Are we in a recession, depression or "jobless recovery" ?

[steve2470]

Poll question: Are we in a recession, depression or "jobless recovery" ?

Your thoughts please.

[RC]

1. There is no such thing as a jobless recovery.

Except for the people causing the problems in the first place.

[steve2470]

4. I agree. It's an oxymoron despite its usage in the MSM nt

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. I'm still employed, so it's a recession.

If I was unemployed, it would be a depression.

[closeupready]

3. Depression. No question in my mind.

Thank God we have more of a safety net than they did in the 30's, faulty and inadequate though it may be.

[taught_me_patience]

5. Jobless recovery

But very close to another recession. We might have fallen back into one this last month... we'll discover later when the revisions are finalized.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. We're in the cellar.

[peace frog]

7. We're in the cesspit under the outhouse

[frazzled]

8. This is not a question for anyone except trained economists

Why would we care what any of us (I include myself) THINK is the current status. The economic analysts can't even agree.

You might as well have added the categories "a purple haze" and "a New York State of mind"--they're just as meaningless

[Speck Tater]

9. Other: The leading edge of the collapse of the Western Empire. nt

[krabigirl]

10. Depression, but honestly? The new normal.

[OhioChick]

11. Agreed n/t

[hvn_nbr_2]

12. None of the above

It's a slide into a new, old economic system, medieval feudalism. The three new, old classes of society:
1. lords of the manor (lords of the corporate boardroom)
2. enforcers/knights (enforcers/cops, Blackwater mercenaries, union-busting thugs)
3. serfs (cubicle serfs and retail serfs)

[kelly1mm]

13. Other: The new normal, or the great resetting is what I call it. nt

[Initech]

14. Other: We're living in a morally and financially bankrupt America.

Trillions in debt. We have a piece of shit AM radio host getting paid handsomely to manipulate people against the very services they need to survive, billionaires are killing us and laughing all the way to the bank, And we're in two needless wars that will probably never end. And the party that is motivated enough to win thinks people who can't afford health care should fuck off and die, boos gay soldiers getting to serve for the first time, and cheers executions.

[jpljr77]

15. We're in a recession...another one.

This one started when the Stimulus money (the only meaningful economic input in three years) ran out. And it will continue until businesses start deploying their cash hoards, and they won't do that with Obama in the White House.

So.....we need to tax the motherfuck out of them and spend that money on direct job creating projects (infrastructure, etc.).

[Literate Dragon]

16. Definitely a depression

We're not in a recession, because GDP is growing and a recession means the economy is contracting.

It's a jobless recovery all right, but more than that, as I'll explain below.

There are many "other" things it could be called, but depression fits the bill.

Here's why I say that. The Great Depression, which we can take as our "depression" template, lasted from 1929 until 1942 -- twelve and a half years. But the recession that started it, sparked by the stock market crash of '29, lasted only until early 1933. From that point until the double-dip recession of 1937-38, the U.S. economy, although in sad shape, was actually growing, not in recession. It returned to growth in late 1938, too. This means that most of the years of the Great Depression were NOT years of recession. They were years of economic growth, but insufficient growth to restore the prosperity of the 1920s.

What happened in the 1920s-30s is very similar to what happened in the 1990s-today. In the 1920s, there was an economic boom, but it was partly fueled by a lot of consumer borrowing. Wages had not kept pace with productivity, which meant that consumers didn't have enough money to buy all of the products that were coming out of the factories, so banks and manufacturers extended them credit, resulting in high sales. Too much of the nation's income accumulated at the top, resulting in excess capital accumulation that went into speculation in real estate, Ponzi schemes, and the stock market. In the fall of 1929, the speculation-driven stock boom tanked, the market crashed, and this devastated the entire financial industry. Since the 1920s boom was credit-driven, a failure of the financial industry was carried over into the economy as a whole. Sales slumped, businesses failed, people were laid off.

When the recession was over and growth resumed in 1933, the underlying imbalance in income distribution hadn't been fixed, and it was no longer possible to pad people's incomes with credit as had been done in the 1920s. As a result, the economy reset around a lower baseline. It began to grow again, but that growth left unemployment in double digits and production far below capacity. This was not a temporary problem. It required truly dramatic government action -- rewriting of the economic rules of the game to favor labor over capital, plus a massive stimulus arising from World War II -- to restore real prosperity.

Something similar has happened now. The 1990s boom and the 2000s water-treading were fueled, like the 1920s prosperity, by consumer borrowing. Income is lopsided, now as then. Excess capital forms and goes into shell-game investments, now as then. A hiccup in the financial industry resulted in a general economic meltdown, now as then. And the economy has reset around a lower level of employment and production, now as then.

We are in a depression.