Salon has a great piece today that lays out, in concrete terms, the damanges to the country during the last eight years. The report is filled with links pointing to the underlying data.
Expected shortfall of gross domestic product below normal growth path in 2009: $900 billion
Decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from its decade high to its value at the close of business, Jan. 7, 2009: 5,394.83, or 38.1 percent
Number of manufacturing jobs lost since 2000: 3.78 million
Increase in number of unemployed workers from 2001 to 2008: 4 million, a jump of 2.7 percent in the unemployment rate
Real median household income according to the 2000 census, adjusted for inflation: $51,804
Real median household income as of August 2007: $50,233
Of course, the government didn’t sit idly by while our financial future was disappearing down the drain. Instead, the feds have pumped in hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, hoping to juice lending and public spending.
Cost of finance industry bailout: $350 billion, with another $350 pending congressional approval
Cost of auto industry bailout: $17.4 billion, so far
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