Let's be honest - there is a lot of fear in the atmosphere right now when talking about the U.S. economy. As I stated in the blog post on Monday, I am no economist. But I do recall stories my grandfather told me about the Great Depression, so when the U.S. Economy section in NewsTrust has articles, highly rated articles at that, titled "Our Three Decade Recession" from the Los Angeles Times, "Can't Grasp Credit Crisis, Join the Club, from the New York Times and my personal favorite from today, "Partying Like It's 1929," I start to become concerned.
I looked at the reviews for the top six rated stories and found one similarity: They all were ranked high in the category of 'importance.'
In fact, all but one were ranked 4.5 or higher.
I quickly cross referenced some of the other factors that we use to measure a story: Context, accuracy, fairness, etc. Obviously they were all ranked relatively high (these were, after all, the top six rated stories), but some were rated high in accuracy and low in context, others were trusted a lot but didn't get a high mark in style.
The one aspect of these stories that seemed to remain throughout was 'importance.'
I imagine this is in part because the nation's gaze has been on two subjects this week: The economy, especially with news that the Iraq war will total around 1.2 trillion dollars when we exit, and the presidential election.
This importance is reflected in some of the comments of our trusted reviewers.
Gary Clark writes about the article "The crash in Republican economics,"
This is an insightful article dealing in detail with some of the challenges confronting the public, their financial masterminds and supposed regulators, who are or have been the very people benefiting from permissive fiscal policies. I'd like to know more about statements such as; "Today's economic regulatory apparatus is a far cry from what existed in the 1920's" without analyzing what they are and how effective they are proving to be in this specific situation.
Louise Auerhahn says about "Don't bail out those who put us here,"
Provides important background and context to the current crisis, going beyond blaming it all on subprime loans to talk about some of the deeper structures and philosophies that have led us down this road.
and Jack Dinkmeyer comments about "Can't Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club,"
Phrases the author uses like: "long, deep economic downturns;" and "could take out the whole global financial system," indicate there may be much more to this crisis than a mere short-term recession.
My concerns as a young adult continue. To some extent - they worsen from reading all the good material that the NewsTrust community has dug up. But, better to be informed than blind-sighted. That's a motto I think my grandfather, who lived through the great depression, would agree to. To that extent - if we are moving into a recession, we are better equipped, because of tools like NewsTrust, to look forward at the obstacles ahead.
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