MODESTO, Calif. -- Vacant storefronts, abandoned homes and shuttered schools tell the story of the economy in the Northern San Joaquin Valley: This is the new normal.
People are beginning to look at the 3-year-old economic downturn as a permanent condition rather than a storm to be weathered.
Modesto is looking at $8 million in cuts this year from its $106 million general fund, the money that pays for essential services such as police, fire and parks, Mayor Jim Ridenour said. That number is down from the city's $130 million general fund of its 2006-07 budget year.
School districts around the region are feeling the pain, as well, with declining enrollment and the steep drop in tax revenues leading to layoffs, pay cuts and campus closures.
Businesses have closed or cut back drastically.
"For lease" signs line commercial strips and office complexes. Important tenants such as Gottschalk's, Mervyn's and Circuit City left gaping holes in shopping centers that, as a result, get less traffic.
Often the nation's car theft capital, the region earned another dubious title when it led the country in foreclosure rates. Weeds overtake lawns at homes abandoned by people who could no longer afford to pay for them.
Kelvin Jasek-Rysdahl, professor of economics at California State University, Stanislaus, and co-director of the university's Center for Public Policy Studies, recalled a presentation he gave in November 2008. It was just before the government officially recognized the country had been in a recession for more than a year.
'Hindsight is 20-20'
"The projections then among several groups of economists were that this might last through the first quarter of 2009," he said. "Hindsight is 20-20, but obviously nobody predicted this."
Wrong. Plenty of people "predicted this" (excerpt, of course, most economists). Why are those individuals who didn't see this coming the ones who keep getting asked for their opinion?
More Here..
In the end there were no real profits from productive labor being made in America only a supply of foreign credit used to pay out dividends called “profits” As real profits cannot be got from employing overpaid and subsidised American high waged workers . So, as the multinationals owned the jobs not americans themselves “made in America” for American profits had morphed into made in China for Americas Wall St profit.
ReplyDeleteNext will come will be a wave of foreclosure on a lot more housing assets and commercial properties. And companies will be got on the cheap when the “recovery” “Unexpectedly” crashes on the stock exchange. The rich have all the necessary cash on hand for a cheap buy up as their losses have been socialised in return for cash handouts and cheap or free money available from the Fed as a result of the Financial Coup to control the Treasury money supply.
And of course as everybody knows, people have the right to spend their “hard earned cash” as they please. The rich are about to press the reset button. For the big buy up.
Obama and “socialism” will get the blame as scapegoats. And the Republicans will promise really, really, really , to get America moving again with the old constitution patriotically “restored” with “better” regulations and patriot acts. So the old game can begin again from a fresh start for the American dream . And the same patriotic rich gangsters still in control. The bulk of the average Americans “assets” are now debts as the system ensured would be the case and the falling rate of profits took its toll.
When the cut in that foreign supplied credit that flowed thru to the average americans dried up the old debts to pay off the dream became unpayable, Bubble! Crash! Nightmare!
Poverty next with only a jobless recovery and third world level wages competition promised after the buy up and reset.
As one Rothschild is reported to have said:
ReplyDelete“In a financial crisis you don”t buy until you see the flow of blood on the streets“.
It wont be long to wait now.
I just came back from Modesto...I go there 2-3 times a month...The town has so many empty stores BUT it's semi-clean and the people are friendly and everyone is still shopping.
ReplyDeleteI can't figure it out since Stockton looks like a bomb went off on it and it's a combo of Blade Runner and Robo Cop...With mixes of violent gangs, drug addicts and homeless everywhere.
Salinas is slipping into a palible depression but honestly Modesto looks friggen nice.
I see it as a slow death now. America is fatally wounded, ready to die, but it will take some time. The Oligarchs have all the patience in the world and are willing to sit it out.
ReplyDeleteThe time and date of our demise has already been determined by them. That course has already been charted.
Overbuilt strip malls, fast food restaurants, sub-divisions, mega malls; these are nothing more than props in a movie set. Make believe growth without the ability to sustain.
ReplyDelete"Obama and Socialism will get the blame as scapegoats"
ReplyDeleteOh PLEASE !!!
In my town; like everytown we had the "old Money" that gobbled everything up; got to big to hold what it had and in the 3rd and now sometimes 4th generation sells it all back off - it is the way of things.
I also like the guy on another subject who states that even the eartquakes are controlled by those damn Oligarchs !
Damn buddy; next thing ya know them rotten SOB's are gonna control the Sun !
Oh that's right ! They already Do !
Too damn funny people
I would go into a 6 paragraph rant on california; but will save everybody the unneeded diatribe.
ReplyDeleteGive the whole damn state and EVERYBODY in it
back to Mehicho
Problem Solved
To Noodles 123.......was there a short time ago and would agree, Modesto is good compared to some others, but have you been south of Sacramento around the Elk Grove area?
ReplyDeleteThere is an entire outdoor mall sitting there unfinished for the last couple years, Google "Elk Grove Promenade"
The poster child for a project that was never needed, and the whole area around there is going downhill with all the vacant stores
Obama was handed a mess BUT he could reverse it by drastically cutting the spending. No, instead he speeds even more recklessly. Obama is like a junked up crack whore with a stolen check book. Writing checks we will never cover. He is a delusional narcissist.
ReplyDeleteThe coming Depression is just one of the realities of Obanomics. This is his depression and he can't make it happen fast enough.
One thing is for sure, every Rothschild and their kind who have passed on would gladly come back to live under a bridge rather than stay where they are. All these Luciferian cabal live a illusion of power and wealth then comes HELL............
ReplyDeleteThe swat teams are coming. Your doors will be kicked in and you will be shot.
ReplyDeleteThere will be no "Baby Jesus" in the end, just your blood flowing in the gutters.
ReplyDeleteBush, Clinton, Bush, Satero...Come on guys, there is no difference. The economy is going down by design, PERIOD!
ReplyDeleteOne must admit the PTB have done an amazing job of bringing the economy down, slowly...slowly...Of course they have lots of practice utilizing their propaganda machines MSN. If you follow the MSN and believe what you the actors are telling you, you live in a totally different world than I and many on this blog.
The permanent depression will continue for many years, even when the dollar collapses and the economy bottoms out, the sheeple will have no clue. The sheeple have no clue now, nor will they in 5 years.
By the way, Geithner is just another Harvard ass-wipe. He's a perfect icon for America.
ReplyDeleteIn my area (northeast PA), the only reason things are improving is the gas companies coming in and fracking for natural gas. They've paid landowners for leases, so a bunch of people suddenly have money. The result is apartment rents are shooting up, but only the gas workers can afford them. And the only new stores I've seen are second-hand/antique places. Previously I joked that in this economy the new jobs were going to be rag picker, junk dealer, and flea market seller. Looks like I was right.
ReplyDelete5:53 I agree with you it's coming and yes I have been up in the Galt/Lodi/Sac Area...I see it as a very slow decline but my point was...For a city that is sooooo underwater and full of foreclosures and bankruptcies it still looks very nice unlike say others around it.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I did notice people there were so financially fucked that most gas stations in that area will NOT take credit card only cash and debit...That says alot about what's going on underground and unsaid.
7:24 sadly will end up the same place as the Rothschilds et al
ReplyDelete10:33
ReplyDeletenat. gas is 4 bucks a MCF ??? !!!!
Who's going to use all this new production ???
What appears to be design is really the “falling of profit” that is a part of how capitalism works. It inevitably results in periodic crisis ,a cleansing process that results in destruction of fictionally valued capital that is valued on future expectations of profits that will be got .Bond prices P/E earnings on shares and the like . These fictional hopeful values are now seen as unrealistic expectations “fictional values” that are destroyed in a financial crises .Not by a deliberate conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteBy using the power of the Dollar Hegemony America was able to stall the effects of the falling rate of profit for many years by exploiting and importing value in the form of cheap commodities and credit from the oil sheiks ,Japan and especially from the cheap labor third world.
As it has been many years.A long lifetime since the last Great Depression ,and house values continually rose and so on , this created the appearance of economic growth, of rising productivity from credit! People were lulled into a false level of confidence that American capitalism was now stable . And are shocked that this is not so.
The PTB ,the rich financial elite have international experience like an “institutional memory” passed down in their class and families for handling these crisis .
Crises that have regularly occurred in other parts of the world like in the USSR and in the Asian economic crises last decade. They are
aware of the effects and opportunities for profit in these re-occurring crises. They do plan and will take steps to ensure their coming out on top again . This appears on the surface to be a deliberate plot, conspiracy,or design and that they even know the date. What they really know is how the process works.
The elite recognised a fatal financial crisis in the U.S. when foreign supply of speculative credit for “AAA”and even government guaranteed housing bonds was withdrawn the short term money markets ,credit supply collapsed .Nobody including the elite was willing to invest their capital in an economy that was creating insufficient internal profits from American labor and value creating industry to pay the interest /dividends on an excess of overvalued capital . Game over.
The result was a financial coup, a conspiracy by the financial elite to replace their losses and rebuild their capital from the U.S. Treasury.