Your point is well taken. However I must point out to you that it's not about all dollars and cents when profits are taken, taxes are paid and surpluses are created on paper. A LARGE percentage, probably a majority of the time, of loans being given, money being spent and surpluses being created are through LINES OF CREDIT....aka paper money, because companies like ENRON COOKED their books to show profits and therefore were extended HUGE amounts of credits by banks and lenders. Huge corporations do not deal in "real" dollars, but instead deal in letters of credit, loans, etc.

And as far as the dot-com businesses that were created by these "kids," yes, many of your averqage people did invest in those companies, but many big money investement firms poured money into them, bought their stocks on MARGIN, and when the truth came out that the dot-com company that they invested in were not really making the monies that they claimed that they were on their books, those big investment firms who poured "paper money" into buying stocks in those companies now had to come up with some REAL money to meet their margin calls! So they sold what they had in stocks, driving the price of those stocks into nowhereland, which in turn caused the average working Joe to lose any little money that he or she may have put into buying stocks for their portfolios and their retirements, which in turn has a ripple affect because now the average Joe cannot afford to go out, go on vacation, etc. And the big investment firms who dumped those stocks because they had to come up with real money for their margin calls wound up getting loans and letters of credit to meet those margin requirements.

You see, it just doesn't happen in a week, or a month. It takes time for these type of ripple effects to develop and over the course of time it eventually affects employment numbers and our federal budget.

Basically it's like the family that gets a credit card and keeps on charging on that card but makes the minimum payments. It's not real money. It's money given on credit. Eventually they are going to fall deeper and deeper into debt to where it gets to a point that it has a trickle down effect and winds up affecting everything and everyone else in that household.


Our economic woes are a combination of what took place with the last TWO administrations and not just because of what took place during the term of one of the administrations.