Lies and Self-fulfilling Prophecies

I remember the day 16 years ago when my boss came rushing into the office to announce that the Wall Street Journal was reporting that the United States economy would be in recession soon. He immediately called a meeting of all of his managers and began preparing for a recession. This included canceling material orders and cutting back on overtime. Sure enough, three months later the economy fell into George H. W. Bush’s recession. You all remember the “no new taxes” recession, where the former president promised not to raise taxes during the campaign and then did once elected. Boy, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

The point is that recessions are self-fulfilling prophecies. When someone is reparable, like a well known economist, and they say publicly that the economy is going into recession, it will because people and businesses will prepare for one thus causing it to happen – self-fulfilling prophecy. Hence, the current President Bush’s statements today that the U.S. economy is not recession bound is a calculated move by the President to convince Americans that we aren’t headed towards a recession, thereby avoiding the self-fulfilling prophecy routine, thereby avoiding a recession. The problem is that the President has a history of lying. It’s one thing to use deceit to rally the country around an unconstitutional, unjust war. After all, the poor will pay a higher cost of the burden than anyone else. But, if this President thinks for a minute that economically astute Americans are going to trust him with their economic well-being, then he is dumber than anyone could have imagined.

The fact is that the U.S. economy is probably already in recession. Recently it was reported that consumer confidence has plunged, the wholesale inflation rate is soaring (thank you Ben Bernanke), the number of homes being foreclosed has jumped (thank you Alan Greenspan), home prices are falling sharply and there is a prediction that big increases in health care costs are on the horizon. In President Bush’s own words: "I believe that our economy has got the fundamentals in place for us to ... grow and continue growing, more robustly hopefully than we're growing now; so we're still for a strong dollar." One can only wonder how the man sleeps at night, let alone talks with a straight face.

The President’s most recent lies will not be believed by even that small percentage of Americans who think he is doing a good job. It is unfortunate that economic hard times will probably last through the remainder of his final year in office and then we will have either Barack “the socialist” Obama or John “I will divert America’s attention away from the crummy economy by invading Iran” McCain to look forward to to heal our economic ills. Where is Jack Kevorkian when you need him?

Kenn Jacobine teaches English and history at the American International School of Lusaka, Zambia