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Despite the yammering of the blame gamers and talking heads, not everyone in this credit catastrophe got there by living above their means or taking out loans they couldn’t afford. Six months ago, many of the businesses and homeowners who are now sinking like a rock were creditworthy. Now, with Fortune 500 companies going down for the third time, they are taking Main Street, Wall Street and Electric Avenue with them.
The banking crisis is worsening as the economy continues to sink. It's not just that bank balance sheets are still stuffed with "toxic" assets probably worth far less than what they're listed for -- subprime loans mixed up with all sorts of other things. It's because more and more individuals and businesses that had been credit-worthy six months ago can't make their payments. (Robert Reich, “The Banking Crisis”, Robert Reich’s Blog)
This crisis is not an isolated event. It has spread to all sectors of the economy, from banking, investing, retail, manufacturing and the service sector. Autoworkers lose their jobs, can’t pay their mortgages or buy “extras”. Retail workers get pink slips because their companies depend on autoworkers and construction workers for customers.
The trickle down, domino effect soon sends toxic shockwaves to other sectors of the economy—grocery stores, clothing stores, specialty shops and mortgage companies. With unemployment extensions running out, and many state unemployment funds tapped, many unemployed Americans are wondering how in the world they are going to survive.
President Barack Obama and his team are working on an economic stimulus package to jumpstart the economy, but this economy is so bad that it will take a transplant to get it working again. We are talking about a total renovation and reconfiguration of the national economy, a redirection of mass and gross proportions.
As Reich and others have long noted, it’s going to take a Roosevelt type works and repair program to get this economy working again. More than that, we have to come up to speed and modernize our transportation industry as well.
To decrease our dependence on the volatile oil industry, we must move into alternative fuel sources—biofuel, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power. This transition will require a massive retraining of our workforce and a retooling of our factories, energy grids and transportation networks. However, as in the computer industry, what happens when we don’t have enough trained professionals in the hard sciences and engineering?
Are we back to the same old H1-B visa trap of hiring massive numbers of skilled foreign scientists, technicians and computer engineers because we allegedly don’t have enough home grown ones? Are we in the process of creating massive numbers of jobs for trained white males and bypassing women and minorities?
Regarding the stimulus packages’ potential for bypassing unskilled workers and the chronically unemployed, Reich says:
… if there aren't enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many new jobs in these fields. And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed -- will be shut out. (Ibid)
And, here we go again: there is a distinct possibility that any stimulus package requiring skilled trades will bypass those who do not already possess those skills. Unless there is a mandatory training component attached to the legislation we will miss one of the best opportunities in half a century to train massive pools of chronically unemployed or underemployed workers for new technologies and the “Green Economy.”
The current crisis gives those chronically under and unemployed workers, particularly the people of color in the nation’s ghettos, a major opportunity for bootstrapping their way out of poverty. However, as one activist noted, it’s not going to be easy.
Speaking of the limitations of President Barack Obama and the need for self-reliance to a group of chronically unemployed black men in an urban library, activist Van Jones, founder of Green for All, noted:
"I love Barack Obama," he said. "I'd pay money just to shine the brother's shoes. But I'll tell you this. Do you hear me? One man is not going to save us. I don't care who that man is. He's not going to save us. And, in fact, if you want to be real about this - can y'all take it? I'm going to be real with y'all. Not only is Barack Obama not going to be able to save you - you are going to have to save Barack Obama." (Elizabeth Kobert, “Greening the Ghetto”, The New Yorker, 1-12-09)
Jones is a firm believer that the Green Economy has the potential for a massive infusion of money into the black community in the form of jobs, renovation, construction, invention and investment. Most importantly, when it comes to providing solutions to the energy crisis, he sees no reason why these inventions and new technologies can’t originate in the nation’s inner cities and ghettos.
Why, he says, can’t we save ourselves? Why do we think the solution to our problems have to come from outside our communities?
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