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I guess you never heard about the S&L bailout. Nothing has changed. The 1980 recession and the 2007 recession were virtually identical. Housing prices crashed, millions of people lost their jobs, rich people, including Jeb Bush, walked away with federal money, and nobody went to jail. The recovery took almost a decade. I bought 5 acres and a house in 1986 for 60% of the 1978 sale price. Even in the early '90s interest rates were over 8% and housing prices were still depressed.
I completely forgot about that! It's amazing how, over time, we lose perspective.
Back when that was going on, it was the main headline for ages. Anyone under 40 is unlikely to remember that and how bad it was.
The boomers are now in positions of power and influence. There is no gibberish in that.
"The Boomers", this made up term for the purpose of giving an entire generation an azz whipping is beyond stupid, I'll ask you to divulge your age so we can all take you to task for ALL the negative things some in your age group have done. Not just you, but ALL of those in your generation will have to suffer the indignation of being blamed for things they had zero control over.
When you can't seem to identify those individuals who, in your view, have harmed the country AS individuals instead of conveniently casting them in with me and others then most of my generation will write you off as just another gibberish speaking fool.
Can't you and others make your complaints known by simply saying that SOME people have brought you grief, AND be mature enough to know that these same people have brought that grief in many forms to me and others of my generation. No generation "is in power", Wall Street and their cohorts in government have their share of young bucks screwing over the populace, and has for decades. Your age group most likely has it's "representatives" in the mix.
I think your insistence on blaming the ills inherit in American politics and economics on an entire generation speaks volumes about your political immaturity, I'll make it a point NOT to extend that charge to ALL of your generation though......
locally it was not. But some areas still have not recover much if at all. the70's recession had double digit inflation and unemployment national and here it took twenty years to recover really.That is what I se for so mANy areas that have permanent job losses that will never return,
It was also easier to be counted as unemployed back in the 80's, so the unemployment rate looks higher than it really was using today's criteria to be counted as unemployed.
Your chart does not include 1980's data, or 1930's data. When we can see all three together, maybe a truer picture might be revealed.
I'm going of the top of my head reading of unemployment data of all three periods. All three had stubbornly high unemployment, even when the economies were more or less in recovery.
The difference Obama has over Reagan or Roosevelt is that Obama has a huge number of SSA and SSDA people off the work rolls, so has an employment picture that is improving in no small part to a lower labor participation rate.
You know, you don't have to be a jerk about it (or maybe you do). I'm here asking because I don't know what true economists use as a definition of recession. And I don't know how the indicators from each era compare. I wasn't informed; I lived through both of them.
And if you are referencing the recession from 1973-1975, it's not the one I was asking about. The one to which I was referring was this one. For my family it started in the late 70's until I had to leave the state I was living in in 1984 because jobs were still scarce. My perception, and I've never claimed to be an expert, is that they were equally bad. I learned from the first one, though, and made sure that I was in a recession-proof employment by the time the second major one rolled around.
Why did you only read/respond to my post? Others, who are far more informed than me, agreed and had pertinent information.
What happened in the 70's was NOTHING compared to the economic devestation the current "administration" (if you can even call this collection of fools and America-haters an "administration) has, is, and will continue to bring to the USA.
Obama-care alone will continue to do grave and grievous damage for many decades, raising exponentially the cost of health-care, which, as it already has started, will become a very scarce commodity, as people with options opt out (witness the droves of doctors in Canada who went into non-gov't Veterinary care when Canada made their mistake).
The U6 unemployment figure is nearly 20% still (doesn't exclude long-term unemployed, which obama has caused millions to become as never before in the USA).
Nearly irreversible changes to the business structure as to employees have been made, and will become more deeply ingrained into corporate working models, that leave many with only part-time employment (again, to avoid Obama care strictures), or no job at all due to shipping the work overseas.
The 70s was a party to what is happening now. As soon as a Republican is elected, you will start hearing about it on a continuous basis, of course with blame being attributed to said new President.
How old are you and where do you live or lived in the 70's recession?Without that its hard to tell what you felt or saw. Certainly where I lived the double digit inflation with double digit unemployment really hurt. This one we see a vast difference in regions as we did then. 6.8% growth for my state last year. Sales tax for local and state have risen every year for three years. showing consumer spending has recovered. My area it took 20 years to recover jobs permanently loss and that will be the case for some in this one I suspect.
This is by far worse than what we had in the 80's. It really got bad in 82 and 83. By 86 everything was cooking again, back to normal. We aren't even close to looking back to normal. Many states still have fewer employed people than they did in 2008. Some probably will never recover. I was researching a move to Wis. and they did a study that showed that each year, on average, about 14,000 with a BA or BS or above leave the state. That's pretty bad for long term rebuilding of their economy.
The economy that followed the late 2000's downswing traditionally would not have been recognized as a recovery, and this December marks seven years since the recession began in NBER's opinion. Let's go look at what was happening seven years after other NBER-dated recessions in the past century began (like-for-like comparison, right?). I put this in spoiler tags so it doesn't clutter up the post:
Spoiler
1913-14 Recession: It was January 1920 and this recession was two business cycles and one World War ago, long in the rear view mirror.
Post-WWI Recession: It was August 1925, in the middle of a then-historic economic boom. The economy had long since recovered.
Depression of 1920: It was January 1927, again in the middle of the Roaring Twenties.
1923-24 Recession: It was May 1930, in the early Great Depression but nonetheless the economy had long since recovered.
1926-27 Recession: It was October 1933, and the recovery from a subsequent Great Depression was beginning.
Great Depression: It was August 1936, in the middle of the most rapid economic expansion of the 20th century. The economy had almost fully recovered by this point, and in any case it would get well soon.
Recession of 1937: It was May 1944 and times were hard, but WWII was ongoing, making a comparison difficult. In any case 1937's recession was only a memory by 1944.
Recessions of 1945, 1949, 1953, and 1958: The economy had long since recovered 7 years after all these, and another recession had occurred during the following 7 years.
Recession of 1960-61: It was April 1967, and the economy was in a historic boom.
Recession of 1969-70: It was December 1976, one big recession and two expansions after this one.
Recession of 1973-75: It was November 1980 and the economy had recovered from this one before the then-current double-dip recession. The U.S. economy became perennially weaker following this era, but the recession itself was licked long before 7 years were up.
1980-82 Recessions: It was January 1986 and the economy had long since recovered.
Recession of 1990-91: It was July 2000 and this recession was just a memory.
Recession of 2001: It was March 2008 and disaster was on the way, but this recession was firmly in the rear-view mirror.
Recession of 2007-09: It is/will be December 2014 and the recession is very relevant; no real recovery had occurred in the intervening seven years.
Expansions are more important than recessions for determining long-term economic growth, and NBER claims there have been (including this one) eleven economic expansions since WWII. Of the ten prior to this one the weakest in employment, GDP, and household income was the 2000's expansion. Employment and GDP both grew at 1% per year, and household income shrunk by 0.1% per year. The latter is actually worse than any recession year in the 1950's and 1960's, when wages grew during recessions albeit less than during expansions. No recession has seen employment grow, but also no expansion has seen employment grow as feebly as it did in the 2000's. All told the 2000's expansion only had most of the hallmarks of an expansion (and barely) and actually had some hallmarks of a recession.
Why all this talk about the 2000's expansion? Because it was actually stronger than the current expansion. Employment growth during the current expansion bears no resemblance to any previously seen, and although not recessionary is in fact is closer to a typical mild recession than an average expansion. It is stronger than any recession on record, but it is striking that the closest match to the current period's trend is not any expansion but rather the 1970 recession, when employment flat-lined for a time. GDP growth has averaged about half of the 2000's expansion's already near-recessionary rate. Household income shrunk by 4% during the 2010's expansion. Every single recession since 1950 excepting 1980 and 2008 saw better income growth than the current expansion. By that metric this recovery has been among the worst recessions of the past century. Taking a broader perspective, the hallmarks traditionally associated with recovery and expansion are almost completely absent in the economy following the 2008 recession. This is the reason any growth in employment, GDP, or income inspires fanfare in the media - today's "positive news" would not be considered newsworthy in previous expansions before 2000.
By traditional standards this economy is closer to a recession than an expansion, and in my opinion it constitutes neither in and of itself. We had a recession followed by no recovery. Whether that constitutes an ending of the recession followed by something else or a continuation of the recession is a matter of opinion. My view is that a recession cannot end until a recovery begins, and thus the U.S. have been in a recession for seven years, meeting some people's definition of depression.
Last edited by Patricius Maximus; 11-18-2014 at 09:34 AM..
. Inflation isn't nearly as bad as not being able to find a job. Finding a job was much easier during the early 80s recession compared to the Great Recession.
Even at 10% unemployment, 90% of the people who want a job have one.
5% unemployment is considered "full employment" and somewhat below the historical average unemployment rate.. and even then, there's only half the % unemployed compared to a severe recession.
When the economy is poor, you're constantly stressed about how long before you're gonna lose your job and how you're gonna pay all the bills. When inflation is also out of control on top of that, you have the added stress of figuring out how you'll manage to survive without a job and with prices going up 1% every month. Unemployment directly affects those without a job (but may indirectly affect those with one by confirming the notion of a bad economy.) However, inflation affects everyone since we all need to eat, have a roof, etc. The negative synergies of unemployment and inflation can be quite debilitating as demonstrated here.
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