September 26, 2010 07:09 PM UTC

The "Recession" is Over

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• 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.