The Economic Crisis of the 21st Century
Who is responsible for the economic disaster?
Who predicted it would happen?
Who thought it would not happen?
What were the first signs of the crisis coming?
How does it compare to the Great Depression?
What is the difference between a recession and a depression?
When did it officially become a recession?
What caused the mortgage market to collapse?
How did mortgage rates affect the real estate boom?
Was the burst of the real estate bubble the starting of all of this?
Was 9/11 the real cause, and this is just residual effects?
What government intervention has helped?
What government intervention has hurt?
Did the government do to prevent this from happening?
What did the government fail to do to prevent this from happening?
Are big corporations to blame?
Is there any “one person” or any “thing” responsible for the mess?
How did Bernard Madoff get away with a $50B ponsey scheme?
How much worse will it get before it gets better?
Will it get worse before it gets better?
Have we seen the bottom?
Where is the bottom?
What signs will indicate we have reached the bottom?
How much money has the crisis cost America?
How much money has the average American lost?
Has America made the same mistakes of the Great Depression?
Does every generation need to make their own mistakes?
Could this have been prevented?
How much worse was the Great Depression than this?
Can any “one” country be identified as the culprit?
When this is over with, when will the next one happen?
How often do we have recessions in America?
When was the last recession?
What did we do to get out of it?
How does the media influence slow the healing of this crisis?
Do the media protract the crisis?
Is the crisis immune from Government help?
Does it just need to “run its course?”
How much do politics play in this?
Are other countries in as much pain as America?
Has the suicide rate increased from this crisis?
How many suicides can be accounted for during the Great Depression?
Does technology have any effect on the speed with which the crisis is happening?
How many people have lost their jobs?
How do the jobs losses compare to that of the Great Depression or other Recessions?
What jobs are available right now?
How do the government bailouts help or hurt?
Who has received the government bailout money thus far?
To what extent do the bailout packages affect the national debt of America?
How many bankruptcies have been caused because of the crisis?
How many foreclosures can we attribute to the crisis?
Are any industries or companies profiting from the crisis?
How bad has the stock market losses been?
Where is the stock market bottom?
What was the percentage drop in the market during the Great Depression?
What stocks have increased since the beginning of this crisis?
Should people pull their money out of the market?
How will the crisis affect social security?
How many people are on food stamps because of this?
Does class warfare have anything to do with this?
Are the rich really hurting right now?
Are there people that have not been affected?
How will children remember this crisis?
How much have real estate values dropped?
When can real estate values expect to return?
What were the hardest hit areas of the country?
Did the price of oil have anything to do with the crash?
Will the crisis force the government to takeover more banks?
What are the negatives of nationalizing banks?
Did the Iraq War have anything to do with this?
Has spending increased or decreased in the Iraq War since the crisis?
If a decrease in War spending has happened, has it affected the ability of the troops to do their jobs?
How has the crisis affected migration to the United States?
I love how you looked at this from an average Americans point of view. You did a great job comparing this recession with the great depression and other recessions. Also, I liked how you asked about the suicide rate and if it has gone up. These are the type of questions that every American thinks at one point in time in a depression or recession. You asked a lot of great questions about how people shoud/do spend their money.
ReplyDelete"Attempts to repair our economy will falter unless our health care financing problem is repaired as well. I repeat: the problem is how we finance our health care, not the quality of the care available to those fortunate enough to still afford it. Solutions are available that would save our quality while changing our financing system. Though none are perfect, every other industrialized country in the world has a better solution than do we. Let’s borrow ideas from several and create a composite that works here in America.
ReplyDeleteLike no other country, we currently use the for-profit insurance industry as the means of distributing the majority of our health care dollars to providers [doctors, hospitals, etc.]. This approach siphons up to 50% of those dollars before any health care is delivered! This means that employers that provide health care benefits and citizens that buy insurance to protect their families spend so much on insurance premiums that precious little is left that stimulates the economy and creates jobs.
There are several models of Single Payer systems available from which to find a hybrid that will work in America and here in Colorado. These are NOT government run programs. They use the free-market, independent provider system we have in place, and leave no person without access to quality health care. I repeat: no person without! And for less than we now pay." (TOM PARSON)