World unemployment greatest threat to U.S. security

The New York times reports that unemployment is soaring worldwide.

• Worldwide job losses could hit 50 million by the end of 2009


• Even highly skilled, white collar workers are being laid off


• The International Monetary Fund expects global economic growth to reach its lowest point since the Great Depression


• High unemployment rates have already led to protests in Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Finland and strikes in Britain and France.


• The United States Director of Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, informed Congress that the instability caused by the global recession has become the nation's biggest security threat, outpacing terrorism.

Yet, none of the House Republicans and only three Republican Senators voted for the $787 billion stimulus package designed to stop or at least slow the job loss and stimulate economic growth. And the price of those votes was reducing the size of the package and cutting needed aid to the states and to public schools, two-year colleges and universities.

It's hard to take the Republicans' new found fiscal conservatism seriously since the 2001 tax cuts they enacted cost $1.3 trillion and the preemptive war they unanimously supported is projected to cost $3 trillion, significantly more the stimulus package.

In 2003 anyone who opposed the invasion of Iraq was accused of being unpatriotic.

What does this say about those who voted against the stimulus package now that the greatest threat to U.S. security is rising unemployment?

New Deal stimulus & the Great Depression

An entire revisionist cottage industry has emerged attributing the Great Depression to intrusive government.

Curt's letter to mid coast views earlier this week parroted this analysis.

Noble Prize winning economist Paul Krugman corrected the record when he responded to a similar suggestion by conservative commentator George Will.