Tailspin

So I don't know about all of you, but I really</span> love economics...maybe I should have gone into that field instead of computers.

The recent weakness in the U.S. economy is leaving me both frustrated and fascinated. I remember back a couple months when we were at ~14k with the Dow. Now, we're tiptoeing at ~12k. Woo! What a drop : )

Fed people have been saying that people have really cut back on spending, and this is, of course, making the economy weak. This goes back to an old saying that "you've got to spend money to make money". It's true</span>!

• If people aren't spending money, then businesses aren't able to sell goods to pay for new things (like technology or new employees or what have you).</li>
• This in turn causes businesses to have to stop hiring, or lay off if expenses become too great. (This of expenses like property taxes, energy costs, etc).</li>
• Now, you can argue with me that business don't pay taxes. This is true. However, the way that they go about not paying these taxes is by selling their goods; and if noone's buying....well....you catch my drift?</li>
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  God I love how this stuff works.

  The energy costs thing is also equally cool. Lots of people seem to think that the price of oil is going up because of shortages or demands or what have you. While all this certainly could have an effect on the price of oil, people forget that the U.S. imports nearly half of it's oil from abroad. Now, when you pair that with the current weakness of the dollar, you get some pretty big numbers.

  So there's a couple ways to fix this whole bad economy problem but most of them are of the "who came first the chicken or the egg" variety.

  The cost of energy (oil, coal, etc) needs to go down so business and average Joe's can keep their heads above water. Energy prices won't significantly dip though until the dollar is once again strong. And the dollar isn't going to be strong again until the economy picks up. So people need to spend money to pick the economy up. But people don't want to spend money because the economy is weak, and they may not have the money to spend because they can't get a job. And businesses won't hire people until their costs (energy, material goods, etc) go down. Which brings us back to (one of the many) square ones.

  Awesome!