Cannot be rich without exploitation.

Writing in the New York Times, Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman says that the US economy will remain depressed for a long time to come. He quotes Larry Summers,former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, who thinks that the US will be in " secular stagnation ", which is a persistently depressed state where full employment can only be produced by creating bubbles, which will be temporary. Krugman says that the US economy was growing in the 60s and 70s because the population was growing due to the baby boomer generation but now the population is stagnant. Another cause is the trade deficit which has been growing since the 80s. He has been a vocal supporter of the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's attempts to stimulate growth by keeping short term interest rate at 0% and injecting $85 billion dollars every month by buying treasuries and mortgage related securities. Some economists would go further. They recommend negative interest rates where people will be charged for keeping money in banks or holding on to cash. This will result in the dollar to fall in value and, while this may reduce the trade deficit by making exports cheaper and imports more expensive, it will surely result in tit-for-tat devaluation of currencies across the world and the end of the dollar as a reserve currency as central banks dump US treasuries. The Republicans have a simple solution to improve the economy. Cut taxes for the rich and make up the shortfall in revenues by cutting food stamps for the desperately poor. If the rich have more money, they say, they will invest in new businesses which will create jobs which, in turn, will draw people out of poverty into gainful employment. But will it? A rich man may choose to spend the extra money in buying a luxury yacht made in Germany, a painting by a dead artist or a factory in China. How will that create employment in the US? Major US companies prefer to hold money abroad rather than paying tax in the US. That is why the middle class is shrinking as good jobs disappear, to be replaced by jobs paying less than menial wages as bosses take home millions in bonuses. The real reason is that rich countries became rich by exploiting poor countries by buying up raw materials cheaply and selling manufactured goods at exorbitant rates. Now that poorer countries are refusing to be exploited the rich Americans are exploiting the poor ones. That is the dirty secret.