So I care about the issues and politics and whatnot. I read the news, stay up on the issues and stuff, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around this whole economic recession/whatever they want to call it. I tried to read the Cover Story of the USA Today about it, and it all seemed like gibberish to me. Basically, if I don't know what the problem is, I can't decide how I feel about how to solve it (e.g. who I support).

Can somebody cut through the crap and explain it in layman's terms to me?

Get off TOTSE and talk to people in person. Dont give or pay people to give you crap banking either. The banks and gas companies will merge together soon as well.

Even experts don't completely understand & they certainly don't agree. Let alone all the lying that goes on. I read a bunch about it, way more than I'm interested in it.

I know that to pay to much attention to it is rather depressing. It's low down & mind messing. If you want to read some about it, I like a few sites. One is:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page.html

It has many talented writers, some on economics. I quite like this one, though as with all sites & people they have their slant.

http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva09202008.html

Expect to be enlightened stunned & confused...like everyone else. For a little economic entertainment...

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/MogamboGuru.html

Prices are rising everywhere because the price of gas is rising, so its becoming more and more expensive to transport the products to the stores to buy them. The price of transport is passed on to us.

The rise in gas/oil prices has very little to do with the war. (thats not to say it has nothing to do with the war) The more oil is produced, the lower the prices. And vice versa. Economies grow. And their need for more oil grows as well. Unfortunately the production of oil has remained more or less the same (give or take a few million barrels) since the early 2000's, while the demand from growing economies kept rising (US/Europe/india/china/brazil/ and other developed/developing economies)

This has produced a higher demand for oil, while the production has not increased.

Couple that with the on goings in the middle east(war, rhetoric from Iran saying they will cut oil exports), venuzuela (the same thing), and nigeria(open war/civil war in their oil producing delta)

Couple that with other oil powers who like the high price of oil (and why wouldnt they, more money for them!) Algeria said it will cut oil, this after bush talked saudi arabia into increasing oil production in exchange for sale of more advanced weaponry. (yes say what you want about him, but there is a few things he knows how to do without looking like an idiot)

Lets not forget how our refineries are mostly in the gulf coast, vulnerable to disruption of operations from hurricanes.

Lets not forget how we have billions of barrels of oil in alaska, but the democrats wont let us drill there (no this is not a dems bashing, republicans piss me off as well)

All that is not to say how our whole problems stem from oil.

The mortgage crisis, the losing confidence in the american dollar overseas (to the point where many oil exporting countries want to switch to the euro for their exporting needs)

The sheer amount of money we are spending on the war, and other defense/homeland security related things, just make people question whether we can afford all this. Speculations range everythin from we are just printing more and more money (leading to inflation) to borrowing MASSIVE amounts of money and dumping the responsibility of that on the future generations.

Plus congress is currently debating a $700 BILLION bailout (yes, 700 BILLION, just to be given to corporations to prevent them from going under) which is a double edged sword, If we dont bail them out, they go under, massive unemployment, our economy collapses (or very close to it) and depression. If we DO bail them out, we barrow 700 BIllion from foreign governments, when our debt is already over 11 trillion, meaning by the time we repay (IF we repay) it will amount to over 1 trillion on this particular loan.

Theres just so much more to it that it cant be explained by any one person. There is so much more that it cant be explained by a large group of the most smartest economists in the nation!

One thing is certain, if we had more oil, even just a little more oil produced here, things would just be that much easier.

And this can be achieved by invading Russia or resurrecting Jethro Bodine.

Turbulence is the word.

A plane doesn't crash just because it hit some turbulence.

If it was just "turbulence"? Why the big bailout? Turbulence calls for the wearing of seatbelts & a "STFU!" Not the spending of trillions of $$$.

Why the bailout? How about wall street giants refusing to fail. So they lobby a select few individuals, and get a nice big check from the taxpayers.

And yes, it really could be that simple.

Regardless of physical or geo-political factors, economies go in cycles. Booms followed by recessions with a general upswing due to increases in productivity. The reasons behind this are unclear (this is where the Jewish conspiracy comes in).
http://www.financialsense.com/Market/cpuplava/2007/images/0314.h1.gif

When the economy is in a boom the government tries to hold it back by running surpluses. This is to worsen the impact of a recession. In a recession governments run deficits. They try to push the economy by injecting money. One of the ways they do this is through bailouts.

Is that the way it works DU? Very nice. How much does it matter if you guys do it, what with your small economy? When the US, runs nothing but deficits, good times or bad?

Cycles? When was the last time your country had to bailout or nationalize very large companies? Is it "normal" for the whole economic system to come near collapse?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09212008...don_130110.htm