The New Nation - Internet Edition

Fakir Selim

From New York

The United States has now been facing the worst economic crisis for the last one year. The crisis began almost a year ago following the downtrend of housing market. Hundreds of housewoners including a large number of Bangladeshis living in different state of the country are in severe risk of their house foreclosure. The house mortgage companies and the loan providers are also in risk. Besides houseowners and mortgage brokers, a large part of Bangladeshi immigrants in usa who were in construction and real estate business are in a bad shape now.

Bush administration has been trying to prevent recession by taking various measures. Though officially, the government is saying that the economic situation now the country facing is not recession, economists say a clear recession is going on. According to the economists economic recession is a situation when a country's economy goes down for continuous two quarters. United States is in such a situation for more than two continuous quarters.

The housing and mortgage business of the country is completely collapsed. Unemployment rate has been increasing every week. The rate of us dollar is being affected and going down in compare to other foreign currencies, including euro, pound and yen.Although the US government does not confess the situation, the administration took several measures in last three months to boost up the country's economy.

As the first step the Bush administration announced an economic stimulus package through which the individual tax payers would be given rebate cheque between $300 and $600 according to their incomes.

The second steps was taken two weeks ago in which the treasury secretary of the country proposed the biggest ever reform plan. Named as 'blueprint' treasury secretary Henry Paulson advised to give policing power to the Federal Reserve to look after all business and commercial institutions of the country.

The third step was taken on Thursday (April 10) by the senate in which a bipartisan bill was passed to help the mortgage business companies and housewoners who are at risk of their houses to be foreclosed. Under this bill a $4 billion was proposed to help buyers who are interested to buy foreclosed and abandoned houses. Along with this $10 was also proposed to help housewoners to for refinancing and make an adjusted and affordable mortgage.

There are many other factors which clearly indicate that the United States is now under an economic recession. Experts said, the downtrend of housing business, credit crunch, high rate of joblessness, decreasing the rate of us dollar, lay off, etc are not only responsible for economic recession. There are some other major causes of which big war budget is number one.

The citizens of the country are eagerly waiting to see a new president in coming November. By this time, two major political parties, the Republican and the Democratic are trying to finalize the nomination of their president candidates. For republican, Arizona senator John MacCain have been nominated as their presidential candidate after primary and caucuses of various states. MacCain's contestants already surrendered and supported him.

Democrats are still in a fix to finalize their presidential candidate. Former first lady Hillary Clinton and Illinois senator Barrack Obama, both are equally popular among democrat voters. Both are hoping as the best contender. Experts said their candidacy would be finalized through super delegate.

The presidential candidates for both republican and democratic parties in their election campaign brought different issues including iraq war, social reform, educational reform, immigrants issues, etc, but practically none of them put any point on any solution of the ongoing economic recession.

The people of the united states are waiting to see who the man or woman to bring the country's economy back.