There is little dispute that the United States is in a bad situation. More than 15 percent of us are now below the poverty line, the official unemployment rate is above 9 percent, retail sales have flatlined, stocks continue to struggle, we’ve lost our AAA credit rating, and all in the midst of Europe’s financial crisis. We are in a bad situation, but we are not without hope. It’s a situation that demands that we act rationally, investing our resources in the most promising regions for economic improvement.

The official poverty line for a family of four is $22,350, which isn’t much spending power, and it’s considered to be the point at which individuals can no longer afford to support their family. With 15 out of every 100 of us making less than that, we’re in a bad way. We need a solution that puts money back into their pockets.

The unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, and this doesn’t include those who work part time – unable to find full-time employment – or those who simply quit looking for work. The real unemployment rate may be higher than 16 percent and there’s a strong possibility that those unemployed are the same as those impoverished. We need a solution that provides jobs.

The U.S. stock market has been struggling since July, but most experts would say it never really recovered from the housing bubble in 2008. We need a solution that builds things, real physical things. Financial markets and speculative investments will not lead us, as a country, out of the economic problem. We need a solution to pool investment into production. It would move a trade deficit toward a balanced relationship. It should give those in poverty money to spend, give the unemployed full-time jobs and give investment to American industries.

We’ve lost our AAA credit rating. Sadly, it wasn’t even due to economics, it was due to politics, and investors have lost their faith in our political system to adequately fix our economic troubles. We need a political solution to show our competence. We can’t keep pumping money into our economy and hope that it works, we need to target it, we need to work together, but we need to figure it out.

The Fed is running out of tools, and bailouts are losing their effects. We need government guidance of our markets to build new industry and new production. It should help those in poverty, providing them with money to spend. We need control over markets and political assurance that we will pay our debts and work out our troubles. It’s a bad situation, but the outlook is hopeful if we can work and compromise together.