Whiners are Weiners?

[BumpyintheBurgh]

We have become a "nation of whiners" according to Phil Gramm, former Senator of Texas in a recent interview with the "Washington Times". He thinks that our economic complaints are mostly "mental".

[bike <3'er]

With nearly 2,200 views of the most popular thread on this page Scared to look at my Mutual Funds... I'd say anyone like Phil Gramm who refers to those who are enduring a meltdown of the US economy as, "whiners" is very numb to reality. Phil might be flush, aces over kings, but that doesn't help me.

[Louis]

Hey, if you're doing as well as he and the folks he hangs out with, you would think that everybody else is a whiner.

I'm surprised he didn't say "Let them eat cake."

[Seramount]

Tom DeLay and Phil Gramm are two of the largest human pudendas on Planet Earth. Anything coming out of either of their pieholes is guaranteed to be inane.

Insufferable, mean-spirited jacktards, the both of them.

[Kevan]

until closer to election time.

[Richard]

You also might mention that (until he stuck his foot in it) he is/was the economic advisor to the presumptive Republican nominee. Guess that implies the urgency with which they view the issue of the economy and its impact on the American people.

[johnnymossville]

He's probably about right about it being mental. Most problems are things we thought up or brought about on our own anyway. Unless ofcourse, you believe you have absolutely no control over your own destiny.

It's just one of those things you shouldn't say, as a politician especially. Honesty is a big no-no. LOL

[Karin Kirk]

Does this also mean when consumer confidence is running high, stocks are gaining value and the public is upbeat that this is also "mental?" So that means politicians can't take credit for that either, right?

[Richard]

It is unclear to me how there are two choices -- "...are things we thought up or brought about on our own..." or "...you have absolutely no control over your own destiny." Seems to me that there is a continuum of control, depending on that which is being controlled. The US economy is certainly beyond the control of each of us individually. I also posit that the state of the US economy is more than "mental," suggesting that the downturn is a figment of people's imagination or a result of herd mentality. We are entering a downturn after an "expansion" where the "real" income of most Americans stayed flat or even declined. I think that situation may exaserbate the sense of dred, but it did not spring from the mind of the whiner.

[Kevan]

consumer confidence?

phone home... (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/07/11/iphone.sales.ap/index.html)

Now watch the price of oil take another jump.