Several factors led to economic woes

July 01, 2008 06:50 pm

— In your paper recently there was an Associated Press article on the front page about the economic woes of our nation. This article listed three items as being the chief causes of our economic woes. How could this article be accurate when it does not even mention that we are in a war that is costing us trillions of dollars that we cannot afford?
From my perspective, this is far more pertinent to our current economic conditions than any of the three items mentioned. They also failed to address the huge federal budget deficit and the equally huge trade deficits that impact our economy on multiple levels.
In short, this article was inaccurate and short-sighted. How about a follow-up article that does address these items, and how they interact with the items mentioned? And maybe a comment on how those investors fleeing the crashing housing market are taking their money, putting it into the futures market, and thereby creating a huge demand for futures, not really the actual products, but how that translates to higher prices for all of us. The stock and bond markets are heavily regulated by the government to help prevent speculation and market crashes and surges, but the commodities and futures markets are not.
All of these things need to be mentioned in any article about the current state of the economy, or the resulting article is not worth reading, and indeed, may be termed as misinformation or propaganda.
David Seal
Anderson