Who believes we are going into a "double-dip" recession?

[kentuck]

Personally, I feel we never came out of the first dip recession. The stimulus stabilized the economy for a while but we have never had the number of jobs created to truly say that we came out of the initial Great Recession. This is a rough horse to ride.

But I do not buy this sliding into a double-dip recession talk. We need much more done to help recover from this mess that the Republicans laid on the American people. They like to blame it all on Barack Obama and not accept any responsibility. Basically it is a deceitful lie, hoping to regain power and to reinstate the Bush economics all over again. If the people fall for that, we will reap what we sow.

[Taverner]

1. Who believes we're already there...

[aquart]

4. I was about to say.

[TBF]

14. We've been there awhile... nt

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. As defined the question is will we see negative GDP growth?

I am not sure.

But stagnation seems baked in the cake.

And +0.5% is not that much less damaging than -0.5% when neither one will create jobs.

[ejpoeta]

3. i agree that i think we never left the recession beyond some artificially propped numbers

thank to federal help. but it wasn't enough. and the dems are going to suffer for their desire to compromise. i wish they would have just done the job in the first place, the republicans be damned. whether that would have stopped this i don't know, but i know that the stimulus wasn't enough. we need a serious investment in infrastructure to give people jobs. that in my mind is the best way to get people back to work. but it's all going to be temporary unless we get jobs in this country again. bass pro shop and mcdonalds aren't going to pull us out of this. we need serious manufacturing jobs. and an investment in green energy that will give us another avenue to improve our system.

[Bonhomme Richard]

5. I think double dip is a load of crap.

We are in a single dip that is still dropping. I believe that they are putting all their eggs in the basket of failed economic policy that goes back 30 years. We are in the crapper until there is a more equal distribution of income in this country and, even if the powers that be had balls to address it, we are in for a very long haul.

On edit: Then again, what do I know?

[Skidmore]

8. I keep saying that we are being extorted right now by the wealthy.

They want their tax cuts made permanent, dadgummit. And they want to be able to keep all the money they've cheated out of the lower classes and to be able to keep the mechanisms which allowed them to do it. Then, to add insult to injury, they want to be able to cling to our near dead consumer carcass to force us to purchase goods and services to be subsidized by our tax dollars.

Wake up, people.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

6. Like you, I believe we never left the first one.

I am shocked at how little is being done to eleviate what is clearly an ongoing problem that was only marginally addressed with the stimulous package. The program to keep people in their homes is an outright failure -- all those homes flooding the market and collapsing home values only add to the misery.

The administration needs to do some very serious out-of-the-box thinking about how to get this country back on track but I fear the crew he is listening to is simply not up to the task. The one person who might have had some good answers was marginalized and walked away from the job.

[Speck Tater]

7. The economy is STILL falling off a cliff, with no bottom in sight. nt

[Blue Meany]

9. I'm afraid that the "dips" are just what's on the surface, the

ups and downs of the "Wall Street" economy. The real economy is one of steady decline; less manufacturing, fewer exports, higher unemployment, lower wages. Consumers and workers can no longer support a bubble economy for Wall Street using real estate for their credit. The salient question is how far down the real economy will slide to establish a new baseline, the "new normal." To be sure, devaluing the US dollar could provide a certain degree of bounce to manufacturing and exports, but the broader picture is one in which we are hitting the limits of resources that are used to support the industrial economy. This means that any economic boom is likely to be cut short by rising prices for those commodities that are used in the boom industries, especially oil which is used in all of them and for which there is increasing global competition.

If we disabuse ourselves of the notion that we have unlimited resource on which to draw--the unspoken myth that free-market capitalism depends upon for public acceptance--than we can begin to address the need to use resources more judiciously and distribut those resources more equitably. For example, introducing planned obsolescence to manufacturing undoubtedly generated wealth for capitalists and jobs for workers, but also exacerbated environmental pollution and resource depletion. In a re-engineered perhaps we will all work less, have less money, but will, perhaps, have appliances that last a lifetime, no need to regularly purchase cars because of public transportation, universal health care, etc.

[GSLevel9]

10. of course there's no double dip...

it's all ONE BIG DIP...

the stimulus was epic fail... some perfume on the pig until the pig smell came back. Drastic change is called for...

[area51]

11. +1

I don't believe we ever left the recession of '01, and it deepened into the 2nd Great Depression.

[kentuck]

13. Interesting comment...

But in 2001, we had a surplus and a balanced budget and 4.1% unemployment. True, the tech bubble had burst but we seemed to have recovered from that. That was primarily on the NASDAQ exchange.

But when 9/11 happened, it affected our economy, there was no doubt. However, when Bush and the Repubs passed their trillion dollar taxcuts and started two wars without paying for them, it had almost no positive impact on our economy at all. They more than doubled our national debt and left the present Administration a $1.3 trillion deficit.

I don't believe the recession in 2001 was really that bad. Just my opinion. I think Bush and the Repubs made it unbearable.

[northernlights]

16. the tech bubble was the beginning of the recession

for many high tech workers. I, for one, have spent the last 7 years more out of work than in, and only getting very low pay, high abuse crap jobs. I've run into other former high tech workers in similar situations -- dumped at middle age and no landing place in sight. Few companies want anybody 50+. Forced to live off our retirement savings well before retirement age. And many of my colleagues have simply disappeared down the same drainage pipe.

The rest of the country is only just now catching up with us...

Clinton got at least one thing right when she talked about the "trapdoor" economy. The floor unexpectedly opens and down you go, never to return. :(

[fasttense]

12. The mad rush to bail out the banks at the end of bushes term

with the Democrats voting for it (even Obama) compares very badly with the lack of concern for the unemployed.

It as if all of Washington thinks all we need are disgustingly rich bankers and our economy is fixed.

Unemployment and the absence of jobs is what is getting RepubliCONS voted into offices across the country.

If getting jobs had been a priority, a do anything we can to fix it rush by everyone in government, then the Democrats would not be challenged by lunatic right wingers today.

[kentuck]

15. Almost overnight...

the Democrats turned to Republicans. Now the rest of us are paying for it. It was an opportunity for the Democratic Party to be a true Party of the People and we blew it. We could have put that money in the pockets of working Americans and let the banks fend for themselves? I think that would have been a more "democratic" thing to do.

I wonder if we will ever be the Democratic Party again?

[femrap]

17. I agree....

I didn't feel a bounce. I'm soon to be a 99er.

It's going to get worse, I'm afraid.

[dgibby]

18. We might be,

but wouldn't we have to get out of this Depression first?:evilgrin:

[12string]

19. double dip recession?

More like you said.DEPRESSION.I guess they really think we won't see this pig if they keep putting lipstick on it.

[jotsy]

20. No expertise in economics, but I can't do any worse than those who make the claim.

or we wouldn't be where we are, which enhances ugly exponentially at will.

Someone here once asked what to call this economic chapter of the country's story. From the choices of recession and depression, I deemed repression as more apt an expression than either of the two familiar terms. The original depression was engineered by the bidders on task for the elite. Today's version are Gucci clad gophers given the chops to chew away at a public's well being. If FDR hadn't been so resourceful and diligent, I believe the state we find ourselves in could have come along much sooner. The pillars he put in place have seen some protections put between the foxes and the hen house.

How that has changed is in the architecture of a multi pronged long term plan. Education, employment and effectual incidentals, like the cost of everything from utilities to groceries to gas getting thrown out of reach for the average citizen, once applied collectively. This would be early to mid 90's, a decade and a half into the notions of Richard Wolff and theories outlaid in 'Capitalism Hits the Fan' which essentially contend wages went stagnant at the end of the seventies, yet productivity increased, making greater profits for owners. Credit was offered to fill the gap at reasonable rates until everybody was on the hook and in over their heads, then the ante got upped with interest rate formulas that would make loan sharks blush for the sheer nerve of it.

All the while education has seen diversity and depth diminished with the finishing touch of withheld federal funding for failure to pass tests in NCLB to deliver a society not intellectually equipped to decipher and sort the layers of deceit. This just after Clinton's agenda of a 21st century bridge to the future being best forged as part of a global economy and our accommodating desire to feed a money hungry WTO hits full swing and jobs begin fading from the national landscape. Now throw into that mix an artificially driven housing market and financial institutions who start raking in billions just for overdrafts along with insurers who demand more to order deliverers do less. I'm not depressed or recessed, and I'd only feel oppressed if the position of the PTB wasn't so reinforced backing up all that monetary might in addition to the military maniacals at the end of their leashes, managing the perception employing authoritarian techniques.


The well offs got made more whole at our expense as an early October surprise during the last general election cycle, at our expense no less. Our daily struggles to keep fluid in food and shelter are realities to us, but we aren't real to them and we won't be for as long as we fail to correct their position that we simply don't have a choice.

This is link to an interview with Richard Wolff, referred to above, it's not his documentary, which should be seen by all who want to understand, but his assessment of the recently passed fin-reg bill. Nothing's changing til we make it so. All three branches of government charged with the task of seeing to the people's business don't work for the people anymore and haven't for some time.

I'll be stepping off that soap box now, tyvm.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXbSNs33b48&feature=related>

[taught_me_patience]

21. I think there is a 50% chance of a negative Q3 GDP

and almost near certainty of a negative Q4 GDP. Withdrawl of fiscal stimulus will exaserbate the slowdown, as the FED has nearly run out of options for expansive monetary policy.