<p>By: <a href="http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/UserInfo-Richard_C_Cook.html" target="_blank">Richard_C_Cook</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Topic6.html"><img src="http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/topics/economics.gif" border="0" alt="Economics" /></a></p>
<p>It’s too late for anyone to pretend that the U.S. government, whether under President Barack Obama or anyone else, can divert our nation from long-term economic decline. The U.S. is increasingly in a state of political, economic, and moral paralysis, caught as it were between the “rock” of protracted recession and the “hard place” of terminal government debt.</p>
<p>Even if the stock market can be shored up by more government borrowing for “stimulus” spending, it’s a temporary reprieve, because nothing can bring back the consumer purchasing power that was lost when the banks stopped pumping money into the economy through out-of-control mortgage lending. We simply no longer have the job base for people to earn the income they need to live.</p>
