would bring more discretionary spending to more Americans so fast that they could save their money, invest in more offshore corporations, and we would all live cheaper with more. Basically our politicians convinced us to finance the sellout of our own country with our own savings and debt, while they and their corporate internationalist profiteers move those profits to banks in the Caymans, Hong Kong, Dubai and that old standby, Switzerland.

Read the current headlines. City Bank has to borrow from foreign sources to shore up massive losses that should have put the company under - - but it is too big and important to fail (How many times have we heard that?). While market forces and bad decisions over the years brought us recessions and the depression of 1929-38, our ability to restructure our finances and recapitalize from within saved us from the type of total economic collapse that turned many countries over to despotic leadership in the 19th and 20th century. The very best of the New Deal government programs stabilized our money supply and protected the people’s money from reckless speculation by banks and other financial institutions. Every one of those protections has been eliminated; the majority of them during the Clinton years with the able assistance of Secretary of Treasury Rubin, whom I characterize as the Prince of Corporate Darkness. Yes, short term profits bought a lot of votes in those years, but the politicians then, and to this day, sold us out, drained the piggy bank, and now there is no domestic capital left to reformulate and very little internal infrastructure to reorganize. Yes, we are a “service economy” we are told, so when things get tough we can shine each other’s shoes.

Don’t get caught up in the philosophical political debate between the Democrats and the Republicans over who has the better instant fix for the economy and whose “remedy program” will get the job done just in time to elect them in November. Remember, they collaborated in exporting not just base manufacturing, but the very jobs that the tiered middle class once had access to. The Philadelphia I grew up in had job opportunities at all levels of education and ability, and those who wanted to move through that system and raise a family had opportunity from industries as diverse as anywhere in this country; blue and white collar. Today you jump from permanent minimum wage to jobs that require a master’s degree with very little opportunity in between. That is not the country that suffered through Depression, fought two world wars, and gave the world the first majority middle class that I grew up in - - and the future is bleak.

Those behind the curtain have kept merchandised consumerism alive while picking our bones through marketing debt like it was free candy. Local usury laws were canceled out by minimally restrictive national ones and debt ceilings pushed to the limit while your politicians had lunch and two martinis with blind regulators who sold out large segments of the population. This government/business marketing effort claimed that all lives were being enriched at rates not previously seen. Some lives were being enriched all right, but we have produced the greatest separation between the haves and the have nots since the 19th Century, and what they have is largely in foreign holdings.

And it is all those industries that sell here, but manufacture, headquarter and shelter most of their profits elsewhere that would have not been able to exist in previous years. But do you hear Democrats or Republicans (except Ron Paul) calling for any mandated change in the policies that not only sent the jobs out of the country, but most of the tax money they would pay as well. The biggest corporations don’t worry about corporate taxes these days as they don’t have to pay them if their headquarters is in Hong Kong.

Now, you pay the taxes on all you do here, but they don’t, and your politicians made it all possible through changes ram-rodded through the U.S Congress; particularly since the late 1980s. What I am espousing is not protectionism, but careful prioritizing. “Promote the General Welfare” a mandate from the founding of our government, meant the welfare of this country first, and then set standards of government that were fair and controlled trade that was in our short and long term interest.

The argument in past years was that too much of our largess was channeled to the upper classes, but at least their holdings and capital were assets of the United States . Today a substantial portion of those assets are offshore in the hands of those who have absolutely no vested interest in the United States , and see us only as markets to be manipulated.

We are subsidizing the lifestyles of corporatists worldwide by mortgaging our country to buy what they make and sell under laws and rules we would never tolerate here. What you see and hear from the media is only the tip of the iceberg. In just the last couple of weeks, an economy now perceived to be in free-fall has taken first place, along with employment opportunity, in the mind of the general public in this election year - - as it should. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are scrambling for face-saving instant remedies.

Once you have over-mortgaged the store and sold most of the inventory it is hard to regroup and emerge with any credibility. Hold all of their feet to the fire before you vote in November. Show the leadership that the economy may be stupid - - but we’re not.

Jim Foster
607 E. Phil-Ellena St.
Philadelphia , Pa.19119