i would just say its a matter of optimism and pessimism. there is ammo for both ends to cite, because we are in a recovery, but a bad one. Fox, i'm sure, absolutely certain that your analysis of political alignment applies, however, it clearly applies to those who are eager to declare our economy down for the count, too. the pessimists.
be it neubarth or his replacement, zander, the die-hard pessimists refuse to support their claims of government-led economic ruin - clearly in the political realm which you've described. alternatively, i would like to count myself among those whose impression of the economy is based on observations of of its health from stats, study, and feedback i get from my participation in it. this participation is centered, admittedly, on self. all of my net worth is at play in US and US-dependent economies, and seeing some rise in its value or its returns, does illicit some optimism on my part. i don't attribute much of that to obama at all.
then again, i'm always an optimist; its just worked out to well for me as a mindset.
Once again you are attempting to put words in my mouth. I am not a pessimist. I am a realist.
well, i say that you are well within the confines of the converse, but that's just our differences of opinion.
I believe we are facing 4 large structural changes in our economy - higher volatility, lower trend growth, higher levels of structural unemployment, and an explosion of debt to GDP.
We have recently seen the highest volatility in the last forty years across leading indicators. Look at this chart of the LEI
Higher volatility makes the possibility of more frequent recessions more likely. If you think this is a positive development, good for you.
Then we have lower growth. The 12-quarter rolling average of Nominal GDP growth has been on a steady decline for 2 decades and there is nothing to indicate this trend will change. Is this a positive sign for the economy? I don't think so, but you are free to draw your own conclusions.
ill give you the concern over
projected volatility, however, i would characterize business cycles since the early 90s to be broad and the contractions shallow. this recession is in many ways an adjustment for the public and private credit used to affect that. with both of these sources of credit imperiled, crippled even, the economy may, indeed behave more like the early eighties, with high
demonstrated volatility. the labor force as we know it will be the biggest victim of a weak and erratic (dare i say) recovery in the next 5 years.
if you're looking to depress yourself, you could choose to look at developed nations in terms of the growth of gross productivity, however, analyzing them seriously, and with a clue, one would look to the per-capita figures. developed economies are instruments of quality, rather than quality, that is economic efficiency, rather than gross production values which ethiopia and china eat up. we are not these economies or anything like them. do you mean to say that we should target gross productivity and willfully digress to a labor-intensive manufacture economy, instead of a consumer-intensive money-mill?
Then we have the unemployment problem. The average time of unemployment has sharply increased from less than 20 weeks only 2 years ago to over 30 weeks now – a 50% increase.
recession.
Those unemployed for shorter lengths of time now make up much less of the total than they used to. Instead, the majority of unemployed workers is comprised of those in a chronic state of joblessness. Is this a good sign? Not for me, but I am a realist, not an optimist.
masses of unemployment don't amount to good signs, even for an optimist. i think this is the biggest drag on the economy, casting a shadow on others. other factors are all dependent on the improvement of the employment outlook.
inevitably, jobs lost in the last couple years will never come back. i think we'll have half of the jobs we have now in a matter of a decade or so. this will either be fewer employed or a further reduction of the hours which account for our incomes. every recession since the late 70s has permanently reshaped the nature of the workforce, lopping off hours and workers, never to return. the challenge for economies like ours is to manage this gracefully and innovatively. welfare, pseudo-disability and prison, the current solutions, dont fit that shoe.
Then we have the soon to be realized effects of massive government spending and the national debt projected to exceed GDP in a few years. Do you think the US can keep interest rates artificially low forever? I doubt it. When the rates start to rise what do yo think will happen?
the debt is a mess. i contend that it is not the linchpin factor which you make it out to be, or a dire near-term threat, but it is a liability which will have to be dealt with through tax, inflation and austerity over the next decade. economic growth will have to persist, despite that, presenting quite the challenge. i think the fed rates could be relaxed in a non-volatile way. i dont put malpractice beyond the fed, but it would require that to stumble tragically with respect to rate/monetary policy from their end.
i anticipate the government cooling the borrowing voracity in the next year or two as well. your realism will come by way of a shift back to more tax-based fiscal policy, i predict.
no matter what, but certainly if the GOP can get back on its horse, the austerity needed to address the debt could begin sooner rather than later.
