Grab and Keel

I think I might know some of this economy stuff!

Productivity

That’s when the big companies dropped us because of the last stock market crash as a way to avoid all those extra perks the big companies have to pay, like retirement and health, union wages, and higher salaries for more experienced workers. So that’s when Bush convinced us to start small businesses so we could work twice as many hours for less money.

Small Business

That’s the thing Bush told us to start.  You know we got this cozy idea about what a small business was and pretended we were just talking about the Moms and the Pops. Well, some of us were, but Bush had a lot of other folks in mind too. What do you think defines a small business? Go HERE, and click on the “Table of Small Business Size Standards”.

Deflation – The reduction of the general level of prices.

That’s like the price of our homes for the last two years after we had to mortgage them to the hilt to feed ourselves and keep our small businesses going. You know, after they convinced us to start small businesses.

Inflation – A General increase in prices and fall in the purchasing power of money.

That’s like the price of our homes before the fall.  You know, after the last Wall Street fiasco, when the smart people told us to buy homes and put money in them, because the stock market was shaky. It’s also before they got all our refinance credit and the last little personal crisis was yet to occur, whereupon, we suddenly had no more equity, or home.

Stagflation – persistent inflation combined with high unemployment and stagnant demand in the economy.

That’s when the government acts. It decides the figures don’t look good, so they cut the time you can get unemployment money and drop you off the list. That way the figures look better. Course you can’t get hired anywhere, because the ones that got laid off after you, are still on unemployment and can’t buy anything.  You darn well can’t buy anything. So all that makes demand look bad. So they call you a discouraged worker, and you are pretty much invisible and screwed. In a bad way.

Recession – A period of temporary decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally defined by a fall in GDP for two successive quarters. (Four quarters in a year thus, a period for six months in a row.)

That’s when the government tells you aren’t having one of those. You just live in the wrong place and are suffering from “A Regional Decline”.  You know, it doesn’t count cause some folks in other places, are still working, and gas is so high it pumps the figures way up. Of course regional difficulty can last a lot of years, but it still doesn’t count. Since it doesn’t count, you  don’t either.

GDP – Gross Domestic Product.

That’s what the government says we make in our job’s and farms and factories. That includes oil and gas and coal and electricity. Oh yeah, and wind farms. Except the Spanish conglomerates own at least 20% of that and a few of our solar facilites.  I don’t know who owns oil any more, but it’s sure not me.

Depression – A long and severe recession in the economy.

That’s when the government finally decides we have problem. Some of us don’t know how to live in the woods, so we settle down in front of the Capitol. Depending on where we are in our war cycle, we try to ignore it until the tent town in front of the Capitol gets big enough that the people in charge are tripping over us. Then we start a draft and put people to work. Or we start a work program, and build the art and towers and bridges we forgot to build before.

Liquid assets – cash

Huh?

Liquidity – the availability of liquid assets in the market (2) A high volume of activity in the market.

Again, Huh?

Collateral – Something pledged as security for repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default.

That’s the deed to your home the banks quietly used as collateral to get daily money from the Fed, clear back in 2006 and 2007, while they pretended that the mortgage on them was still good because we would be able to pay the adjusted rate. Course, that was BEFORE we lost our jobs, or dug ourselves into that small business hole.

Autarky – Economic Independence or self-sufficiency

Like when you can’t get a loan, or money, you lost your house and job, so you have to go to the barter system, grow your veggies, reweave your old jeans into tents and live in the woods. Don’t forget your gun, you’ll need it to fend off the other homeless, from your carrots and your spring weeds. If the Depression goes through some winters, you’ll need to be collecting that fluff from the milkweed and cattails for warmth, or skin your dog. The government tells you that they are going to raise your bank account insurance from $100,000,  to $250,000 per account, and you try to remember what a bank account is, because that left when you went on the barter system.

Hey, don’t forget to save your wood ashes! You’ll need that for  a whole bunch of stuff, like making soap off the fat of your skinned dog.

Yep, pretty much been there done that. I know this stuff better than I thought!

Except of course, this time they added that extra part about bankruptcies.  Hmmm.

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