BONNIE ERBE: Country remains passive toward failing economy

www.modbee.com Posted: March 3, 2003 @ 07:28:00 PM PST Scripps Howard News Service

(SH) - Are you as mad as I am about the economy? I'm wondering why the American public seems to be as blithely tolerant of an economy that has been almost purposefully tipped away from the brink of recovery and toward (if not over) the brink of recession for more than a year now.

First, allow me to ask you a couple of questions. Are you better off financially than you were three years ago? Is your investment portfolio (if you're lucky enough to have one) worth anywhere near what it was in 2000? If you don't have investments, how's your pension fund doing? If you don't have any form of retirement other than Social Security, are you still employed at this point and are most of your friends and family members still employed?

If your answer to most of these questions is no, then why aren't you mad as heck and why aren't you doing something about it? I agree we have major security risks in today's world. I agree Saddam Hussein is a bad (to wit, evil) man who needs to be dealt with accordingly. I don't agree that we need to tank our economy in the process. But that is precisely what the Bush Administration is doing.

Have you noticed the price of gas recently? It has climbed to $2.00/gallon and more in many major American cities. A barrel of oil, now teetering on the brink of $40.00, was a mere $16.00 when President Clinton left office.

It even dropped to around $13.00 per barrel shortly after President Bush took office. But his ceaseless war talk for the last year plus has driven oil prices to hysterical levels. Higher oil prices reverberate endlessly throughout the economy.

President Bush's war strategy is directly responsible for higher gas prices, higher oil and natural gas prices to heat our homes, increased airline ticket prices, higher food prices (which must be shipped and trucked into grocery stores,) higher UPS and Fed Ex shipping costs (both companies have instituted fuel surcharges to ship packages) and more for, well, just about everything we eat, drink, drive to, and need to live.

The White House, of course, is dodging blame for its economic capriciousness. Presidential Spokesman Ari Fleischer, that master manipulator and spin-meister extraordinaire, told reporters on Friday the White House is "concerned" about high oil prices. (If that isn't the epitome of a day late and a dollar short, what is?) He blamed higher prices on "a confluence" of factors including a "cold winter" and "short supplies."

Give me a break. If I listen to one more newscast lead by the phrase, "The stock market dropped and oil prices spiked today on threats of war" I'm going to scream. Yes, Venezuela's instability is contributing to higher oil prices. So much so, Venezuela may account for $2-3.00 of the recent $25.00 run up. And yes, supplies are scarce. The reason is business-savvy suppliers are refusing to purchase oil at $40.00 a barrel.

They're waiting for "the war to be over" so they can stock up on cheaper supplies. And a cold winter? On the East Coast, sure. In the Midwest, it's been positively balmy by comparison to normal winter weather.

This oil-savvy White House is hoping for a quick war, and a return by summer to cheap gas (just in time to make the President look good for his 2004 race.) But hope and reality are frequently two different things.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "... it may be that the Energy Crisis of 2003 has already begun. Certainly money has already been snatched from American pockets and shipped overseas, threatening an already fragile economic recovery." And hope for a quick war is ludicrous on its face.

Even if the war itself is short, Americans will be paying hundreds of billions of dollars to repair Iraqi oil fields and subsidize a replacement Iraqi government for years if not decades to come.

So let me ask you. Why aren't you as mad about it as I am?

Bonnie Erbe, host of the PBS program "To the Contrary," writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail her at bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com.