Gloom deepens as 76,000 jobs go in a day
Most in the media focus on the collapse of the financial markets as the reason for the current economic turmoil. They fail to explore what led to the collapse of the financial / mortgage markets.....namely foreclosures.
Why after 10 - 15 years of paying their high interest adjustable rate loans did homeowners suddenly default on their mortgages? I can tell you firsthand that it was the war on secondhand smoke 3 - 5 years earlier. Smoking bans eliminated approximately 10,000 jobs just in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area, the same significant job losses occurred everywhere else smoking bans were enacted. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed hospitality workers, defaulted on loans, stopped buying cars, stopped frequenting movies, quit visiting auto repair shops, etc. etc. The financial impact snowballed from there until the point it affected the financial markets which were reeling from the mortgage foreclosure fallout. It was only then that the media and average person began to realize, maybe something negative was happening in our economy. And as CTA has repeatedly informed you the reader, the pharmaceutical special interests Johnson & Johnson Company (maker of Nicoderm, Nicotrol, Nicorette, Commit, etc.) and their partner the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are squarely and solely to blame for the exaggerated need for smoking bans......and subsequently the downward financial spiral we now all face.
Anytime government over-regulation interferes with the free-market system the results are dire.....yet what do we now face? More over-regulation (forced windpower, green energy, "global warming" initiatives) and government "bailouts" of the free market system.....a certain recipe for disaster and prolonging of the economic malaise.
Updated information:
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2009/03/worldwide-economic-meltdown-and.html