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Can someone tell or point me to a good website or provide information regarding past recessions in our history. Starting first with the great depression and on forth. My reasoning is this I'm curious to know what the reaction of our country was when the first recession after the great depression and recovery happended. Were economist being extra cautious to take all precautions, was there a state of panic? how did the depression effect how we view all furthur recessions. Also if anyone knows of a good time line graph or table of data that maps out the times of all US recessions and recoveries throughout. Also I know yahoo finance could give me that information regarding how the stock market reacted but I'm not sure if It gives me a clear understanding of the economy as a whole.
1. From just looking at a few quick graphs and charts and reading a little sample of the site it looks as if though the current situation we are in or just pulling ourselves out of depending on your current thoughts is about on level with the stats and percentage drops from other similar recessions, but not near as severe as the depression, Why is it that this situation has this country in such worry. Was it because of the industries involved? i.e real estate goes bad people worry more than if say the DOW or tech stops drop suddenly because real estate and job loss has real effect while to the average person the dow and nasdaq arent releavent or not as much so.
2. Im particularly interested regarding the decline of 1945, how did peoples perception of what happend during the depression affect how they dealt with this post war recession.
Also I want to provide full disclosure I am 23 years old, therefore have never delt with a recession in terms of how it affects me today, i.e during the last recession I was living at home with my parents so until this point I had never worked through or during a recession supporting myself. Honestly the city I live in is slightly above the curb regarding economic status so I havent really been effected.
I completely sympathize with you -- the media overreaction was completely out-sized, I suspect because of the election and the leanings of the media. That hyperbole led to a lot of stupid overreaction -- from people on forums such as this suggesting "a return to growing ones own crops" to news anchor's going looking for soup lines, to people massively running from investments of all kinds.
There is a HUGE percentage of the US economy that truly is on "auto-pilot" and always will be -- maybe less than 40% of the spend is truly discretionary. The things that people should do in even the worst economic downturn are NOT so out of the ordinary -- it ALWAYS makes sense to have an emergency fund, to evaluate the mix of assets in one's long term savings / investments, to live within one's means, to limit exposure to variable rate loans, etc...
Lots of people got away with doing stupid things with their housing dollars for too long and the nature of this recession brought extreme pressure on those people. The take away is to NOT stretch too far to buy a house. Good advice that the MAJORITY of people have ALWAYS followed!
I completely sympathize with you -- the media overreaction was completely out-sized, I suspect because of the election and the leanings of the media. That hyperbole led to a lot of stupid overreaction -- from people on forums such as this suggesting "a return to growing ones own crops" to news anchor's going looking for soup lines, to people massively running from investments of all kinds.
There is a HUGE percentage of the US economy that truly is on "auto-pilot" and always will be -- maybe less than 40% of the spend is truly discretionary. The things that people should do in even the worst economic downturn are NOT so out of the ordinary -- it ALWAYS makes sense to have an emergency fund, to evaluate the mix of assets in one's long term savings / investments, to live within one's means, to limit exposure to variable rate loans, etc...
Lots of people got away with doing stupid things with their housing dollars for too long and the nature of this recession brought extreme pressure on those people. The take away is to NOT stretch too far to buy a house. Good advice that the MAJORITY of people have ALWAYS followed!
Yes those tent cities are an overreaction. !5% unemployment in Michigan is imaginary. This recession is all in our heads
Also I want to provide full disclosure I am 23 years old, therefore have never delt with a recession in terms of how it affects me today, i.e during the last recession I was living at home with my parents so until this point I had never worked through or during a recession supporting myself. Honestly the city I live in is slightly above the curb regarding economic status so I havent really been effected.
That's a major reason, today's young adults of your age cohort have really only known historically low unemployment, increasing productivity and a ratcheting upward of the items considered needs instead of simply wants. My base memory of the 70s is one of a nearly decade long simmering recession, from the gas shortage induced recession in the early 70s, to wage and price controls that fed runaway inflation when lifted, to contraction of basic industries and off-shoring of jobs starting to really ramp up, to another oil price shock in 1979, the staglflation of the mid 70s with high inflation and high unemployment. Historically, full employment was considered to be on either side of 7% unemployed. The last two decades has seen unemployment drop to levels only seen in WW II, if then.
It's funny how the argument over whether the recession is getting better or worse on this forum seems to directly parallel the DOW. If the Dow is up, the optimists rule the board, if it's down, the doomers have the floor.
Is it just me or does anyone else notice this?
But the problem with that is the DOW is a crappy indicator of the state of things.
Yes those tent cities are an overreaction. !5% unemployment in Michigan is imaginary. This recession is all in our heads
The OP asked about sources for evaluating the recession as IN THEIR LIFETIME they have not really experienced any prolonged downturn.
Neither I nor anyone else in this thread suggested that the economy is not hurting -- the follow-up question from the OP asked why their perceptions do not match the hysteria. The reason I offered was that the hysteria is a media driven overreaction and a function of the FACT that the housing sector has been both the largest single causal factor and the most obvious pain point in this recession.
The OP stated their area is NOT particularity effected, and I suspect that they are therefore NOT in MI or other areas where the huge reliance on any one industry has MAGNIFIED the recessions negative consequences.
The term "global downturn" does seem to have multiple levels of "truthiness" -- clearly MANY other countries were deeply and directly effected by the troubles in the US banking sector, due to linkages with MBS, and the secondary effects of the extreme downturn in US consumer spending has resulted in a slowdown that touches MANY other countries. That said there are very different effects on housing prices in various parts of the US, with some areas down 30% or more from peak, while a handful of markets have seen no real declines. Global DOES NOT always mean "uniformly distributed".
How does everyone think the 24 hour media blitz of information has affected our preceptions? For the good or bad? For instance when the recession was in full swing everyone knew it and knew every sector of every busisness that was not doing well, the same goes for the recovery we are slowly starting, everyone knows every good thing this is happening does this have any sort of influence on people perceptions. One example I'd like to point to is the obvious cash for clunkers, Something tells me this program while good wasnt anything more than an ignition for the all mighty consumer. People had money from saving for the last year or so of bad times, had heard that we are starting to get better (media) and therefore spent said money on cars. Also does anyone think the stock market will be a leader in brining us out of the recession, or is it stocks are going back to actual market value because they'd been brought down so low they had to go anywhere but down furthur? I love me some economics.
Also I live on the eastside of indianapolis, while my city has been doing pretty well compared to almost all other rust belt cities. The direct side of the city I live on hasnt been that vibrant for many years and most people I come accross on a daily basis, Other than co-workers could not care less about how the economy is going, or they just wanna complain because they've always been broke, from the time of prosperity to the crash of leman.
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What the 4377 are you missing?
