It's the economy, Stupid, Jr.

(yes, I am the Matrix Patriot. Mary from Queens is my Peter Parker, my Bruce Wayne.)

OK back to basics. The American economy.

I have been hoping, waiting, praying that the American economy will turn around and turn around soon.
I'm sure many of you are with me on that regardless of your party.

Thom Hartmann says that our situation is about tarriffs and I think he makes some relevant points. He says to call your Congress person and there's alot of sense in that.

We know we got screwed over the course of years and several Presidents, Republican and Democrat with all these "free trade" agreements. It also looks like the immigration situation isn't going to be resolved in any logical, pretty or palatable way.

Our infrastructure is shot, our education system gutted, our health care third-class. American companies don't have American plants and get out of paying America's taxes. We've had our jobs outsourced and even American executives mock the quality of our labor to our faces.

Everything can be bought SUPPOSEDLY cheaper, better, less regulated elsewhere.

The stock markets that everyone watches are the ones in Asia. Now even American companies are investing their pension funds in American stock markets. So what happens in India or China affects the American investor and they probably aren't even aware of it.

So, we're hoping that the American economy will somehow turn around.

Two nights ago, on PBS The News Hour I saw a very interesting, rather shocking report on real estate development in India.

(unfortunately News Hour has no link to this story - same show as India patents and copyrights story)

I couldn't believe my eyes.

We're under the impression that India has taken away SOME jobs and some people are better off now being in a middle class over there but I don't think that many Americans REALLY KNOW what is going on over in India. I sure didn't. I had no idea the development was that extreme.

They really are undergoing a "boom" which would ordinarily be ours.

We were the ones who were supposed to benefit from the tech boom. We were the ones that trained for it.

Their manfacturing has gone up TWELVE PERCENT.

They can't build enough hotel rooms fast enough.

They are now past building up Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and are now looking for suburbs to build on.

They are devoting an unbelievable amount of money to infrastructure - roads, highways, bridges, city planning.

They are building HUNDREDS of shopping malls.

Indian developers compare it to America in the 1950s and beyond.

Seeing the film footage was jaw dropping.

And I realized something very profound once I saw all this footage of all this building.

The American economy isn't going to turn around. Not in the next 10 or 20 years. Not with new, renewable sustainable energy industries - maybe not even in our lifetimes.

It's not going to happen for us again.

People might think that's pessimistic but I think it's realistic.

They are making a whole new world in India, in Dubai and other places.

They are making fantasy playgrounds in those countries for an upper middle class and wealthy class and we won't be part of it.

The money has moved.

The game is now in India or China or some other place but it's not here anymore.

Investors are like drug addicts, they don't care which street corner they buy their drugs from. They have no sentimentality about the neighborhood they buy their drugs in. They don't care what happens to the environment or the economy around where they buy their drugs ....

whereever the drugs are - that's where they are.

You move the drugs - they move with it.

And they don't give another thought about where their drugs used to be.

We are yesterday's fix, yesterday's high.

We're on our own. We are really, seriously alone.

And we're in debt and we're broken.

What are we going to do about it?

There's no impetus to invest in America anymore.
There's no reason to build factories here anymore and employ legal Americans anymore.

That's gone. That's really gone.

And if you need proof, go take a look at Dubai or India's new neighborhoods.

In the battle of the stock markets - it's between India and China - they're not looking back here anymore.

We have to start really asking the next Presidential candidates - what are you going to do to bring business and manufacturing back to America?

What are you going to do to bring good paying jobs back to the American worker?

We've been left in the dust, my friends. The proof is out there.

We have to stop dreaming of a shining knight that's going to save us, he/she is not going to come.