"Stinking Fish Head" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Stinking Fish Head

Thirty years ago I was the business-economics producer for ABC News. It was a grand opportunity for me because I had an excellent correspondent who knew the field, Dan Cordtz, and my forte was making complex ideas accessible to an evening news audience. We won a bunch of national awards for our work.

Someone who is also very good at this task is Paul Krugman, though his readership is presumed to be considerably better informed on such matters. For instance, he speaks of terms like "debt deflation" and "deleveraging" and even though he explains them, they will be pushing many of his readers beyond their comprehension comfort level.

The economy if far more complex than the stock market numbers reported by most news outlets. They’ll report the Dow and sometimes the NASDAQ, but those numbers have very little relationship to the economy. Wall Street will often go up on bad news for Main Street. Experts will opine, stentorionusly if speciously, on the market as though it was divine-able. For instance, is it gloomy about today or optimistic about tomorrow?

The U.S. economy – and the world economy with it – is heading downward. What’s coming will be as bad or worse than the Great Depression because there are billions more people, fewer new resources to tap into, and a history of remarkable incompetence among those who might have mitigated the problems.

Top Treasury people warned ten years ago that Fannie and Freddie were in trouble, but nothing was done. Just this past March their regulator scoffed at the notion of needing a bailout, and yet he’s still in place. Only a few years ago then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan denied the existence of a housing bubble. Just last year his successor, Ben Bernanke declared that the housing bubble would only cost $100 billion; the bill is $500 billion and climbing.

Add to the failed oversight the political games playing at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and the corrupt special interests who feed the campaign coffers, and it becomes dangerously clear that our government is no longer of, by and for the people.