11 When will the Recovery begin? Never - by Robert Reich

(1) Indians enrol in "dodgy" courses - overseas education 'a scam', an immigration racket
(2) Racism Is Not The Problem
(3) Governor's "adultery" during a separation? Such a Prudishly Crass Society
(4) Uighurs: China is now an empire in denial, by Gideon Rachman
(5) Kevin Rudd's "special relationship with China" put to test over detention of Riotinto manager
(6) When will the Recovery begin? Never - by Robert Reich

(1) Indians enrol in "dodgy" courses - overseas education 'a scam', an immigration racket

http://www.watoday.com.au/breaking-news-national/australias-overseas-education-a-scam-20090714-dj03.html

Australia's overseas education 'a scam'

July 14, 2009 - 4:06AM

Thousands of Indians are being enrolled in "dodgy" courses in Australia, while others are paying up to $20,000 for a good result in the International English Language Test System exam, an investigation into the overseas student industry has found.

Following a recent spate of attacks on Indian students in Australia, The Australian reports the nation's $14-billion international education sector has turned into a recognised immigration racket.

Last week, police arrested three people in Punjab, the main feeder community for Indian students in Australia, for impersonation and forgery after they were caught sitting the IELTS exam for aspiring foreign students.

Other scams have involved operators across the Punjab arranging "contract marriages" for aspiring migrants to partners who have passed the mandatory English test for a student visa.

For an additional fee, agents have arranged bank documents and loans to satisfy Australian immigration law that demands students have the means to support themselves for the duration of their course, the newspaper says.

There are 500,000 international students living in Australia. Of these, 20 per cent are Indian.

Universities on average rely on international students for 15 per cent of their revenue.

(2) Racism Is Not The Problem

By Russell Marks

http://newmatilda.com/2009/07/06/racism-not-problem

6 Jul 2009

Rather than panicking over racism in the attacks against Indian students, Australia should try looking a bit deeper for what's really behind this violence, writes Russell Marks

When violence against international students begets a minor diplomatic crisis people want to know more. But despite much speculation and conjecture, there is no consensus around what's actually going on here. The reports in the media focus on incidents in which Indian students seem to make up the majority of victims. The obvious implication of this is that the attacks are racially motivated.

All this attention feeds into a strange myth about Australia which is held by many Australians with progressive views. "Of course Australia is racist," says former diplomat Bruce Haigh. For Haigh, the attacks on Indian students exposed the racist "underbelly" of Australian conservatism, Australian sport and Australian society generally. "Like it or not," argued Colleen Egan in the West Australian, "greedy fat cat Sol has a point." (Egan was referring to the parting shot of failed former Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo, who returned to his native USA with a $20 million-plus payout and confirmed for BBC journalist Steve Evans that Australia was, indeed, racist.)

This idea that there is an ingrained racism that was so "naturally Australian" that it's hardly even acknowledged is a myth that dates back to Humphrey McQueen's bestselling book A New Britannia (1970) and the emerging debates about Australian identity which preceded it. According to this myth, Australian nationalism has always been, and will always be, primarily racist. The expulsion of Indigenous people on the frontier and then the exclusion of non-Europeans at Federation together work as a kind of original sin double whammy for the Australian nation.

The myth of Australia's "natural" racism is also popular overseas, and competes with, or perhaps complements, the countervailing foreign impression of Australia as a quaint backwater of Mick Dundees, Steve Irwins and surfing. The attacks on Indian students merely confirm the former. An editorial in the Times of India linked the assaults on Indian students with a "tribe of extreme nationalists who champion an exclusivist, white Aussie identity".

Not that the mere existence of a national myth automatically denies its truth. After all, racists are "curry bashing" Indian students. Good then. Australia is a racist country. So, all we need now is ... more education, to let violent people know that racism is just not on? (That was Haigh's suggestion.) Or perhaps Australian racism is so ingrained that we need Indian students to stop speaking Hindi because that might provoke the Inner Racist in every Norm and Bazza? (That was a police strategy back in January.) Or, as Victorian MP John Pandazopoulos proposed in February, perhaps "curry bashers" should be slapped with a vilification charge (maximum six months jail) on top of their robbery (maximum 15 years) or assault (maximum five years) charges. Good idea. That will make them think twice.

But where is the evidence that the fundamental problem is in fact racism? There is much disagreement among Indians in Australia on this. One high-profile recent assault victim is Mukesh Haikerwal, a former president of the Australian Medical Association. 47-year-old Haikerwal was attacked with a baseball bat in Williamstown last September, and needed emergency brain surgery. Rather than racism per se, Haikerwal puts the problem down to a worrying increase in the level of urban street violence. Senior police officers also problematise the simplistic "racist" theory. Commander Trevor Carter is straightforward: "We need to make that clear. We don't think it's about race." While this may be evidence of traditional police blindness to the problem of racism, it may yet contain some real clues.

As it turns out, people of "Indian appearance" are not the only victims of recent violence. People of Indian origin accounted for just over half of one per cent of all reported robberies and assaults during the 2007-08 year. Although it's difficult to draw anything sensible from such statistics, they do help to put what is after all very anecdotal evidence into some sort of context.

The theory of "ingrained racism" to account for violence against Indian students simply tries too hard to mould the facts to its essential truth. It suggests an element of co-ordination; it hints at a conspiracy. ...

"Racism" does not adequately explain the spate of recent assaults, which in Melbourne have mainly occurred in the northern or western suburbs or in the CBD. Indeed, the "racism" discourse operates to hide the true nature of the problem.

Perhaps the best piece of journalism regarding Melbourne's alleged racist bashings epidemic was written by John Ferguson in the Herald Sun. After a recent fortnight-long investigation centreing on Sunshine, in Melbourne's west, Ferguson discovered that violence across the entire suburb is endemic and involves many different ethnic combinations.

The problem here is one of juvenile and youth delinquency, of "urban violence" in Rudd's language, of hot-headed testosterone and unemployment and truancy and senseless sadism. It may well have developed a racial component, but the problem is one of basic social decay. ...

It is generally recognised among social scientists that the neoliberal era of deregulation, privatisation, tariff reduction and tax cuts, which in Australia began during the mid-1970s, has led to increases in the level of inequality. This story, however, has been swamped by the fetishisation of the GDP figure and "economic growth" as the sole measure of national "success". Stories of inequality and poverty make little sense in this schema. When Kevin Rudd tried to begin a national conversation on homelessness, he found that his only audience was listeners to Radio National's Life Matters.

But in Melbourne's west and outer north, Sydney's west and Adelaide's north and south, regional towns, outback farms and Aboriginal townships and outstations, the impact of inequality has been difficult to ignore. Investigations into general socio-economic conditions will illuminate much more about the apparent "curry bashing" epidemic than the half-baked attempts at explaining them in terms of Australian "ingrained racism" have managed to date.

(3) Governor's "adultery" during a separation? Such a Prudishly Crass Society

From: norman clemo <normanclemo@telkomsa.net>  Date: 09.07.2009 12:48 AM

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson070309PF.html

July 3, 2009
Thoughts on a Schizophrenic Society

by Victor Davis Hanson

Pajamas Media

Such a Prudishly Crass Society

I was watching cable television about 5 PM on a Friday night, channel surfing between commercials on the Western station. Sandwiched between regular cinema programming were several channels with what could legitimately be called light porn motifs. I then surfed through a confessional about phallic enhancement and a couple talking about herbal remedies for impotence.

Once I got out of that channel cluster, and went into the 200s, here and there came up infomercials on everything from how to buy foreclosures with no money down, how to get out of credit card debt, how to avoid taxes, and how to default on housing payments without hurting your credit. The talking heads looked just like those hawking natural Viagra a few channels earlier, and indeed were hawking the same instant gratification, sober faces advising radical conduct.

By the time I got back three minutes later to the Western channel, the Maverick episode was extolling the virtues of honesty and keeping one's word. Television, in other words, is a cesspool. To channel surf through it to find an old Western, one has to take an antiseptic shower afterwards.

Are We Victorians or Libertines?

I bring this up because I am somewhat baffled by the reaction to this week's news. Take poor Governor Sanford. The only excuse for the hysteria over his trip could be possible use of state funds for personal travel, or taking vacation time without logging it in, or unauthorized leave. All are serious breaches of professional conduct.

But "adultery" during a separation? This entire popular culture transcended fornication years ago when it decided that tampons, Viagra, and Extend were fair game for commercial television. Our children know more about sexuality than our grandparents.

Can one think of very many politicians who were not guilty of some sort of adultery — Ted Kennedy? John Edwards? Bill Clinton? Newt Gringrich? Rudy Giuliani? John McCain? In a California governor's race or during the Presidential primaries the oddity is always the non-adulterer. I am being descriptive not sermonizing.

Our greatest icons — Jefferson, JFK, FDR — at times conducted private affairs in a manner that this society would have sensationalized, a society that in fact is far more tawdry and without the decorum of the past.

I don't know the circumstances of the Sanford marriage, but the notion that a culture that has deified sex, only to become "shocked" in Casablanca-like fashion that an official would reflect contemporary values is surreal. If this were 1910 or even 1950, I too would be shocked; but once our culture chose to elevate sex to Olympian status, why does it insist on Plymouth Rock reactions to the logical result of its own values and emphases?

How Did Mr. Jackson Live so Long?

I am sorry Michael Jackson passed away, but baffled when sober commentators pontificate about what the "autopsy findings" will bring, and note his sometimes bizarre behavior. Does one think?

Again, with all due respect, it was hard to see clips of Michael Jackson in a normal mode — without the singer grabbing and/or pointing to his genitals or whispering in an infantile voice. (Another strange thing was to see Jackson on mainstream television at an awards ceremony gesticulating in a genital-obsessed fashion that apparently was just "dance" and good fare for senior citizens as if it were Ed Sullivan hour again).

I don't think many of us have ever invited small boys over for conversation in our bedrooms, or traveled with a small city across town. He seemed in a perpetual drug daze, whether holding a child over a balcony or wearing pajamas to court. That surely took a toll in addition to the travel and performance.

"Drugs? — I'm Shocked!"

Once again, we idolize a rather troubled, odd icon, and then are surprised that he perishes after an injection of Demerol. I have had about 10 major kidney stone episodes and two operations. On one occasion I was given an injection of Demerol in a Greek hospital and immediately entered into a zombie-like, four hour trance. The notion that any living person could inject Demerol while on antidepressants, muscle-relaxants, anti-anxiety drugs, and another opiate pain-killer is a testament to one's constitution — or luck that he could survive one day of such torture. (Had we given Jackson's cocktail to the Gitmo prisoners, well, fill in the blanks…). So, the mystery is rather how did Mr. Jackson live so long? A quarter of that drug regimen would kill most of us instantly. Again, popular culture idolizes certain postmodern traits and then turns Victorian when their tab comes due.

The Worst of Both Worlds

The point? We live in an age without rules only to reinvent them at a whim. A prudish society does not invest billions in Botox, reconstructive surgery, and sexual enhancement; yet a Gomorrah does not demand public contrition for sexual intercourse outside of marriage. I am not passing moral judgment as much as confused about the consistency, and puzzled over what are the exact rules, if any any more.

In the old days — sin being ageless and inherent in human nature — FDR simply kept his private life private, and most in the media complied. In a better age, the fact that he died near someone not his spouse was incidental and went unreported. Most in theory might object to the President's adultery, but in fact did not care to know — inasmuch as they did not know the full details of the Roosevelt marriage and did not demand to find out.

We live in a Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde world-stifling prudery without the resulting prim and proper behavior; free love without the accompanying absence of shame and social stricture.

California Baffles Me Too

Here it goes again: The state has unbounded natural wealth. It has the nation's largest population. Its economy is the most diversified. California should be awash in cash, given that both its income and sales taxes are also the highest in the United States. Instead its deficit is also the largest in the nation.

Economists, of course, have explained why the state is broken — and their exegeses are truly multifaceted, a perfect storm of sorts: State government is far too large. Employees enjoy pensions and compensation far above that found in private enterprise. Spending exceeds the rate of growth and inflation. Plentiful oil is not drilled; rich farmland is taken out of production; available timber is not always logged; nuclear power is shunned; key roads are delayed; natural wealth is considered nature's, not man's; yet men are not to live natural lives.

We spend more on criminal justice and incarceration than any other state. Entitlements are more generous than elsewhere. There are nearly five million illegal aliens in the state; Los Angeles is the second largest city of Mexican nationals in the world, with the accompanying expense of thousands of illegal aliens without legality, English, or higher education. A brain drain means that 300-400,000 workers with specialized skills and/or BA degrees in disgust leave the state each year; nearly an equal number of those without education enter.

Regulations on business are far too complex and burdensome, and geared toward employee litigation. I could go on, but all this is well known. Daily columnists write about "California — the Canary in the Mine." They shower us with statistics about the above, with the theme that we already know where Obamanomics will soon lead.

California Rules

I write only to suggest that many of us do not need statistics, but long ago sensed the state was unsustainable. Here are some of the symptoms that struck me the last few years.

I watched the UC and CSU systems create untold numbers of new administration jobs, staff them with incompetents that had no market value in private enterprise, and lavish $100,000 salaries with generous benefits as they contributed nothing to the teaching of students.

I would see four or five in the parking lot get into their state cars (I remember the local scandal of the mammoth administrator SUVs replete with boat hitches and tow packages) and wonder — how can a state afford a million dollars for that bunch who bring us nothing in return? (California Rule One: Most California executives would gladly work for two-thirds of what they receive, given the absence of commensurate offers from the private sector).

Worse, when the inevitable budget cuts came, these same four would send us memos, advise us to warn the public, and terrify the electorate with stories of social collapse if taxes were not raised to "save the kids." In response, they would lay off the Russian professor, cut the part-time history teachers (all gifted, teaching for us for ten cents on the dollar), and then decry a "greedy voter." (California Rule Two: To save the superfluous, the essential will always be cut.)

We in the state soon were used to the modus operandi. A well-paid functionary threatens financial Armageddon unless taxes are raised, issues edicts cutting essential services, and then sort of chuckles when proposed cuts incur hysteria: the subtext being that you will burn in your homes, be mugged on the street, have no garbage service unless you continue to pay me $150,000 a year — with a $100,000 pension for life to administrate, counsel, adjudicate, pontificate, and excoriate.

The problem was not just that there were too many employees per se, or even too many overpaid employees (many in fact were hard-working and underpaid), but rather too many who simply did absolutely nothing constructive at all at the top of the pay scales. (California Rule Three: There are no private counterparts to California's top state jobs.)

About 1995 I walked into a packing-house of a friend — dozens packing fruit, fork-lift driving, and engaged in frenzied production to ensure all of us fresh produce. The owner mentioned that four regulators had come that day: one to inspect the fruit (fair enough), one to check safety (sorta fair enough), one to monitor minimum wages (kinda sorta fair enough), and one to inspect chemical storage. All in theory necessary, all costly since the regulators were far better paid with state cars than the workers.

When I pointed that out, my friend laughed and added that three of his employees (he pointed to them) had sued him for various disabilities and work-related injuries over the past two years: he could not fire them, they were back at work, and apparently quite healthy. I thought at the time: this is all wonderful in a perfect world, but who shall pay for it all? (California Rule Four: The more someone toils to keep the state going, the more the state tries to destroy him.)

An Hispanic student from Phoenix once complained to me that he paid three times the level of tuition as did many resident illegal aliens in my class, and added when he went to central services to object, they instead advised shortcuts on obtaining California residency so that he too could obtain discounted tuition. (California Rule Five: The state that nourishes you incurs disdain rather than loyalty.)

I gave a talk years ago in the Santa Barbara hills and joked to the audience that I was glad to see there were still a few oil platforms out in the bay. Not silence, but furor followed that bad joke. Yet as I left, as I mentioned once before, the parking lot was full of SUVs. Where did the gas come from?

This weird "they" is what killed California, the notion that somewhere in a room a group of plutocrats sits on bags on ill-gotten gold and can be dragged out and forced to cough up bullion in tough times. Do we believe that the Big Four of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker are still around, hoarding half of the state's resources? (Rule Six: No matter how broke California becomes, there is always someone else somewhere who can and should pay for others.)

Once during a brief teaching sojourn at Berkeley, a biology student struck up a conversation. He was talking about a class he had that dealt with the ecology of San Francisco Bay. I heard what I realize only now was an early explanation of why we are idling thousands of acres to keep the Delta smelt alive: this strange combination of utopian demands for pristine landscapes coupled with the assumption that 36 million daily can go down to a Whole Earth co-op and buy cheap, organic fruit in abundance. (California Rule Seven: Stopping production for environmental reasons nevertheless should result in increased production.)

What killed California-the same old schizophrenia we see everywhere in our want-it-all society: I expect A to be provided by B, and, if not, I will blame "them."

©2009 Victor Davis Hanson

(4) Uighurs: China is now an empire in denial, by Gideon Rachman

China is now an empire in denial

By Gideon Rachman

Published: July 13 2009 19:06 | Last updated: July 13 2009 19:06

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/414f6e50-6fd4-11de-b835-00144feabdc0.html
http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2009/07/china-is-now-an-empire-in-denial/

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it suddenly became obvious that the USSR had never been a proper country. It was a multinational empire held together by force. Might we one day say the same of China?

Of course, any such suggestion is greeted with rage in Beijing. Chinese politicians are modern-minded pragmatists when it comes to economic management. But they revert to Maoist language when questions of territorial integrity are touched upon. Supporters of Taiwanese independence are "splittists". The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, has been described as a "monster with a human face and an animal's heart". The Muslim Uighurs who rioted violently last week were denounced as the tools of sinister foreign forces.

According to David Shambaugh, an academic, the main lesson that the Chinese drew from studying the collapse of the USSR was to avoid "dogmatic ideology, entrenched elites, dormant party organisations, and a stagnant economy".

It is an impressive list. But it misses out one obvious thing. The Soviet Union ultimately fell apart because of pressure from its different nationalities. In 1991, the USSR split up into its constituent republics.

Of course, the parallels are not exact. Ethnic Russians made up just over half the population of the USSR. The Han Chinese are over 92 per cent of the population of China. Yet Tibet and Xinjiang are exceptions. Some 90 per cent of the population of Tibet are still ethnic Tibetans. The Uighurs make up just under half the population of Xinjiang. Neither area is comfortably integrated into the rest of the country – to put it mildly. Last week's riots in Xinjiang led to the deaths of more than 180 people, the bloodiest known civil disturbance in China since Tiananmen Square in 1989. There were also serious disturbances in Tibet just before last year's Olympics.

In a country of more than 1.3bn people, the 2.6m in Tibet and the 20m in Xinjiang sound insignificant. But together they account for about a third of China's land mass – and for a large proportion of its inadequate reserves of oil and gas. Just as the Russians fear Chinese influence over Siberia, so the Chinese fear that Muslim Xinjiang could drift off into Central Asia.

Han Chinese immigrants suffered badly in the race riots that convulsed Xinjiang. But China's emotional and affronted reaction to the upheavals in Xinjiang is typical of an empire under challenge. With the British in Ireland, the Portuguese in Africa and many others besides, the refrain was always that the locals were ungrateful for all the benefits that had been showered upon them.

In the mid-1990s I had a conversation with an Indonesian general who was genuinely outraged by what he regarded as the ungrateful attitude of the brutalised population of East Timor, after all the lovely roads and schools that had been paid for by Jakarta.

China is especially ill-equipped to understand ethnic nationalism within its borders because many government officials simply do not accept, or even grasp, the idea of "self-determination". Years of official propaganda about the need to reunify the motherland, and the disastrous historical consequences of a divided China, means that these attitudes are very widely shared. I once met a Chinese dissident who was strongly opposed to Communist party rule. But when I suggested that perhaps Taiwan should be allowed to be independent, if that was what its people wanted, his liberalism disappeared. That was unthinkable, I was assured. Taiwan was an inalienable part of China.

Yet the idea that Tibet and Xinjiang could aspire to be separate nations is by no means absurd. China insists that both areas have been an inseparable part of the motherland for centuries. However, they both experienced periods of independence in the 20th century. There was a short-lived East Turkestan Republic in Xinjiang, which was extinguished by the arrival of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1949. Tibet experienced de facto independence between 1912 and 1949.

As things stand, the break-up of China looks very unlikely. Over the long term, a steady flow of Han immigrants into Xinjiang and Tibet should weaken separatist tendencies. The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, is not even calling for independence. Some Uighurs may be more militant – but they lack leadership and the international sympathy that bolsters the Tibetan cause.

The Mikhail Gorbachev years and the loss of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe created a degree of political turmoil inside the USSR that does not exist in contemporary China. The Chinese state is much more economically successful, more confident and more willing to shed blood to keep the country together.

Violent repression of separatism can be very effective for a while. But it risks creating the grievances that keep independence movements alive across the generations.

For the moment activists campaigning for Xinjiang or Tibet look forlorn and defeated. That is often the fate of champions of obscure and oppressed peoples. The Baltic and Ukrainian exiles who kept their countries' aspirations alive during the Soviet era seemed quaint and unthreatening for decades. They were the archetypal champions of lost causes. Until, one day, they won.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

(5) Kevin Rudd's "special relationship with China" put to test over detention of Riotinto manager

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25759154-7583,00.html?from=public_rss

Big risk in nasty business

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor

July 10, 2009

THE arrest and detention in Shanghai of senior Australian Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu represents a grave crisis in Australia's relationship with China.

It is a serious miscalculation by Beijing, and threatens to do lasting harm to China's interests, not only in Australia, but throughout the Western world.

Rio Tinto is one of the biggest mining companies in the world. Recently it has earned the ire of official China (China Inc, as it's sometimes described) in two ways.

It has pulled out of a huge deal in which the wholly Chinese government owned Chinalco was going to buy nearly $20 billion of Rio. And it is involved in tense negotiations over iron ore prices.

And now Rio's number two man in China, a Chinese Australian, and three of his Chinese employees, are in custody, ludicrously on suspicion of espionage and stealing Chinese state secrets.

Often when the Chinese state is under stress it reverts to Cold War rhetoric and indeed Cold War impulses.

But really, to arrest a senior Rio executive for espionage? In 2009?

This surely is 30 years out of date.

These arrests always tend to be of ethnic Chinese, no matter what their citizenship, as though Beijing does not recognise the foreign nationality of anyone of Chinese blood.

But if Australian executives cannot have difficult business dealings and negotiations in China without being arrested, this is a grievous development.

The story has been reported widely internationally, on various forms of media including CNN and Bloomberg.

Rio is a giant in the mining world. If Chinese authorities capriciously detain executives from companies such as Rio, what lessons will the international business community draw from this?

Most of all, however, this is a crisis for the Rudd government. There is an air of contempt in the way the Chinese authorities have failed to respond to Australian government requests for information and for consular access to MrHu until today.

What does the much touted Australia-China relationship add up to if Beijing treats Canberra with such conspicuous discourtesy and indifference? Or, more likely, are the Chinese deliberately sending a message? If so, it's a chilling message.

If the Rudd government cannot secure Mr Hu's release within a few days, it will be seen as having zero influence with Beijing.

Kevin Rudd's ambition to be a "zhengyou" to China, a good friend who can tell even unpleasant truths, will be torn to shreds.

If the Rudd government cannot resolve this matter quickly, then every positive thing it ever says about its relations with Beijing will not be worth the hot air they take to say.

The frequent talk of a special relationship between Australia and China will be seen as fatuous sentimentality.

But the Chinese are risking serious interests as well.

Their action against Mr Hu greatly strengthens those such as Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce who argue against any strategic partnership between Australia and China, while China's many apologists in Australia will be deeply discredited.

This nasty business needs to be resolved very quickly.

(6) When will the Recovery begin? Never - by Robert Reich

From: ERA <hermann@picknowl.com.au> Date: 13.07.2009 03:30 AM

When Will The Recovery Begin? Never

by Robert Reich

Published on Friday, July 10, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/10-5

The so-called "green shoots" of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.

Unfortunately, V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions. Focus on those that started with the bursting of a giant speculative bubble and you see slow recoveries. The reason is asset values at bottom are so low that investor confidence returns only gradually.

That's where the more sober U-shapers come in. They predict a more gradual recovery, as investors slowly tiptoe back into the market.

Personally, I don't buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.

Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must.

Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can't be built on replacements. Don't expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don't rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.

My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained.

The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come. ##

Robert Reich was the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is "Supercapitalism."