“..Time Is Running Out..”     

“..We’ve now lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession, and a vast majority of them are gone for good.

The politicians are clambering aboard the jobs bandwagon, belatedly..

.. but very few are telling the truth about the structural employment problems in the U.S…

.. and the extremely heavy lift that is necessary to halt our declining living standards ..

.. and get us back to an economy that is self-sustaining.

We don’t hear a lot that is serious about the sorry state of the nation’s infrastructure ..

.. or the trade policies that crippled so many American industries ..

.. or our inability (or unwillingness) to compete effectively with China when it comes to the new world of energy for the 21st century ..

.. or our abject failure to provide a quality public education for the next generation of American workers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.

Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems..

.. the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade.

A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

Neither the politicians nor much of the mainstream media are spelling out the severity of these enormous structural problems or the sense of urgency needed to address them.

Living standards are sinking in the United States, and there is no coherent vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend over the long term.

The conference was titled, “The Next American Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment.”

It was put together by the Brookings Institution and Lazard, the investment banking advisory firm.

When Governor Rendell addressed the conference on Wednesday, he used words like “stunning” and “unbelievable” to describe what has happened to the nation’s infrastructure.

His words echoed the warnings we’ve been hearing for years from the American Society of Civil Engineers..

.. which tells us: “The broken water mains, gridlocked streets, crumbling dams and levees, and delayed flights that come from failing infrastructure have a negative impact on the checkbook ..

.. and on the quality of life of each and every American.”

The conference was sparked by a sense of dismay over what has happened to the U.S. economy over the past several years and a feeling that constructive ideas about solutions were being smothered by an obsessive focus on the short-term in this society..

.. and by the chronic dysfunction and hyperpartisanship in much of the government..”

(recommended-read..)

go to source/story>>>  Time Is Running Out      : Information Clearing House -  ICH