The Mechanics of the Meltdown

Guest Commentary for all the Faithful Federalists out there...

By Marilyn Barnewall

To whom should we listen about banking, the stock market, the economy? There are so many differing analyses right now, it is difficult to know.
One opinion is that Wall Street is sitting on $50 plus trillion in leveraged assets and the United States government has a $5 to $6 trillion gross domestic product (GDP). There is, this opinion says, no way to avoid a total meltdown.
Today I read an analysis by Stratfor, whose opinion I respect tremendously. Stratfor says we must focus on the political realities, not the economy. Using this strategy, Stratfor had been correct in predicting many things Wall Street, the Treasury, the Fed, and economists around the world have missed. Stratfor says we will have an ugly, painful recession, but the “fall of the housing markets will be trumped by the size of the American economy.” They see the core problem as the fall of the housing markets and approach problem resolution from that perspective.