Poll: Econ. woes fuel US awakening

The majority of participants in a Press TV survey believe that the economic crisis in the US, triggered by government support for the Wall Street, will spark a revolution across the country.

According to the results of an opinion poll conducted among 10,329 participants, 47 percent of the respondents believe the American awakening — which is represented by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement across the United States — stems from misguided financial policies of the American establishment, thought to be behind the country’s economic crisis.

The OWS was initiated on September 17, when a group of people began rallying in New York’s financial district to protest “corporate greed” and top-level corruption in the United States. The campaign has now spread to nearly 70 major cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Boston, as well as more than 600 communities across the nation.

A total of 30 percent of participants said that the US will again be entangled in an economic recession that will most likely prompt a more severe global financial crisis.

This is while 15 percent of the respondents predicted a double-dip recession for the US, though eight percent felt that the American economy will recover slowly, at the expense of international economies.

On Friday, the US Department of the Treasury announced that the government budget deficit has climbed to USD1.3 trillion in the current fiscal year, fueling further concerns about the country’s economic crisis.

The new deficit figure marks the second-largest budget deficit in US history since 2009, when it stood at USD1.42 trillion.

Meanwhile, according to official statistics, unemployment in the US increased to 9.2 percent in July, which was up from 9.1 percent in June and consumer confidence fell sharply in August and reached its lowest level since April 2009.

In early August, Standard & Poor’s, one of the three principal American credit assessment agencies, downgraded the US credit rating for the first time in the country’s history, lowering it to AA+ from the top grade of AAA and directly blaming the political failure over fiscal policy-making in Washington.