Unemployment still above 9%. Growth below 1/2%. Stock market losing the last 9 straight days, something that hasn’t happened since 1978, and oil plummeting, DESPITE Obama’s near trillion dollar stimulus, tax cuts on the lower class, cash for clunkers, homebuyers tax credit, and interest rates as low as they can possibly go.
If we aren’t in one already, is there any doubt that the recovery is dead and we are double dipping?
Yes, because “double dip” implies that at some point it ended for a while. For the non-wealthy it didn’t.
It’s certainly possible. By the way, the stimulus is credited with saving millions of jobs. The reason we’re having trouble is:
[ul]
[li]The stimulus wasn’t large enough. It did good, but now that it’s mostly spent, there is no money to keep cities and states from cutting jobs.[/li]
[li]The Republicans almost destroyed the world economy because a colossal fucking tantrum. In doing so they nearly got our credit rating knocked down a peg. [/li]
[li]The rest of the world is having economic upheavals, and that’s lending some fear to the market.[/li][/ul]
So what we need to do is have a second stimulus, but we wont, because the slow kids what drive the right nowadays think that deficits are more important in the short term than unemployment. And they are so committed to their ideology that they are willing to threaten to put millions of people out of work to get their way.
The recession only ended for GDP, corporate profits and the investor class, who recovered starting in 2009.
For many of the rest of us things got bad in 2008-2009, and stayed at that level of bad ever since. They may start getting more bad faster, but I wouldn’t call that a double dip recession on anything other than technical terms. We never recovered in the first place. Things started going bad, stopped going bad so fast, stayed at that level of bad, and may start getting worse again.
If you are using medical terms a better analogy is we were in critical condition, now we are in serious condition (not as bad, but we aren’t getting better) and we may start going back into critical.
Double dip recession imples there was a period of recovery between recessions. For everyone/everything except corporate profits, GDP and the investor class there was no recovery. Just a fragile stability.
This is inaccurate; the market gained yesterday.
If we do head into another recession, after we have barely stabilized the fall from the last one, it is entirely the fault of you and yours. Don’t even think about blaming it on Obama. Everything he has attempted to do has been shot down by your side. You created it, and you’re ensuring that it endures. I hope you’re happy.
It’s 1937 all over again. When we needed a stimulus, the federal one got reduced by massive cuts at the state level, and now, with federal cuts also, it is going to get worse.
How exactly does this encourage businesses to start producing more and thus start hiring more?
By the way, any Republican Congressman who helped form the debt ceiling crisis and who now says that regulations are bad because it makes business owners uncertain should be beaten to a bloody pulp.
The five-year yield is down to 1.13%, which is just painfully low. Ten-year is down to 2.46%. One-month yields were briefly negative. Christ. Just awful.
Stocks are generally down, the gains over the year so far apparently wiped out. Congress has proven itself to be entirely dysfunctional, willing to hold the world economy hostage for political purposes, when the economy was already fragile. I’m still in a state of flabbergastation from that horrific behavior. And to top all off, the euro crisis is heating up, as well. People say Greece is small, but they said the same of Lehman. When everything’s inter-connected, there’s no telling which pieces might give out. In any case, Italy is not small.
Things are bad. A double-dip (according to the NBER measure of recessions) is becoming more and more likely.
Obama needs to move on the Fed, same in as 2009, same as in 2010. Appoint Mankiw to the board, as some libertarian-sorts have been arguing. If the Pubbie Senate won’t allow an up-or-down vote on a Nobel laureate, they should allow a vote on the former chair of W’s council of economic advisors. Bernanke needs more friendly votes from people who know what they’re doing.
That’s just absolutely ridiculous. Among the things Obama and the Democrats have to answer for:
A trillion dollar health care plan passed during a recession, which puts huge financial burdens on business, but even worse - which hasn’t even been written as specific law, meaning businesses have no idea what their employment costs will be five years from now.
A 2,000 page financial regulation bill that is also still be written out by the bureaucracy, adding a whole lot of additional uncertainty.
Nearly a trillion dollars of stimulus money borrowed at a time when the markets are terrified of public debt, and which didn’t have the kind of effects that were promised.
An EPA that is threatening all kinds of major new regulations, including classifying CO2 as a pollutant, which would have wide-ranging effects in industry.
A president constantly lambasting businessmen and the wealthy, declaring that they’ve made enough money, that the wealth needs to be spread around, that they need to give up their private jets, yada yada. If you don’t think this rhetoric has an effect, think again.
Obama administration policies have heavily damaged domestic oil production.
The Obama administration has not put an emphasis on trade, and has not signed a single major trade agreement while other countries have been building trade relationships to help them recover from the recession.
The Obama National Labor Relations Board intervened and shut down a 2,200 job factory expansion because they decided it wasn’t fair to the unions. This also adds uncertainty to the planning of all businesses, who now have to worry that a militant NLRB will intervene in their operations.
The Congress hasn’t passed a budget in two years, in contravention of the law. This makes it more difficult for businesses that contract with the government to plan, and for other businesses to understand their tax liabilities.
Numerous other bills have been signed by Obama that jigger with the way businesses operate, such as the rule changing depreciation schedules and another one changing the accounting rules for inventory.
Every single one of these things is anti-stimulative.
That’s a fantastic idea.
Terrorism! Terrorism!
In general, this is the bullshit equivlant of Shayna’s posting of all the new laws Obama has signed. I’ll simply pick out this one:
[/quote]
The U.S. budget is constitutionally required to originate in the House of Representatives. Can you offer me a cite that the Democrats did not pass a budget in 2010, and that the Republicans have not in 2011?
I love how he blithely declares the terror of the market over the stimulus spending just after Hellestal posted on the absurdly low bond yields that now exist.
This isn’t the National Review comments section, Sam. Take your BS propaganda elsewhere.
Senate Democrats Delay Action on Budget
The Republican-controlled house HAS put forward a budget. Even the Obama administration put forward a budget - a terrible one, but a budget nonetheless. Both were voted down in the Senate, which has not produced its own budget for over 2 years, in contravention of the Budget Act.
Nonsense. You know better than this. The HCR bill will save us money. To the extent that businesses are afraid of it, it is because of lies and misinformation by the right.
The Republicans refusing to appoint a head of the agency is to blame for lack of regulations.
The stimulus had an effect and saved millions of jobs. After the Republicans loaded it was less stimulative tax cuts.
Because the Republicans backed out of Cap-and-Trade. Because the Tea Party thinks they can wish physics away.
Nonsense. Obama is strongly pro-business.
Not true.
Have you seen the Senate recently?
Cite please? Because I find it unlikely your version of events is actually accurate.
Obstructionism again.
Oh well, numerous other bills actually helped business. Wow it’s easy to assert stuff!
If you’re pissed about Obama’s performance, blame the Republicans who have opposed him and obstructed the normal functioning of government since he took office.
The Republicans in congress should be crowded around a giant banner, reading “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”, and giving each other high fives.
Or did it escape your attention about the timing of the stock market collapse? Right after the children who were elected to govern the country chose instead to introduce an enormous amount of uncertainty to the business world?
Sam, in a nutshell, you’re arguing there is too much uncertainty. As if uncertainty in business has never occured before. Yet, the number one driver, that we both agree on, is that demand trumps all. If there is real demand for goods and services then businesses will take on more risk.
Yet, we just had an avoidable and manufactured crisis of governement, where the US demonstrated to the world that congress is fucked up. This has racheted up uncertainty significantly and of course was avoidable. This just racheted up uncertainty by a major factor and the global markets have reacted to that. The reaction was not directly because of debt levels but because the US congress have shown that they will make the debt problem worse.
The vast majority of our long term deficits and debts are due to our health care system, about 80% or more. The health reform law was a first step in keeping our system solvent, and increased the solvency of medicare by over a decade. Our unaffordable health care is also a major drag on business competitiveness in the US since costs fall so heavily on employers.
It may not have been the best timing, but trying to reduce the rate of medical inflation is the most important thing this country can do to reduce its long term deficits. The health reform act tried to do that.
We are in this mess largely because of risk taking by the financial industry and income inequality making it so the consumer class can’t afford to keep buying goods and services. From the very little I know of the regulation bill, it was very watered down. But it was an effort to stop the kind of insecurity that collapsed the economy in 2008. Evenso, like I said I don’t know if it is effective.
That stimulus added about 3 million jobs, so the U3 would be about 2% higher w/o it. So we’d be at 11-12%, not 9-10%
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-08-30-stimulus30_CV_N.htm
Like Voyager said, much of it was counteracted by cuts on the state/local level. But the CPBB is a liberal think tank, so it has bias.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_03/028575.php
Climate change will do trillions in economic and property damage. And innovation in energy technology (in the form of efficiency and investment in renewables to make them cheaper than fossil fuels) will eventually save large amounts of money that can be reinvested elsewhere and allow for more economic growth, esp in the developing world. I recently heard Bill Gates on a podcast say if he had a choice between picking the next 10 presidents, or reducing the cost of energy by 75% he’d take the energy reduction.
Auto makers were willing to accept 55mpg fleet vehicle standards by 2025. The reason is in part, I’m sure, because that is where demand will go in the future. If businesses haven’t caught on that the public and world are clamoring for cleaner energy, and find the concept destabalizing then they haven’t been paying attention to what has been going on in the world. Even BP was moving into alt energies 5-10 years ago.
The progressive taxes Obama talks about raising would raise trillions over the next decade. The private jet industry has seen a decline in the first 6 months of 2011, and who knows how much was due to Obama and how much was due to something else (fuel costs exploding, people picking charter jets instead, something else, etc). If the drawback of trillions in new revenue is a 20% drop in private jet purchases, then so be it.
But on top of that, (and this is an issue that irks progressives) is despite what the pundits say, businesses and the wealthy have done great under Obama. The Bush tax cuts were extended, and their profits are higher than they were before the recession.
When Obama went to India and Latin America to promote trade conservatives constantly bickered over how much the trips cost. So that is disingeneous. He promoted trade overseas, I know because there is a long paper trail of conservatives ridiculing him for it because they said ‘his trip costs $X per day’, which wasn’t even a true figure.
But to claim he didn’t promote trade overseas isn’t true.
The workers demanded $11/hr rather than $7.25 to work at a mall that was getting 8 figures in tax subsidies. And again, how is paying people so little that they can’t consume and having the profits go to corporate profits going to help the economy? That is what is going on in this ‘recovery’. Employers are paying less in wages/benefits and demanding more work. The extra wealth created goes to corporate profits, which are not reinvested. Corporations have 2 trillion in cash now and profits higher than before the recession. I don’t see them creating any jobs here with it. Until people have stable jobs with living wages they won’t spend money. Until people spend money the economy won’t get better.
There are lots of issues taking away security and business certainty. Legislation can reduce certainty. Natural disasters like the one in Japan reduce certainty. Europe’s economic problems reduce certainty. The risk China is in a bubble about to burst reduces certainty. Lack of consumer demand reduces certainty. Natural resource shortages reduce certainty. Feeling your job could disappear tomorrow reduces certainty. Playing a game of chicken with the debt ceiling reduces certainty. Giving the impression politicians in the US can’t act like adults reduces certainty.
There are tons of things that reduce certainty.Some further and promote my political ideology. Some further and promote yours. But fundamentally we should do what is pragmatic to get the economy moving. From what I know of it, we need more stability, security and consumer demand. And I don’t know if or how that is going to happen.
Well, I’m glad we finally have a thread where the OP asks us who is to blame for the current economic situation. :rolleyes: And to be far, the OP poised the well from the start, so maybe the knee jerk reaction isn’t completely unjustified.
So, to answer the question in the thread title… Maybe we need a new definition of “recession”. We are not, by definition, in a recession right now. The latest recession ended some time in 2009. The National Bureau of Economic Research is the official arbiter of whether the US is in a recession or not.
But until then, yes, there is doubt as to whether we are headed into a double dip recession. I can’t honestly claim to know what the consensus among economists is, but my unscientific “finger to the wind” sense is that it’s somewhere between 33% and 50%.
A Double-Dip is a lock. We just agreed to raise the debt ceiling without revenue. The deficits will just continue to grow while the right wingers and baggers will gleefully cut programs for the poor. They think it will make a substantial dent in the deficits. They must believe it, they said it enough. As they continue policies that increase unemployment, they will slaughter the social programs.
The world economy was waiting for revenue in the ceiling deal to give them hope that we would really address the problem. The baggers gave them the finger.
I guess I did poison the well, but as you said, the recession ended in 2009 so it would really be stretching to point to a Bush policy and say, “See, that policy pushed us into a recession, we came out of it, but it put us right back in again.”
I knew that this would descend into a GD, that’s why I didn’t post it in GQ. However, there was a bit of partisanship to my point. We have spent a metric shitton of money trying to stimulate the economy. The Fed is basically out of tools having held the federal funds rate near zero for the past three years.
I should have expected the “without Obama it would have been way WORSE” and the “Bush fucked things up so bad that Obama hasn’t had time to fix it yet” posts, but I’m wondering how long that will continue to be a valid argument. If Obama completes two terms and unemployment is still 8 percent, is it Bush’s fault?