Economic restructuring. There is no market for services in the western economies now. They will have to restructure to meet the desires of the eastern economies.
The amazing part is that retail has been de-leveraging even with the alphabet soup of federal programs to try and dampen the velocity of the de-leveraging. Even the smallest of pullbacks in retail leasing was enough to blow up a bunch of heavily leveraged commercial REIT's and/or lead to one of the many programs that has attempted to mark to fantasy the actual real world valuations of this real estate.
I doubt the unemployed are buying anything more then consumables. Unless they all fall to the ground and die they will still be consuming food, gas, clothing. If will come from other sources such as friends or family.
you have given the argument for expanding welfare. reduce unemployment benefits you can then reduce business unemployment taxes which can then be used for capital investment which makes workers more productive.
When you throw in the number of people who have strategically defaulted on their mortgages as well, I think you can see where alot of the additional money for consumption has emerged.
yea and when we get our working conditions equal to what the foxcom workers are getting in china for making apple products we will show them how great america really is. by the way. what industries need more capital investment when factory utilization is running under 80%? last we heard corporations were sitting on something like 3 trillion in cash. the only way they can invest is if unemployment insurance is destroyed?
yep.. maybe then they would go on the streets and speak up...instead of quietly collecting "help"..one extension after another..