[Plantagenet]

For years posters at peakoil.com have been battling over whether or not we are headed back into a double dip recession. Its been a great debate, but it completely misses the point.

The problem we face is not whether or not we have a double-dip------the real economic problem is that this is the WORST RECOVERY EVER

This is the WORST RECOVERY EVER

Thats why there are no jobs and salaries keep going down and food stamp use keeps hitting new record highs and nine million fewer people have jobs then before the recovery began......

[mmasters]

it's better than the great depression

[Beery1]

...the real economic problem is that this is the WORST RECOVERY EVER...

Given that, since 2008, we've been in what is essentially a post-peak world, what surprises me is that the economy can be in recovery at all.

[Plantagenet]

it's better than the great depression

No its not.

Read the linkie in the first post.

In 1929 people lost their jobs and stood in breadlines. In 2008 people lost their jobs and went on unemployment, foodstamps, and disability

After the 1929 crash there was a recovery. Things were going pretty good by 1936 when there was a double dip.

After the 2008 crash there was a recovery. This recovery is worse than the post-1929 recovery.

This is the worst recovery ever.

[Plantagenet]

Plant, you forgot Obama!

Isn't Obama still partying down with Lady Gaga in the White House?

In any case, Obama briefly touched on the economy in his inaugural speech ---he said that "economic growth" is underway --- but his teleprompter didn't cue him to also admit that this is the WORST RECOVERY EVER.

[peripato]

It is the worst recovery money can buy.

[AgentR11]

Plant, you're making a big assumption here. And that is that there is a recovery underway at all. There is not.

All we really have is a very gentle, very, very long duration depression, a situation where the currency managers finally have tools that are faster than the proverbial "run on the bank".

Basically the system is running as an "expansion", but only in the sense that the economy is expressed in more dollars now, than in 2009; even though now, in every measure that would count, expressed in fuel, its shrinking, expressed in grain, its shrinking, expressed in eggs its shrinking, expressed in bread its shrinking. So we have a long term, continuously shrinking economy, expressed in an increasing quantity of dollars, supported by government policy that crushes the ability of interest rates to react to decreasing, per dollar, purchasing power.

It is the Eternal Recession, and there is no "end" or "recovery" possible.

It is the end of Real Growth.

And it is the solution to resource constraints and carbon emissions. (to bad its too late).

[peripato]

Plant, you're making a big assumption here. And that is that there is a recovery underway at all. There is not.

All we really have is a very gentle, very, very long duration depression, a situation where the currency managers finally have tools that are faster than the proverbial "run on the bank".

Basically the system is running as an "expansion", but only in the sense that the economy is expressed in more dollars now, than in 2009; even though now, in every measure that would count, expressed in fuel, its shrinking, expressed in grain, its shrinking, expressed in eggs its shrinking, expressed in bread its shrinking. So we have a long term, continuously shrinking economy, expressed in an increasing quantity of dollars, supported by government policy that crushes the ability of interest rates to react to decreasing, per dollar, purchasing power.

It is the Eternal Recession, and there is no "end" or "recovery" possible.

It is the end of Real Growth.

And it is the solution to resource constraints and carbon emissions. (to bad its too late).

Very nicely put.

[Satori]

there is no recovery
especially if you look at the real # 's
and not the B.S. the government is putting out

we're well into "the long emergency"

it ain't gonna get any better

party's over
time to pay up

[Ibon]

There is a metaphor here at Mount Totumas, an ancient emergent old growth tree, 180 feet tall, massive, like a statue, a skeleton of hardwood from the trunk to the tree top where only a couple of small branches still bear leaves. There is a ribbon of living cambrian tissue where life holds on tenuously. There is no more growth, but yet still lives, still majestic, still evoking a sense of awe and wonder.

Why cant our modern world in this long descent resemble this tree, growth a mimumum of a few branches while it still holds itself in majesty? Why do we perpetually see this long descent as a loss?

[Plantagenet]

Plant, you're making a big assumption here. And that is that there is a recovery underway at all.

I'm not making any kind of assumption at all---its a simple fact. The Federal Reserve collects reams of data on the economy and that data shows weak GDP growth started back when the recession ended in May 2009. The weak GDP growth never really picked up the way recoveries usually do, to the point that the current recovery is now the WORST RECOVERY EVER-----its even worse than the great depression.

I expect the economy to totter on like this for a bit longer, until something (a stock market meltdown? an Israeli-Iran war that causes a spike in oil prices? Obama's new tax increases? a government shutdown over the debt limit? civil strife in Saudi that shuts down oil exports?) gives a push to the tottering wreck that is the US economy and topples the US economy back into recession.

[peripato]

Plant, you're making a big assumption here. And that is that there is a recovery underway at all.

I'm not making any kind of assumption at all---its a simple fact. The Federal Reserve collects reams of data on the economy and that data shows weak GDP growth started back when the recession ended in May 2009. The weak GDP growth never really picked up the way recoveries usually do, to the point that the current recovery is now the WORST RECOVERY EVER-----its even worse than the great depression.

I expect the economy to totter on like this for a bit longer, until something (a stock market meltdown? an Israeli-Iran war that causes a spike in oil prices? Obama's new tax increases? a government shutdown over the debt limit? civil strife in Saudi that shuts down oil exports?) gives a push to the tottering wreck that is the US economy and topples the US economy back into recession.

No, it will be a good year for stocks, the Federal Reserve will see to that. A rising stock market generates tax, capital gains and banker bonuses Of course no one will question the cost of the Dow going up in money (trillions) erosion of the real economy (a.ka. restructuring) or curtailment of democratic freedom (rule by a financial elite), as it is the ultimate barometer of economic deception.

[kublikhan]

In 1929 people lost their jobs and stood in breadlines. In 2008 people lost their jobs and went on unemployment, foodstamps, and disability

That's right. And that's one of the reasons why things are not as bad as they were in the Great Depression. Out social safety is much better now than back then. And the unemployment situation was much worse back then as well.

A good deal of commentary has addressed similarities between the recession that began in December 2007 and the Great Depression. Comparisons between the two have extended beyond conditions in financial markets to conditions in the labor market. The analogy appears to be fueled by projections that the unemployment rate could reach double digits in the coming months. Little if any comparative labor market research has been undertaken, however. To address the situation, this report analyzes the experiences of workers during the 1930s.

A labor market analysis of the Great Depression finds that many workers were unemployed for much longer than one year. Of those fortunate to have jobs, many experienced cutbacks in hours (i.e., involuntary part-time employment).

there remain substantial differences between the Great Depression and the current recession:
• In 1933, at the depth of the Depression, one in four workers was unemployed. In contrast, the unemployment rate had risen to 9.4% by May 2009. The number of jobs on nonfarm payrolls fell 24.3% between 1929 and 1933. Thus far during the current recession, firms have cut nonfarm employment by 4.3%. The first 17 months of the ongoing recession compare favorably with the first two years of the Depression as well.

• In addition to the greater magnitude of unemployment and job loss during the early 1930s as compared with today, the implications of being unemployed have changed much in the intervening years. One reason for the altered situation facing today’s unemployed is the increased prevalence of families in which both spouses work. Another is the deeper drop in earnings and hours worked that occurred during the Depression. And, the social safety net that is now available to displaced workers and their families did not exist before the onset of the Great Depression.

The Labor Market during the Great Depression and the Current Recession

After the 1929 crash there was a recovery. Things were going pretty good by 1936 when there was a double dip.

After the 2008 crash there was a recovery. This recovery is worse than the post-1929 recovery.

This is the worst recovery ever.

Huh? There was no recovery between 1929 and 1933. The economy was tanking hard. It did not bottom out until 1933 after falling more than 25%. Yes, a recovery started in 1933, but even by 1936 things were still pretty bad. When "things were going pretty good" in 1936, the [U3] unemployment rate was 18%, more than double the rate now. So yeah, maybe the "recovery" from 1933-1936 was faster than now, going from 32% unemployment to 18% unemployment. But the unemployment rate was still more than double today's rate. And GDP still fell more than 5 times harder than ours did. I'll take our tepid recovery over 32% unemployment, soup lines, and a 25% fall in GDP any day of the week. Arguments like that makes it sound like the guy with the gun shot wound who was upgraded from critical to serious condition is better off than the guy with a broken leg because his condition is improving faster. We really are spoiled compared to the vast majority of human history.

Look at you. Like fat Dathrasi you feed, and feed, and complain only when your meal is interrupted. You do not look up. You do not see that the grass is bare. All you leave in your wake is misery. You are blind; I will make you see!

Arishok

Economic activity began to decline in the summer of 1929, and by 1933 real GDP fell more than 25 percent, erasing all of the economic growth of the previous quarter century. Industrial production was especially hard hit, falling some 50 percent. It was not until the 1940s that previous levels of output were surpassed.

Great Depression

The "Great Recession" was worse than we thought. New figures released by the feds Friday showed the U.S. economy contracted by 5.1% after the recession began on former President Bush's watch in 2007.

New data shows economy shrunk 1% more than previously thought

[AgentR11]

I'm not making any kind of assumption at all---its a simple fact. The Federal Reserve collects reams of data on the economy...

Yes, it is an assumption. You are accepting the evaluation of GDP from the people that are also controlling the GDP. That's like asking a seventh grader to write a research paper, and have them grade it themselves to their own standards. To get an objective FACT, you have to evaluate the product against an impartial arbiter. I listed several, all of which indicate the economy is undergoing a contraction in real terms, and an expansion in monetized terms. That's what you get when you add currency into a shrinking economy and flatten the interest rates forcefully; then measure GDP with an inflator that does not reflect the spending ratios of the majority of the population.

"shows weak GDP growth started back when the recession ended in May 2009."

It shows added money and simultaneously suppressed interest rates. That is all.
The quantity of goodies that average population members are able to buy is contracting.

until something (a stock market meltdown? an Israeli-Iran war that causes a spike in oil prices? Obama's new tax increases? a government shutdown over the debt limit? civil strife in Saudi that shuts down oil exports?) gives a push to the tottering wreck that is the US economy and topples the US economy back into recession.

Stocks? Not a chance in heck. With zilch interest available from treasuries in the face of declining purchasing power, stocks are the only hope for long term capital preservation. They are oversubscribed, and will remain oversubscribed, any dip will be filled by trillions of dollars looking for a bargain better than 0%.

Israel/Iran war? markets go up. We sell goodies to Israel. It will be expensive for Israel to splatter Iran. Money velocity is everything, even if we're printing it, getting it used, and used fast is good for the markets.

As long as Saudi's have food, there will be no "civil strife". Fortunately for us, the King ain't a moron.

So we should continue as is, a slow grinding depression, where people make less and pay $5->$10 for a hamburger; all the while the Fed claims low inflation.

[Ibon]

This is all real time adaptation happening before our eyes. What we have always anticipated. Is this a problem? How else do we move culture away from entitlements and exceptionalism. How else do we bring back a defense of the commons and the local against the corporate welfare state? The adaptation really does not ride on any ideology. It stings where ever you find yourself leaning politically. As it should.

[Plantagenet]

You are accepting the evaluation of GDP from the people that are also controlling the GDP. That's like asking a seventh grader to write a research paper, and have them grade it themselves to their own standards.

Comparing the federal reserve banking system to a 7th grader is a bit of a stretch. The federal reserve budget runs about 3.5 BILLION dollars a year. The money goes to an army of Ph.d. economists, statisticians, analysts, etc. who track loans, construction, prices, shipments, manufacturing,sales, etc. in each of the federal reserve districts across the USA.

The Federal reserves banks collect important and valuable data. The data is real and factual. Trying to pretend otherwise is silly.

the economy is undergoing a contraction in real terms, and an expansion in monetized terms. That's what you get when you add currency into a shrinking economy and flatten the interest rates forcefully

Of course. But that doesn't change the fact measures of GDP show the economy is growing very slowly due to those measures.

Just because you don't like the policy doesn't mean the data is wrong.

The quantity of goodies that average population members are able to buy is contracting.

Yes, of course. But GDP involves more than that single measure.

So we should continue as is, a slow grinding depression, where people make less and pay $5->$10 for a hamburger; all the while the Fed claims low inflation?

Of course. People just voted not to change things and to continue as is. Just because the GDP data show this is the WORST RECOVERY EVER doesn't mean people can't get used to living through what is, in effect, a slow grinding depression.

[Plantagenet]

This is all real time adaptation happening before our eyes. What we have always anticipated.

Yes...you are exactly right. The global economic downtown corresponds rather well to the predictions by Dr. Colin Campbell and James Kunstler and others of a global cyclic economic downturn after peak oil.

The WORST RECOVERY EVER is the early phase of THE LONG EMERGENCY----if Campbell and Kunstler are right, the economy is likely to have cycles of ups and downs, but in the long run its going to trend down and things will get a heck of a lot worse.


We seem to be living through the early part of "the long emergency."

[Satori]

I trust the Fed's data collection and interpretation
about as much as I believe the OFFICIAL government figures
for the unemployment rate and inflation

governments lie
that is what they do

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-2 ... here-it-tr

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-2 ... diocletian’s-book

[Plantagenet]

CBS news began the nightly news with anchorman Scott Pelley announcing portentously "THis is the worst economic recovery America has ever had.....

CBS evening news: "This is the worst economic recovery America has ever had

Good to see the MSM reporting honestly on the crappy recovery .....