[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 't')he very fact that GDP did not collapse as hard as it did in 1929 likely explains the tepid recovery.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'N')ot really. The current recovery is clearly worse then all the other post WWII recoveries and those were also times the GDP didn't collapse as hard as it did in 1929.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', ' ')looking at the Reagan recovery and reporting it's glowing surge in jobs is inaccurate.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', ' ')looking at the Reagan recovery and reporting it's glowing surge in jobs is inaccurate.

[dissident]

What a silly debate. The US business elites shipped most manufacturing jobs abroad since the 1980s. Republican or Democrat presidents don't do jack sh*t to control this process. Numbers, what numbers? There is only inane, irrelevant partisan bitching here.

If you compare the US growth period after WWII it corresponded to manufacturing job growth. If you look at China's growth today you see the same thing. Low paying burger flipping service sector jobs are worthless.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dissident', 'T')he US business elites shipped most manufacturing jobs abroad since the 1980s. Republican or Democrat presidents don't do jack sh*t to control this process.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', ' ')Just to be clear here: The US is still deleveraging. When the US was still deleveraging in the Great Depression, our GDP was crashing hard. So to be fair, I would not even start to compare the "recovery" until this period of deleveraging is over.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', 'w')e're not experiencing Great Depression conditions

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')irst, it is true by most reasonable measures that the Great Recession, which we are still recovering from, was the worst U.S. recession in 50 years. But U.S. history goes back much further, and there have been many worse recessions in our history, with much slower recoveries.

There are at least five other, earlier recessions where average output fell more than our recent recession and where real per-capita GDP remained below its previous peak more than five years out.

Does anybody remember the Panic of 1797? The Depression of 1815-21? The Recession of 1836-38? The post-Civil War recession? The Panic of 1873 and the resulting Long Depression? The Panic of 1893? The Panic of 1907? The Depression of 1921? The Great Depression? I doubt folks did their homework.

It is simply not true that this is the worst recovery in U.S. history. Since this economy hit bottom in 2009, economic growth has been positive but unimpressive, not enough to create the jobs needed for all those who lost their jobs plus those who enter the workforce each year. However, the economy will regain its previous peak in this quarter, a duration of less than five years.

This was the first “balance sheet” recession since the Great Depression, not the garden-variety recessions that most of us have experienced. The recession that began in 2008 was caused by a bubble in the housing market that burst a couple of years before and a financial crisis that left us on the edge of an abyss in the fall of 2008. As both the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decade show, recessions like this are almost always deeper and longer than most recessions, and much harder to recover from, no matter what the government does.

We need a debate over how best to lay the groundwork for future economic growth. We need, however, to stick to the facts and avoid unsubstantiated hyperbole disconnected from any real understanding of what has happened.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', ' ')Somewhat illogically, many of the people who blame the crisis on debt are the same ones who think the FED rescued the economy by creating even more debt with QE, or that TARP rescued the economy by bailing out banks, and that the way to future prosperity is for the Obama administration to create even more debt with never-ending trillion dollar deficits.
...
If we are right, then the Fed and the EU and the Obama administration can simultaneously talk about paying down private and government debt by creating more debt

[ralfy]

What we are looking at are the effects of three decades of voodoo economics:

http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/ ... s-of-debt/

And more if one considers the Nixon shock:

http://wsws.org/en/articles/2011/08/pers-a15.html

[Loki]

Whether this is the “worst recovery” or not is a red herring. Irrelevant except as a pedantic point for economic historians to squabble over.

This I think we can all agree on, the Great Recession is on par with the worst of the depressions in US history, though probably not the worst. I think something along the lines of the 1890s but not quite at 1930s level....yet. And I think everyone can agree that the “recovery,” however you want to define that, has been slow.

Yes, balance sheet recessions take longer to sort out than run of the mill recessions. But this time around we're facing real resource limitations, as well as major demographic challenges (paying for Baby Boom retirement being the most daunting in the US). "Laying the groundwork for future economic growth" will be exceedingly difficult. As I said before, history rhymes but does not repeat. We can learn from the past, but it shouldn't blind us to new conditions.

Japanese-style malaise for the next few decades is the best the US can hope for, I think. The mother of “slow recoveries”, I suppose. If that's what we get, and I hope that's all we get, doom will be a lot more boring than the hype would suggest. Getting poor slowly is pretty dull, but a lot better than “lights out” and “die off.”

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', 'T')hose pesky numbers. What are the liberals and Obama-pushers to do re economic history (besides blaming George Bush of course)? Their strategy seems to be to laugh and mock any position that doesn't advocate more spending, more debt, and of course, the holy grail - far more government.
I see this on TV interviews with mind-numbing regularity. It must play well to much of their voting bloc.

If you can't use facts and figures and reality to make your point, use obfuscation and distort things. After all, if a huge propotion of your base is too ignorant to know the difference, what can go wrong?

[evilgenius]

Don't underestimate the role of the health care fiasco situation in America when ascertaining the root causes of the crisis. Don't forget that the drop in worker's wages that fostered so much of the private borrowing was in large part brought on by the trend of employers tending to boost worker's wages in the way that was least expensive to them, via health care benefit increases over bottom line hourly or salary wage increases. The resultant artificial over real market to reach discovery over the cost of health care caused it to explode in price much faster than the rate of inflation in almost any given year. Add this to a prevalent meme in society against organization at the worker bee level, both at the management as well as the worker bee level, and you get what you get. If that didn't turn out bad enough technology has also forced people to change at a rate beyond that of previous generations, taking away the old 20 years to retirement doing that one thing that was always done backstop. Don't even get me started on the role of empire and the commensurate trappings which compel politicians to look toward mass bribery of the body politic because so much wealth is at their finger tips. All of this contributed to the mess that peaked when Joe Bob Six Pack had to face either paying the sub-prime mortgage or putting gasoline in the F-250 at $5 a gallon (thank God for all those plastic toys at Biglots with Christmas coming up and all). The causes of this mess run far more deeply than any one presidential term or cycle of party supremacy, decline and then supremacy again. The blame for this mess lies at the feet of the people.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', ' ') the Obama administration .. creating more debt

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', 'W')hether this is the “worst recovery” or not is a red herring.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'I')ts nice that the Obama administration shrank the deficit from 1.6 trillion during Obama's first year in office in 2009 to 1.1 trillion during his fourth year in office in 2012, but the Obama administration is still creating over a trillion dollars in new debt every year. SO far Obama's debt totals over 5 TRILLION just for his first four years---with no end in sight to the trillion dollar deficits.
...
Yup. It may have been foolish for Obama to push for all the tax increases because it will definitely hurt GDP growth at a time when we are already in the WORST RECOVERY EVER---we'll just have to see how big a hit GDP takes from the Obama tax increases going forward.

[Plantagenet]

A nice discussion of the WORST. RECOVERY. EVER.
the WORST. RECOVERY. EVER.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '[') On the one hand, you condemn the huge deficits. On the other hand, you argue for even larger defecits [sic] by keeping taxes low.