(I am pleased to publish this post by guest-blogger Eugene Mirabelli. Gene is the author of six novels, plus short stories, poems, many journalistic pieces and numerous book reviews. For many years, Gene was the editor and creative force behind Critical Pages, the online social and cultural commentary site that provided the inspiration for my own modest blogging efforts. I’m also honored to say that I was Gene’s student thirty years ago at SUNY Albany. If I remember correctly, Gene was in his late teens and I was a five year-old sophomore.)
Let’s enjoy the good news. We’ve avoided a ferocious 1930s-style depression. The worst of the recession is over. Unemployment has stopped rising. Employers can’t increase the workload any further and must now hire more workers if they want to boost output. The stock market has risen dramatically, which means that people with real money to risk are betting the economy is going to revive.
Wait, there’s even more good stuff. Inflation remains low and stable. People are paying off their credit card debts and are beginning to save money again. The bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has come up with a long list of suggestions on how to reduce the government’s debt. Lawmakers of both parties clearly recognize that the current imbalance between what the government takes in and what it spends is leading us to disaster. So let’s enjoy the good news.
Because from here on the news gets bad. (You sensed this was coming, right?) Employment is going to rise, yes, but very, very slowly. A financial earthquake, such as we had in the final months of the Bush administration, followed by a collapse of the “real” economy, as we had in the early months of the Obama presidency, takes an especially long time to repair. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testifying this month before Congress, said he hoped it would take only four or five years from now before employment reaches normal levels.
© 2011, Eugene Mirabelli. All rights reserved.
controversial ever since it was first published. It is in the list of books most commonly banned by school boards. In the early years, it was controversial because of its respectful portrayal of a black man and his friendship with a young white boy. Ironically, the reason most cited for banning the book these days is the use of the word nigger. It was a harsh word in Twain’s time and he used it specifically for both its authenticity and to make a powerful ironic statement. Since then, however, the word has become one of the most offensive words in the English language and evokes a visceral reaction just reading it (and when typing it as I have just discovered). Given modern sensitivities, it’s understandable that parents and educators would want to protect schoolchildren, particularly African-American children, from the pain and discomfort of confronting that word in class.
