(a imagem é de New Orleans)
(ainda a explorar o Economic Report of the President dos EUA ao Congresso. O texto assinado pelo presidente é seguido pelo The Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers, que é da autoria do presidente deste órgão, para o caso Christina Romer. O todo costuma ser de consulta obrigatória. Mais uma vez, os destaques no texto são meus)
um discurso extremamente duro.
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But to understand where we must go in the next year and beyond, it is important to remember where we began one year ago.
Last January, years of irresponsible risk-taking and debt-fueled speculation—unchecked by sound oversight—led to the near-collapse of our financial system. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs each month. Over the course of one year, $13 trillion of Americans’ household wealth had evaporated as stocks, pensions, and home values plummeted. Our gross domestic product was falling at the fastest rate in a quarter century. The flow of credit, vital to the functioning of businesses large and small, had ground to a halt. The fear among economists, from across the political spectrum, was that we could sink into a second Great Depression.
Immediately, we took a series of difficult steps to prevent that catastrophe for American families and businesses.
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To achieve this, and to prevent an economic collapse, we were forced to use authority enacted under the previous Administration to extend assistance to some of the very banks and financial institutions whose actions had helped precipitate the turmoil. We also took steps to prevent the collapse of the American auto industry, ... Indeed, the decision to stabilize the financial system helped to avert a larger catastrophe,
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More than 7 million jobs have been lost since the recession began two years ago. This represents not only a terrible human tragedy, but also a very deep hole from which we’ll have to climb out.
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In recent years, spending bills and tax cuts for the very wealthiest were approved without paying for any of it, leaving behind a mountain of debt. And while Wall Street gambled without regard for the consequences, Washington looked the other way. As a result, the economy may have been working for some at the very top, but it was not working for all American families.
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Beneath the statistics are the stories of hardship. I’ve heard all across America—hardships that began long before this recession hit two years ago. For too many, there has long been a sense that the American dream — a chance to make your own way, to work hard and support your family, save for college and retirement, own a home — was slipping away.
And this sense of anxiety has been combined with a deep frustration that Washington either didn’t notice, or didn’t care enough to act.
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In addition, I’ve proposed a set of common sense reforms to prevent future financial crises. For while the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it is still operating under the same rules that led to its near-collapse. These are rules that allowed firms to act contrary to the interests of customers; to hide their exposure to debt through complex financial dealings that few understood; to benefit from taxpayer-insured deposits while making speculative investments to increase their own profits; and to take on risks so vast that they posed a threat to the entire economy and the jobs of tens of millions of Americans.
