8537
VIP Member
Ecvnomists forecast. And the ones Obama has been usingt have proven to be awful at forecasting. They assured no higher than 8% unemployment and when it soared above, they said they read the economy wrong.
Republican economists were predicting unemployment rates of 8-8.5% at the time.
Economists read the economy wrong....Love that one.
Some of them did, some didn't.
However, HISTORY shows us that recessions come every 6-8 years and are based primarily on market saturation, with some also spurred by technological advances. History also shows us that such recessions usually stablize within 18 months...sometimes quicker. The one recession that did not was the one that turned into the great depression.
No, the recessions of the early 1980's lasted longer and were far deeper than the rest, as is this one.
So from an honest debate standpoint, we again look at history and ask if "spending" has proven to be the answer to economic collapese during peacetime. Afterall, there is a solid debate that war helps economies recover so maybe FDR's spedning was not the catalyst.
FDR's policies led from 3000 bank failures in 1933 to 7 bank failures in 1934. That single act brought stability to the financial markets. Later spending programs that increased demand helped create an environment of 4-years of record growth and decreasing unemployment.
So we look at history of peacetime spending...ala...Japan. For ten years of peacetime, they tried to spend themselves out of a recession and it did squat.
Japan entered that recession and responded by cutting spending and increasing interest rates,then made tepid steps towards Keynesian stimulus until about 1999.
So now we look back at history of the US. When we dont spend, we get out of the recession in about 18 months.
We got out of the 1980 recession in 18 months? Because you're relying on the NBER recession dates, you'll have to conclude that most likely this recession only lasted about 20 months - it started in November of 2007 and most believe the NBER will date the end as June - August 2009. Just b/c the NBER has declared it over doesn't mean the economy is doing great. Afterall, the last recession ended in October of 2001 and we didn't see positive jobs numbers until almost 2004.