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Recession ended in June 2009

themusicteacher said:
5. Most economists (except your run-of-the-mill Chicago school fundy) agree that the stimulus saved millions of jobs and kept us from going into a deeper hole.
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LOL!

Just curious. If that's true, how do you explain this chart?

https://www.americancentury.com/images/WMUchart-weekOf-Aug02-10-2.gif

Can it be any clearer that the Stimulus didn't work? We recovered from all those other recessions noted in the chart, some deeper than the one we were in at the time the stimulus and other nonsense was proposed and passed, and obviously did so much, much faster than the current recovery. Without much in the way of stimulus either. How do you explain that?

As http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=548288 notes

We have fewer jobs today than we did a year ago. And since Obama took office, we've lost about 4 million of them. Unemployment stands at 9.6% — higher than it was in June 2009, when the "recovery" began. This is what $700 billion in bailouts, $862 billion in "stimulus," $1.4 trillion in new money printed by the Fed and $2.9 trillion in federal deficits in just two years get you. Nothing.
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:D

themusicteacher said:
6. With the size and scope of the recession, getting back to 5 or 6% unemployment will take a lot longer than a few years. If you can't be intellectually honest enough to admit that, you can excuse yourself from an honest debate.
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LOL! Speaking of intellectual honesty … let's see how you respond to the above and the following facts? Many economists are now saying that we probably won't see unemployment below 9% through 2012. Even the CBO is saying it will likely still be over 8%. And that's assuming Obama changes his ways. Meanwhile, what's unemployment currently doing? Going back up. Yet here's what unemployment did over the period of time in all those other recessions mentioned in the above linked chart where by now we were already well on the road to a full recovery:

http://0.tqn.com/d/uspolitics/1/0/R/P/unemployment_rate_annotated.jpg

As you can see, in case after case, there were very rapid declines in unemployment after recessions. In particular note what happened after the 1981-82 recession, where unemployment actually exceeded the peak seen *so far* in the current recession. It was below 7% in a year and a half (a drop of nearly 4%). A drop of 4 percent here would take us back down to your 6% range. It dropped another percent or so in the following year and half. Yet here we are being told to expect unemployment to stay above 9 percent for 3 years after the so called recovery began. :rolleyes:
 
BeAChooser said:
We have fewer jobs today than we did a year ago. And since Obama took office, we've lost about 4 million of them. Unemployment stands at 9.6% — higher than it was in June 2009, when the "recovery" began. This is what $700 billion in bailouts, $862 billion in "stimulus," $1.4 trillion in new money printed by the Fed and $2.9 trillion in federal deficits in just two years get you. Nothing.
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Wow, you just quoted a source that was complaining that Tarp was a failure?

Yikes. Not much for reality are they?
 
lomiller said:
It apparently shows you can't read even when you have pictures to help. The line stops going down and starts going up right at the 15 - 18 month mark That's Apr -June 2009 when the stimulus money starts to flow.
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LOL! Is that all you see in that chart, lomiller? :rolleyes:

Since you apparently want to ignore it's content, you might as well ignore this one, too:

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/images/wmuchart-weekof-aug02-10-1_000.gif

It shows the cumulative percentage change in non-farm employment. Look how distinctly different the current recession is behaving compared to all the others. And note what was happening at the very end of the data in June 2010. Unemployment was increasing again. Oh my. :D

Oh … and by the way … the government was pumping money and uncertainty into this recession long before the Apr-June 2009 timeframe. Did you forget that? :)
 
joobz said:
Wow, you just quoted a source that was complaining that Tarp was a failure?

Yikes. Not much for reality are they?
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LOL! So you think TARP was a success? Let's see what some others think.

Like the Inspector General for the program …

http://247wallst.com/2010/01/31/inspector-general-calls-much-of-tarp-a-failure/

January 31, 2010

The Office of The Special Inspector General for The Troubled Asset Relief Program said in a quarterly report that the program may have saved the banking system but that it has so far failed to reach all of its other goals.

Key highlights of the report:

‘Many of TARP’s stated goals, however, have simply not been met. Despite the fact that the explicit goal of the Capital Purchase Program (“CPP”) was to increase financing to U.S. businesses and consumers, lending continues to decrease, month after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by Treasury. Notwithstanding the fact that preserving homeownership and promoting jobs were explicit purposes of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA”), the statute that created TARP, nearly 16 months later, home foreclosures remain at record levels, the TARP foreclosure prevention program has only permanently modified a small fraction of eligible mortgages, and unemployment is the highest it has been in a generation."
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http://washingtonindependent.com/27205/the-failure-of-tarp

As the economy continues to sink, the Wall Street Journal today documents an increasingly obvious fact: Most of the big banks that got a total of $148 billion in taxpayer money didn’t use it to make loans. Instead, lending activity at 10 of the 13 banks that received funds under the Troubled Assets Relief Program actually declined by 1.4 percent in the last quarter, the Journal reports.

… snip …

From the Journal:

“It has failed,” said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University’s business school. “Basically we have dropped a huge amount of money … and we have nothing to show for what we actually wanted to happen.”
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And hot off the presses …

http://www.property-casualty.com/Ne...Doubt-On-Governments-AIG-Investment-TARP.aspx

9/16/2010

… snip …

The Congressional Oversight Panel’s September report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—called “Assessing the TARP on the Eve of Its Expiration”— also carries other distressing news.

It acknowledges that the program provided “critical support” to the financial markets at a time when market confidence was in freefall, but it states the program has been far less effective in meeting its other statutory goals, such as supporting home values, retirement savings, and economic growth.
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Wow! What a success. Why that is almost as big a success as … well … the stimulus. :) And of course, it was such a success that Obama had to step in and pledge to overhaul TARP. Although it isn't clear that ever happened. :D

And say we agreed that TARP was a success (not that I am doing any such thing). Well then, who should get credit for that? Not Obama. Afterall, it was put together under Bush. Right? :D

No, joobz … here is the reality of TARP:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-TARP-Was-a-Taxpayer-Failure-But-a-Political-Class-Success&id=4826368

- Several months prior to the onset of the TARP payments, the Associated Press reported that many of the big financial institutions that received government bailout money had made big contributions to each political party's Presidential convention. Four of these companies alone, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Freddie Mac donated a combined $3.1 million. Note that three of these four, the exception being Goldman Sachs, turned out to be in the most dire financial straits when the the bailout money became available.

- The Center For Responsive Politics posted an interesting article on its website on February 4, 2009 which listed out how much money each financial institution received from the TARP fund and how much money those companies had spent in lobbyist expenses and campaign contributions, contributions that were made to the very same people in Congress who would decide how much taxpayer bailout money those companies would receive. According to the website, "members of Congress were able to specify to some extent where the money should go, and they have lobbied regulators to urge them to inject funds into specific banks and financial institutions including those in their own districts." In other words, taxpayer money was not distributed on need and merits but on political considerations.

… snip …

Fraud, lack of respect for the free market to take care of the strong businesses and punish the weak ones, a new source of campaign funding for politicians, and a potential source of free money, courtesy of the American taxpayer, were the reasons for TARP's existence, not the saving of the world's banking system.
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Now THAT is the harsh reality.

:D
 
BeAChooser said:
LOL! Is that all you see in that chart, lomiller? :rolleyes:

Since you apparently want to ignore it's content, you might as well ignore this one, too:

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/images/wmuchart-weekof-aug02-10-1_000.gif
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At least understanding this one requires a little (as in very little) knowledge other then what is explicitly in the graphic. It’s sad when complete ignorance of a subject is actuality a step up in post quality.

Employment is a lagging indicator. It normally follows recovery by 6-12 months. Surprise surprise, when you work back 6-12 months for the turnaround in employment it takes you right to when the stimulus money started to flow.
 
lomiller said:
At least understanding this one requires a little (as in very little) knowledge other then what is explicitly in the graphic. It’s sad when complete ignorance of a subject is actuality a step up in post quality.

Employment is a lagging indicator. It normally follows recovery by 6-12 months. Surprise surprise, when you work back 6-12 months for the turnaround in employment it takes you right to when the stimulus money started to flow.
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It should also be pointed out that THIS recession was quite different from other post-depression recessions in a number of key characteristics.

First, BAC's graph shows how much worse it was. Hurricane Katrina affected New Orleans in a much different way than past floods. The recovery will obviously not match what came before.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, this recession was spurned by a fiscal crisis that led to a liquidity trap. Interest rates were at the zero bound, so the economy could not recovery through the lowering of rates, as it did in those past recessions.

Not only does the graph NOT support BAC's argument, as you've shown, but this recession so differs from the other ones on that chart that such a bald comparison really isn't very illustrative of the major issues.

And yet it still proves the effectiveness of stimulus.
 
TraneWreck said:
Interest rates were at the zero bound, so the economy could not recovery through the lowering of rates, as it did in those past recessions.
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This is a very important point. Another important consideration is that the ripples in the global banking industry were still being felt in mid 2010, particularly in Europe. The possibility of a double dip has been a hot topic since the recession started and with the stimulus running out right around the time the EU crisis was peaking it almost came to pass. Any less stimulus or liquidity injection and it probably would have.
 
lomiller said:
Employment is a lagging indicator. It normally follows recovery by 6-12 months. Surprise surprise, when you work back 6-12 months for the turnaround in employment it takes you right to when the stimulus money started to flow.
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But why did all the other recessions show much greater employment (and GDP) growth long before that 6-12 month time period, and without much in the way of stimulus?

That's the question you are obviously desperate to ignore, lomiller.

:D
 
TraneWreck said:
And yet it still proves the effectiveness of stimulus.
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LOL! The denial from you folks as to the reality of the situation and the facts is just incredible.

Fortunately, I don't think the folks who will be kicking democrats to the street in November share the same delusions.

Because the rest of us can actually see what a chart like that says.

And what it says is *socialists go home*.

:D
 
BeAChooser said:
But why did all the other recessions show much greater employment (and GDP) growth long before that 6-12 month time period,
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That gets us back to your inability to read a graph. Even with the poor graphics (for this purpose) you linked to it’s clear that GDP starts to grow much sooner then employment.
 
TraneWreck said:
I'm sure it's pure coincidence that the countries that weathered the recession the best were also those that used the most stimulus with respect to the size of their economies or had floating currencies they were able to devalue:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/ever-expanding-government/
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LOL! Did you ever consider the possibility that Germany's current good economic performance has more to do with EXPECTATIONS of what the future holds, than just the amount of money thrown into stimulus? Afterall, your own source says that the Obama administration threw just as much stimulus at our economy as the Germans threw at theirs. So why didn't our economy do what theirs did? What's the difference between us? Well, for one, they didn't raise taxes. We've heard about nothing but raising taxes from the Obama administration. And more important, Obama and company have saddled us with massive new government debt, with no end in sight in it's growth. In fact, come 2020, yearly deficits are expected (assuming even the best assumptions) to be over a trillion dollars a year and rising. Whereas the German goverment announced an austerity program to go with their stimulus. By 2014 they are planning deep spending cuts. Cuts to welfare. Cuts to federal employment. Not bigger and bigger government, not more and more people on the welfare rolls, like Obama and democrats have talked about and desired. And business has responded accordingly in each case. :D
 
BeAChooser said:
LOL! Did you ever consider the possibility that Germany's current good economic performance has more to do with EXPECTATIONS of what the future holds, than just the amount of money thrown into stimulus?
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I fully agree. Expectations and positive outlook has a major impact on the confidence in the market. It is one of the reasons why I think ideological pundits who continually spew cherry picked nonsense in order to have "their side" win elections are partially responsible for lackluster recovery. I mean, what kind of sick, america hating individual would continually report negative, cherry picked news about america with smilies?
 
BeAChooser said:
LOL! Did you ever consider the possibility that Germany's current good economic performance has more to do with EXPECTATIONS of what the future holds, than just the amount of money thrown into stimulus? Afterall, your own source says that the Obama administration threw just as much stimulus at our economy as the Germans threw at theirs. So why didn't our economy do what theirs did? What's the difference between us? Well, for one, they didn't raise taxes. We've heard about nothing but raising taxes from the Obama administration. And more important, Obama and company have saddled us with massive new government debt, with no end in sight in it's growth. In fact, come 2020, yearly deficits are expected (assuming even the best assumptions) to be over a trillion dollars a year and rising. Whereas the German goverment announced an austerity program to go with their stimulus. By 2014 they are planning deep spending cuts. Cuts to welfare. Cuts to federal employment. Not bigger and bigger government, not more and more people on the welfare rolls, like Obama and democrats have talked about and desired. And business has responded accordingly in each case. :D
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Clearly you didn't read the article or the links within.

Your post was just a garbled mess of incorrect and incoherent claims. Obama didn't raise taxes, he cut them.

As for expectataions, compare Ireland and Spain. One engaged in austerity eagerly, one didn't, guess which one has the better looking long term numbers and willing investors?

Germany is behaving in a completely Keynesian manner. The crisis hit and they engaged in government spending, when the crisis is over, they're going to engage in cutbacks. This is exactly what Keynes said should happen, this is exactly what we should do.

Our crisis is deeper than Germany's, largely because we can't abandon the struggling states like Germany has abandoned the struggling European nations (both the states and the EU are unified by a currency. Countries like Sweden and Israel with floating currencies weathered the storm by devaluing. Greece and Alabama can't do this. America takes care of Alabama, Germany ignores Greece). But German austerity is as much of a myth as American stimulus (state cut-backs led to zero net stimulus).
 
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