So in other words, it’s total crap?
Seems very specific.
So it’s April 14, 2015 we should be worried about?
Remember the Great Depression of 1990 by Ravi Batra? Predictions of depressions have a habit of being wrong.
Can’t we renew the subscription? Usually, you get a discount for multi-year renewals.
Meanwhile, would it kill the OP to give us some idea what leads this ‘CIA consultant’ to believe there is a depression looming? I’m not going to follow his spam link.
CIA insiders don’t have any special advantage over anyone else in terms of economic forecasting. The fundamental strengths and weaknesses of the global economy, including America’s, are out there for all to see.
Here’s my prediction: by sometime in late 2015 or early 2016, the U.S. economy will start looking more or less normal. We won’t see a boom in 2016 or anything, but the unemployment hangover from 2008 will finally be reduced to the point where it’s not dragging the economy down noticeably, and wages will finally start to increase.
Our economy has created 1.9 million new jobs between January and September. I’m not sure how seriously to take the 5.9% unemployment rate, because of various reasons to believe it doesn’t reflect the true level of slack in the labor market as well as it used to. But nearly 240,000 new jobs each month is real, and once you subtract growth in the labor force, that’s still 150,000 people going from unemployed to employed each month, and having more money to spend as a result, which creates more new jobs, etc. - your economic ‘virtuous cycle’, IOW.
(You know there was never a 7-month period during the ‘Bush boom’ where the employment numbers went up by 1.9 million? Last time that happened, Clinton was President.)
So I’m cautiously optimistic about the U.S. economy these days. Maybe by the end of Hillary’s first term, we’ll actually see a boom. But for the next year or two, I’ll gladly settle for normal. Normal is big progress compared to where we’ve been.
There’s nothing to immediately disagree with in your post. However, as with much in the economic and financial world much of it is unpredictable. Your post does seem rather US centric. The US is subject to worldwide economic factors and geoploitics. If China(and, or) the Eurozone slip into a recession or depression then much of the rosy predictions for the US economy can be thrown out the window.
Im also a great believer in waiting until the entire economic cycle is over before concluding certain policies a success or not. A case in point being the Government budget deficits in the US, Europe and the UK in the lead up to the financial crash. Having budget deficits of 3% or so between 2001-2007 were fine and well at the time. Looking back they were a disaster. Having a 3% budget deficit at the height of an economic boom and an asset bubble was in retrospect fiscally irresponsible. We have a worrying tendency to judge these things over far too short a time frame. If the world economy continues to improve current budget deficits may be defensible . However, if we are currently at the height of the economic boom then such deficits are way too big.
I remember that! I read it in the late 80s, but it was obviously crap then. He was forecasting a depression largely based on the Hindu idea of how everything happens in periodic cycles. I can’t imagine how that book became so popular in Christianity-soaked 1980s America. The only thing that I can figure is very few people actually read it and instead just ran with the inflammatory book title.
Load of rubbish.
Remember Paul Samuelson’s quote? “Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions!” Predict them frequently enough and you’ll be right eventually.
Holy CRAP! :eek: If a CIA insider warns of this, it must be true. I mean, look at how accurate those guys were about WMD in Iraq! Time to start digging my bomb shelter and going into survivalist mode (where did I put those gold bullets?? who’s got the toilet paper???).
Well, good luck everyone…hope you all survive the 25 year Great Depression™…
All too often I see comments about things which “can be seen with hindsight”*** which were in fact foreseen with foresight***. Paul Krugman, for one, did not think GWB’s deficits were a good idea. (Perhaps I should apologize to right-wingers for quoting a Nobel Prize winner – last time I did, one objected, apparently thinking I should give equal time to Joe the Plumber.)
Another example of the same phenomenon is “in hindsight repealing the Glass–Steagall Act was a bad idea.” NO. Once again, it was a knowably bad idea at the time.
The wolves are in control of the henhouse, and when their mischief is exposed they speak of “Well … in hindsight …”
This has got to stop.
You are too generous by a factor of at least 10.
Hmmm…I’m setting my alarm for 10:24 AM EST. (Just my luck, someone will see this and beat me out at 10:23 AM).
It’s worth pointing out Krugman’s Nobel prize was in Trade Theory not deficits.
Your link from Krugman is slightly misleading on the matter of him forecasting economic doom due to deficits. In your link Krugman does not seem to be arguing that deficits in themselves lead to problems rather than him complaining on how the deficit was being spent during the Bush years(his criticism seemed more political than economic). Here’s Krugman last year defending the more recent deficits. Therefore some deficits are good whilst other are bad according to Krugman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/krugman-dwindling-deficit-disorder.html
"Yes, we’ll want to reduce deficits once the economy recovers, and there are gratifying signs that a solid recovery is finally under way. But unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, is still unacceptably high. “The boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity,” John Maynard Keynes declared many years ago. He was right — all you have to do is look at Europe to see the disastrous effects of austerity on weak economies. And this is still nothing like a boom."
The emboldened part of the above quote is the important point to take away from the article imo. If we are currently only part way through an economic recovery then the deficit may be acceptable. If this is close to the height of the economic boom then the recent deficits will be shown to have been at more problematic levels.
April 15th 2015.
Those tricky fed bastards deliberately set that date AFTER tax day.
How would the CIA know when a depression is coming? Economics is not their specialty.
True. But if anyone thinks he claims to be able to predict the next one then he either haven’t read or didn’t understand “The Black Swan.”
I’m not comprehending your point here. Krugman’s take on deficits is pretty standard. Are you claiming that his view on the goodness or badness of deficits is random or purely political?
And his point about deficits today is that wages for most Americans are either stagnant and that wealth is falling relative to inflation.
Before the recession he was too optimistic about the impact of the collapse of the housing bubble, but, unlike Greenspan, he knew it was going to collapse and warned about it repeatedly.
I’m not sure where you think our disagreement is, if any. The GWB years were largely prosperous; the average unemployment rate during the era was about the same as during the Clinton era. In 2008 there was a severe financial crisis and unemployment zoomed. Yet you’re comparing Krugman’s 2005 views with his 2011 views. :smack:
Quick sanity check. Name a topic in economics where Krugman is likely to be less well-informed than any Doper in this thread.
This isn’t a particularly meaningful post. A Democratic thinker is going to predict the failure of 100% of Republican ideas and a Republican thinker is going to predict the failure of 100% of Democratic ideas. If you go back and look at the ideas which were made law and later failed, you can be certain that you’ll find someone who predicted failure. But that same person will also have predicted failure for all the laws which were passed and (at least so far) seem to be perfectly fine.