I was at Whole Foods on Monday and it was almost impossible to find a parking spot. The store was packed with people, and the checkout lines were long. My daughter’s high school senior class took a week long trip to Orlando for spring break in April. That’s 250 kids at $950 each. We told our daughter she had to pay her own way if it was important to her - she decided to save her money.

I have to judge by what I see around me and in my own life and what my friends from other states tell me is happening there. I don’t care what the Washington Finance and Economic experts tell us. The words don’t match the facts one can see around them with their own eyes. I see stores and mini malls closed that were open and thriving before. Employees laid off, more out of work, everything but salaries going up. People cutting down on basic needs and more people carefully tallying up their cost of food with hand held calculators in the stores. Food Banks asking for more donations for the poor. People shopping at Thrift Stores instead of the local Dept. stores for clothing and household items. Gas going up while the big oil companies are making obscene profits. How can they make such huge profits, (just like they have been for many years) while we are held captive to whatever price they choose to set. They apparently are losing no income from what they buy and then sell to the public. I think it’s another Enron ploy. How is it, that Halliburton and their subsidiaries can become even richer from this war and America can’t take care of the returning Vets properly? Did you know some of the employees of Haliburton doing low skilled jobs in Iraq make as much as $20,000. a month? How many active duty military in Iraq make that kind of salary putting their lives on the line everyday? We borrow money from China and other foreign countries to finance the war and government needs as defined by the current administration. I think we are in dire financial straits that will take years to recover from. I would not want to be the President that has this dumped into their laps to fix. Bush and Cheney need to be held responsible.

Maybe I misread the question “is it possible to avoid a recession” rather than “are we in a recession”. I’m no economist, but someone should have figured out the consequences. I think the Bush administration changing the credit, mortgage/banking rules put us here (as well as the cost of the war). The documentary “Maxed Out” has a scene where a female economist warns bankers about the dangers of extending too much credit without safeguards. The bankers laughed at her because to do so would take away their profit margin. Turns out she was right. Yes, the market has to go through corrections, but I remember not being able to get a credit card back in the ’70s because of income requirements. Now anyone can apply and get approved.

We can avoid a recession, but will we? I think worrying about one and seeing things in a negative way will and putting out a lot of negative energy will be a self fulfilling prophesy.. People who did not get a good education, for whatever reason are the ones feeling this current state of affairs most strongly. Next are people who bought on credit without the income to afford what they were buying. Our society is shifting from industrial manufacturing to high tech and that requires much more education. School drop outs will be in big trouble unless they go into a job like electrician, plumber, etc and become really good at it. I think it is immature to blame President Bush for our own lack of planning and financial managment. But after he is gone out of office, we will just have to blame President Obama…or Clinton.

Don’t kid yourself. Electricians and plumbers make good money and many live better than college-educated folks. However, Bush did change the banking rules that lead to this mortgage crisis.

I’m not kidding and I NEVER said people shouldn’t take responsibility. What I am saying is that his administration changed rules (with help from Congress) and the banking lobby, and it’s too easy to get credit. There was a time that many of these people would have been turned down, and I am saying we need to go back to those times.