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September 26, 2010 07:09 PM UTC

The "Recession" is Over

  • 39 Comments
  • by: MADCO

Gotta admit the sources here are left leaning commie rags clearly in the tank for Obama

Wall Street Journal  

Slump Over, Pain Persist

Secondary Sources: Recession End, Hard Times, Individualism

Bloomberg

Recovery Deniers Just Got Mugged by Reality: Caroline Baum

City Wire

NBER: U.S. recession ended June 2009

I could go on sourcing analyses and headlines from right leaning sources, but why bother?  Even neutral sources. Of course, the Times (Financail, NY & LA) are all over it. The WaPost, the Tribune (Chicago and International Herald) ,  and others are reporting it and chewing about what it means for jobs.  Employment recovery has always lagged GDP recovery, but sometimes shorter sometimes longer.

The point is that the Bush administration did the right thing by saving the banks and the financial system (AIG isn’t a bank). And the Obama administration did the right thing by providing the stimulus.  Bank failures have slowed down. Job losses have slowed down.  US GDP is a small and positive number.

It worked.  Keynes is alive, so to speak.

BUT

We are in election season.

The right cannot let go of the Obama-bad, policies ruined economy story. And the left while correct that it was Bush who tanked us,  is not prepared to talk about recovery, and to acknowledge that the imbalances in the US and global economic distribution are not a verfiable sign of end times.

The left should be screaming about how the R-gument  that we just can’t let the Bush tax cuts on the über rich expire in a recession has no merit now.  And how the left favors a progressive income tax and why.

And the right should focus on describing for us what the US tax code should look like:  FAIR tax, regressive consumption tax, flat tax (at 24%) with no deductions, budget unicorns or budget fairies, etc and so on. Or which meaningfull spending reductions they would advocate.  Sure you can eliminate the NEA and even the Department of Ed, but the long poles in the tent are Defense, Medicare, and Social Security. So start there.

While you are at it, Mr. Buck, explain how a balanced budget amendment would work in a 9/12 environment, i.e., how would Bush have funded the Iraq invasion and subsequent eight (8) years of operations and occupation.  A balanced budget?  Oh, yeah “accounting tricks” (lies) where we keep the war off the books.  

Or better to just look at the polls, and other numbers and conclude that the bs that has passed for campaigning till now in this cycle is working so just hold on to it for a few more days. (ballots in the mail soon, election day only 5 weeks away. So instead we’ll argue about gay rights and abortion and cutting taxes and false claims about what caused the recession and unicorns and fairies.

But the recession is over.

Comments

39 thoughts on “The “Recession” is Over

    1. Well, I’d agree that most voters don’t care, in part because most voters don’t know the difference.

      But you are a college grad, not the average voter. Not the average citizen.  You have some grad school.  Even more evidence to suggest you can understand.

      Do you understand?

      “Jobs and good pay”

      What exactly are you referring to when you judge Obama on these?  

      (hint: don’t bring the 2009 budget into it – that was Bush.)

        1. I own a small business and none of the items you listed are a problem for us. Our problem can be summed up in a single phrase – lack of sufficient demand. Until people are buying more stuff we’re in trouble.

          If you offer me a booming economy and a 10% increase on my taxes I would take it in a heartbeat. Because my income will more than double and so I’ll end up with more money.

          1. with which to earn money to buy stuff, which is directly a result of those things. Jobs are the only real method of redistribution of wealth that doesn’t kill the economy. And a 10% increase on taxes is not going to get you a booming economy.

              1. Obviously, no. There is a balance. But lower taxes spur economic activity. And please, please, please stop with the Keynesian theory. It failed. Get over it.

                1. I seem to recall reading that someone somewhere sometime did the numerical analyses to determine whether Keynesian theory was dead or not.  I’m quite sure that it was reported widely in all the left leaning press – WSJ, The Economisr, Financial TImes, London Times, and on and on and on.

                  There are legitimate arguments for and against gov’t intervention. Unfortunately for you, they are not based on vapid ideological one liners nor childish taunts.  You should read some of them, then look at the data and decide for yourself.

        2. The ARRA stimulus helped, not hurt.

          The bailouts were Bush.

          President Obama saved GM.

          95% of American taxpayers have gotten a tax cut. The ARRA was more than 1/2 tax cuts.

          What small biz burden?

          Which just leaves heathcare- and on this I’ve agreed with you many many times: repeal the death panels and the 16, 500 new IRS agents.  Keep the exchange and the part about no ban for pre-existing conditions for kids. Keep the medicare fix. Keep the parts that save the Feds money.

              1. He doesn’t deal with facts.

                But it wasn’t cute- it’s stupid.  His approach to politics, and major Colorado R’s approach this year is offensive.

                Oh you have a plan?

                That’s great.

                I’m sure the plan addresses how to get the deficit under control by identifying which spending will be cut…

                Tax cuts.

                But what about spending?

                Lower taxes

                What about …..Lower taxes. And secure borders.

                But mostly lower taxes.

                How stupid do they think we are?

          1. you continually inspire me. Against the incredible density of thoughtless pandering and sloganeering, you keep pushing right back. It is a Sisyphean task, but you never tire! Thank you!

            1. They only win the R-gument  when we accept their false premises and wacky definitions.  Bs.Wislon38 in particular has no facts.  Paraphrashing Dr Venkman, “He’s a factless wonder”

    1. But employment usually lags GDP, sometimes by a long time.

      Some of us remember the jobless recoveries of our youth.

      see, USA, 1930’s, 1990’s, early 00’s.

      And the harsh reality is from a non-partisan economic view, there’s no reason the jobs have to come back.  IN many economies, when they were lost, they never came back.

      1. I see your point, but the only reason profits are up isn’t because demand has rapidly increased, and people are buying more stuff. It’s because companies are working people (the ones left) harder.

        When demand is up somewhat, but employers are afraid to hire, and many people afraid to spend, how is it really a recovery?  

          1. How about not raising taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, eliminating overregulation of private industry, ceasing talk of energy tax hikes like cap and trade, forgoing the Wall Street bashing, etc. Pretty much everything opposite of what Obama has done.

              1. And Obama’s stuff does? It would work just fine if it were ever tried. Actually it was tried once. Ronald Reagan did it, and gave us a decade or more of prosperity.

                1. But that’s bitter laughter.

                  We’re living with the legacy of Reagan’s policies today. He kicked off the banking deregulation that is the root cause of the meltdown. He inadvertantly added a zero to a proposed defense budget in 1981 and didn’t care to fix it, and their immediate popularity with contractors and certain congressional districts has given us the bloated defense budgets (and their significant contributions to the deficits and national debt) that hamstring balanced budget efforts ever since.

                  Read your history, beej. Read your history.

                  1. He might find out Reagan RAISED TAXES to get the deficit under control.  He might also learn about FIRREA and the wacky things unregulated and insured depository institutions do.

                    He would certainly have to learn about how Reagan armed Iran and Iraq. About the criminal conspiracy called Iran-Contra. About poor military decisions like Lebanon.

                    There would be good news too. But it’s just so much easier to live on soundbites and ideological one liners.  

                    1. only after he cut them to get the economy going. He did exactly the right thing to fix the economy after Carter’s disastrous presidency. The rest is just talking points.

                    2. Nothing I wrote is exaggerated or untrue.  You could look it up.

                      As for the Reagan tax record:

                      Legislated Tax Changes by Ronald Reagan as of 1988

                      (in Billions of Dollars of revenue)

                      Tax Cuts

                      Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981

                      -264.4

                      Interest and Dividends Tax Compliance Act of 1983

                      -1.8

                      Federal Employees’ Retirement System Act of 1986

                      -0.2

                      Tax Reform Act of 1986

                      -8.9

                      Total cumulative tax cuts

                      -275.3

                      Tax Increases

                      Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982

                      +57.3

                      Highway Revenue Act of 1982

                      +4.9

                      Social Security Amendments of 1983

                      +24.6

                      Railroad Retirement Revenue Act of 1983

                      +1.2

                      Deficit Reduction Act of 1984

                      +25.4

                      Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985

                      +2.9

                      Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985

                      +2.4

                      Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986

                      +0.6

                      Continuing Resolution for 1987

                      +2.8

                      Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987

                      +8.6

                      Continuing Resolution for 1988

                      +2.0

                      Total cumulative tax increases

                      +132.7

                      Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1990 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), p. 4-4.

                      Said another way, Reagan’s tax increases were over 2.6% of GDP. Massive tax increase by any measure.

                      Oh and if you’re wondering why there were no correlated spending cuts – so was everyone else. Until that guy figured out that deficits don’t matter.

                    3. that you didn’t address my comment, regarding how the economic meltdown can be directly attributed to banking deregulation. When would you like to do that?

                    4. I had always been aware of Reagan’s poor economic history, especially the disastrous “trickle-down” theory, but hadn’t ever seen it laid out in plain language before. It’s baffling that the Republican uber-cons like Palin look to Reagan as an inspiration. If you take his tax history and add his Iran-Contra fiasco, his compromising with terrorists, and his desire to reduce our nukes…the uber-cons would run him outta the party as a RINO in the blink of an eye.

                      Plus you laid out just how ignorant Beej is of the current history of his own party. It shut him up pretty quickly.

                    5. I have met candidates who should have been viable who were Reagan-esque in all but two ways. (No show biz and no …mystique.) And they got crushed and are now D’s. (not in CO)

                      Beej didn’t shut up. He just doesn’t have a ideological one liner reply. I’m not sure he understands cognitive dissonance and the typical human response. Likewise groupthink.  The current R dilemma started with Bush sr – he had to pledge no new taxes, and yet the Reagan example showed there was a time to do it.  And Bush Sr was swept right out.

                    6. The thing is, you guys win the argument, and the beej and his buddies win back the House. Facts really don’t matter to these folks.

                    7. I’d care more about that if I were, you know, a politician trying to win office myself. As an ordinary citizen, being right about these issues is what I’ll have to settle for.

                    8. And there’s great value in having the facts and having the stronger argument. But I have a feeling this year those won’t amount to as much as angry gut feelings, resentment and fear, which are tough to push back against without equally compelling emotional narratives.

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