Stock Market Booms Are Not A Good Thing: Yin Yang Economics Part 7

You know what I don't get?   Why do economists and all the talking heads on TV say stuff like the economy is recovering or is booming because this financial number or that number is doing well, but yet when you walk around and actually look at US cities and neighborhoods, people are still homeless and jobless and there isn't anything US made on store shelves anymore?

The strangest thing of all is that the experts have been saying this stuff since the 1990's.  They made the tech boom and real estate boom actually sound like a good thing.  I just don't understand how a economic boom can be a healthy sign of a country when it produces nothing that we can actually use, trade or sell overseas?   Oh wait! That's right! We did sell credit default swaps and worthless mortgages to the world and the American public,  but of course I don't think these financial items had any real intrinsic value like a car or a pair of pants.   I guess you could always use the paper the credit default swaps were written on as expensive and very uncomfortable toilet paper though.

The last time Americans actually produced a tangible asset of value was back during the tech boom and that busted a decade ago and only a few companies actually made anything of real intrinsic value.  This is a big problem.  The US simply doesn't make anything anymore.   We have no infrastructure to make anything and worse yet, our people don't even know how to.  Yet when you look at the DOW Jones, the stock market just keeps rising, well at least up until Sept. 2008.

I'm no economist but I have noticed a very disturbing trend as a mom.  I've been visiting libraries in Houston ever since I was a little girl and what I've noticed is an increasing trend of homeless and jobless men in the public libraries.   At first it used to just be one or two minorities back in 2007, but now it seems to have grown exponentially and it's not just minorities anymore, it's people of all nationalities and classes that are in the libraries now who are using the computers to hunt for jobs.

To make matters worse, there have been city wide cuts to library hours and salaries.   I have also noticed that there are a lot more beggars on the street now.  It used to be only male beggars, but now I'm seeing female ones as well and this was back in 2008 mind you! It's even more so now.

The whole ridiculousness of the situation is that you have people on financial TV shows that said in 2009, "The economy has bounced back! Look the stock market is doing better! We're recovering!"  They then shouted out all these big fancy financial numbers and created complicated charts and analysis to prove their point that the economy is "recovering" and yet here we are in 2010 and from where I'm standing things have not improved.   Why don't these talking heads on TV actually go out into the streets of America and show street footage of real Americans walking around their cities in real time.   I bet you if they actually sat down and started counting how many homeless people are standing at street corners, how many families are coming into food banks, how many cases social workers actually have, and how many more people are using emergency rooms as a community clinic each year they would have a much better handle on how well the US economy is actually doing.

Maybe I'm just crazy but I honestly don't think a boom in the DOW Jones and rise in the stock market equals a healthy economy.   It just looks like a bunch of useless paper swimming around that inflates financial numbers and provides a false sense of security to those who are still lucky enough to have a job.