Fed predicts 5 to 6 years for unemployment, growth, and inflation to reach "normal" levels

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Fed predicts weak recovery for several years

http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/23/news/companies/fed_economic_forecasts/index.htm?hpt=T2



By Chris Isidore, senior writerNovember 23, 2010: 4:13 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve slashed its outlook for the U.S. economy for this year and 2011 and projected that it could take several years for the economy to return to health.

According to minutes from the Fed's November 3 meeting released Tuesday, more than half of the central bank's policymakers thought it would take about five or six years for unemployment, growth and inflation to return to more normal levels. Other Fed members warned the full recovery could take even longer than that.

The much weaker forecast is the major reason that policymakers decided earlier this month to announce a plan to try and jumpstart growth by pumping an additional $600 billion into the economy through the purchase of long-term bonds. That plan, known as quantitative easing, has been criticized by several economists, politicians and foreign central bank officials.

The Fed now expects the economy to grow between 2.4% to 2.5% this year, compared to an earlier forecast of growth between 3.0% and 3.5%.

[sakabatou]

1. So it may not be until after Obama is out of office

to get back on track

[TheKentuckian]

2. 7% seems more like normal gawdawful, we better think about extending unemployment

(even Republicans) bad.

With new and improved wage destruction and massive wealth drain from property loss, burning assets due to long term unemployment, 401k destruction, and scammy Social Security thieving among a thousand other things.

[area51]

3. It's not a weak economy,

it's a Depression economy. That's why extraordinary measures are needed such as a new WPA. Also, all offshoring/inshoring needs to be halted as we don't have enough jobs to go around for everyone in the U.S.

[Hannah Bell]

4. translation: banksters are going to keep money tight for 5-6 years to bleed the public in order

to recoup their losses.

[Newest Reality]

5. Wow!

So, they extend this current scenario out into an imagined future in order to placate us.

Those who are looking at the bigger picture, (from material resources to finances to energy and ecology) and the results of the bottomless garbage can and endless supply phantasmagoria of unbridled capitalism might tend to see a far different current, short-term and long-term situation. That must be managed with word magic and mystical number spells. The prophets of forecasting have spoken and it turns out to be the banker's Oz Head, the Fed.

What that "growth" is about and for whom is seemingly unimportant just as the current yodeling about recovery was about a certain sector, not the mainstream, and especially not the rapidly growing and potentially permanent underclass.

On the other hand, there is the more fearful, long-term plunge into a different kind of societal structure that continues to support a grossly inequitable shift of wealth, power and eventually, dwindling resources, to the deadbeat rich who are the controlling owners of corporations via shares. Nice facade to hide behind.

So, we can't change what we don't know about collectively. Now would be a great time to create a more equitable, resource-based economy. This is a critical time to reinvent our purpose and direction before the dwindling oil and resources make it totally impossible to be anything but pampered Lord or suffering Serf for the foreseeable future. No, those who own us and the rest of the planet will most likely not want that under any circumstances and would probably prefer a collapse to anything collective and visionary that benefits the many rather than the few.

And so, the ecosystem continues to absorb the impact of artificially induced wants while those with the most dire of needs are left to squalor, illness and death. Just think, all of that is largely for the comfort, power and wealth of a small percentage of us.

[TexasObserver]

6. Sounds right. Because they stopped throwing logs on the fire.

The stim package should have been twice as large and there should have been a second one this year.

We needed about four times the stimulus spending we got, and we needed more job creation programs.

Now the recovery is going to be longer, slower, and more painful.

How dumb is it to throw water on the fire when it's dark and cold outside?

[billlll]

7. nt

Nt

[billlll]

8. "Jobs For All" site ... new WPA

R Reich an advisor to site

http://www.njfac.org

PS. Sweden kept unemp below 2% for decades

Until the RW lied its way into power in the '90's.

Low unemp was "cornerstone of the welfare state". (Welfare there meant "welbeing" not poverty)

Employ up,
Wages then go up (due...folks no longer afraid to strike for decent wages. "Unemployment keeps wages low because folks are afraid to strike"---ancient LW basic slogan -- memorize it. You will not hear it on CNN but it is how the REAL dynamics of our economy proceed)

Learn from Sweden.
"Low unemployment was the cornerstone of the Wel(being) (aka Welfare) State."

The CORNERSTONE.

Reich and M Moore have called for a WPA now.


From jfa site....

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, State of the Union Message to Congress, 1944 

THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

This republic had its beginning and grew to its present strength under the protection of certain inalienable political rights...They were our rights to life and liberty. As our nation has grown in size and stature, however--as our industrial economy expanded--these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. 

    We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.... People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all--regardless of station, race, or creed. .....
More at the JFA site---

www.njfac.org

[Hannah Bell]

11. "Sweden kept unemp below 2% for decades - Until the RW lied its way into power in the '90's."

quite. all the libs who point to sweden as some kind of model, they had their first period of neo-lib "deform" almost the same time the us did, analogous to the reagan years & coincident with the assassination of their prime minister:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme

and dollars to donuts there's a connection.

As leader of a new generation of Swedish Social Democrats, Olof Palme was often described as a "revolutionary reformist". Domestically, his socialist views – especially the Social Democrat drive to expand Labour Union influence over business – engendered a great deal of hostility from more conservatively inclined Swedes....

On the international scene, Palme was a widely recognised political figure because of his:

-harsh and emotional criticism of the United States over the Vietnam War;
-vocal opposition to the crushing of the Prague Spring by the Soviet Union;
-campaigning against nuclear weapons proliferation;
-criticism of the Franco Regime in Spain, once calling Franco "En satans mördare" (Swedish: "a damn murderer");
-opposition to apartheid and support for economic sanctions against South Africa;
-support – both political and financial – for the African National Congress (ANC) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO);
-meeting with Cuba's president Fidel Castro;
-strong criticism of the Pinochet Regime; and,
-support – both political and financial – for the FMLN-FDR in El Salvador and the Nicaragua under FSLN.


Palme's assassination was the end of sweden's "golden age."


fact is, the economy isn't some autonomous thing that functions independently of its controllers. we can have any level of employment we choose to - or the ptb choose to.

[xchrom]

9. Recommend

[BlueIris]

10. 50 to 60 years is more like it. If we still have an atmosphere at that point,

I might start feeling confident.

[sendero]

12. The track record of the Fed's predictions..

... is really pretty poor. I would consider their latest prediction an absolute best case scenario.

[sendero]

13. dup n/t