It's nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double-dip recession when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We're still in one long Big Dipper.
More people are out of work today than were last year, counting everyone too discouraged even to look for work. The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to the highest level since February. Not counting temporary census workers, a total of only 12,000 net new private and public jobs were created in July -- when 125,000 are needed each month just to keep up with growth in the population of people who want and need to work.
Not since the government began to measure the ups and downs of the business cycle has such a deep recession been followed by such anemic job growth. Jobs came back at a faster pace even in March 1933 after the economy started to "recover" from the depths of the Great Depression. Of course, that job growth didn't last long. That recovery wasn't really a recovery at all. The Great Depression continued. And that's exactly my point. The Great Recession continues.
Even investors are beginning to see reality. Starting in February the stock market rallied because corporate profits were rising briskly. Investors didn't mind that profits were coming from payroll cuts, foreign sales, and gimmicks like share buy-backs -- none of which could be sustained over the long term. But the rally died in April when investors began to see how paper-thin these profits actually were. And now the stock market is back to where it was at the start of the year.
What to do? First, don't listen to Wall Street and the Right.
Forget the Neo-Hoover deficit hawks who say we have to cut government spending and trim upcoming deficits. We didn't get into this mess and aren't remaining in it because of budget deficits. In fact, the only way to reduce long-term deficits is to restore jobs and growth so government revenues rise and expenses like unemployment insurance drop.
Ignore the government haters who say we have to void or delay upcoming regulations of Wall Street and big business. We got here because Wall Street went bonkers, the housing bubble burst, and the middle class couldn't continue to spend because their health-care bills were soaring and their pay was stagnating. New regulations of Wall Street and big business are necessary to avoid a repeat.
And don't believe the supply-siders who say we have to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Because the wealthy save rather than spend most of their incomes, extending their tax cut won't do squat. And restoring their marginal tax rate to what it was under Bill Clinton won't harm the economy. The Clinton years had the best sustained economy in American history.
The central problem is lack of demand -- and that's what has to be tackled.
Three of the four sources of demand have stopped working. (1) Consumers can't and won't buy because they're still under a huge debt load, can't get more credit, are afraid of losing their jobs (or already have), depend on two wage earners, at least one of whom is working part-time and pulling in less, or have to save. (2) Businesses won't invest and spend on creating more jobs if they don't see consumers willing to buy more. (3) Exports are stalled because the dollar is so high they cost too much, much of the rest of the world is still struggling with recession, and American firms can make things for sale abroad more cheaply abroad.
That leaves only one remaining source of demand -- government. We need a giant jobs program to hire people and put money in their pockets that they'll spend and thereby create more jobs. Put ideology aside and recognize this fact. If it makes you more comfortable call it the National Defense Jobs Act. Call it the WPA. Call it Chopped Liver. Whatever, we have to get the great army of the unemployed and underemployed working again.
Also: Put more money in consumer's wallets by eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20K of income (and make it up by applying payroll taxes to incomes over $250K.)
Also: Get more hiring by giving the states and locales interest-free loans -- so they can rehire all the teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and sanitation workers they've fired -- to be repaid when their state employment rates hit 5 percent or below.
Also: Get more credit by having the Fed return to "quantitative easing" -- expanding the money supply by purchasing mortgage-backed and other types of securities.
If we let the deficit hawks and government haters dominate this debate, as they have, the Big Dipper will continue for years. The Great Depression lasted twelve.
This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
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Keep It Simple Stupid.
or
MARKETING 101
"Find A Hole And Fill It"
There are a lot of holes out there.
From pot holes in our own roads to lack of water, food, shelter, clothing and medicines for
disaster ravaged countries. These are GIANT HOLES that can be filled now. WITH JOBS!!!!
I refer to it as The WPA meets The Peace Corp meets Job Corp meets UNICEF meets The Red Cross...et
Imagine if all countries of the world were invited to a neighborho
Each neighbor was asked to bring a something they are famous for, prepare it, package it and hold it until one of the neighbor's houses actually does burn to the ground, or is hit by a hurricane, a tornado, sunami, earthquake
The neighbor with rescue experience and equipment will go there first.
The neighbor with food service experience will set up the tables and will phone the other neighbors explaining when and how much the other neighbors will need to bring.
Our neighborho
etc., etc, etc.
Our government pays for the labor and materials to prepare the items we are famous for and major advertiser
K.I.S.S.
Thanks for listening.
Ed Catano
This will take years to sort out, it has nothing to do with "demand". As if demand suddenly was zapped from the economy.
What is government going to do? Buy the bad loans from banks? Moral hazard? Help the underwater homeowners
Housing has to bottom out, banks and homeowners take their haircuts, and we move on.
Home ownership was not the problem, and still isn't. The problem was, and is, Wall Street gambling. The scam was bundling crap with grade B paper and selling it like it was AAA paper. The real crooks are the rating agencies, all of whom are still in business as if the crash of 2008 never happened.
It's criminal. Blaming the collapse of the housing bubble on a few people who never should have had loans in the first place ignores the role of rating agencies who told everybody that their unsecured loans were investment grade securities
You need to understand that banks won't loan money to most people unless the loan is structured such that it can be guaranteed by Freddie. When I bought a house 8 years ago, I could not get a loan for more than could be unloaded onto Freddie if things went bad. I had nothing to do with Freddie, but it still had a very real effect on what I could buy. That's the way it is. Freddie put the brakes on a market that was otherwise accelerati
You should be thankful for Fannie and Freddie.
'Alaska's Scorn Of Washington Exempts Cash' Michael Powell
The problem with representa
Actually, this is Keynesian macroecono
The truth? It's not the middle. There is no middle here, it;s a fork in the road and this is just an Exit Sign that we will stamp our face into if we try to go halfway.
American entreprene
Do you think Pfizer's bottom line is better because they found a cure for a disease or because they make a rhomboid little blue pill?
If Lipitor cured your cholestero
So what do you think gets higher priority at Pfizer on the research to-do list?
it's failing now, before our very eyes.
__________
Moronic idea. This isn't the 1930s, you can't have a bunch of people off the street working in civil constructi
The whole notion of stimulus is just a big crock. What, we don't spend $ in 2007 for the DOT? All stimulus is is just regular government spending, there is nothing special about it whatsoever
And as we can clearly see, running a deficit will not get you out of a recession.
We have a $1400 billion deficit planned for this year, what should we make it Robert? $5 trillion? 10 trillion?
Ridiculous
It's a ridiculous concept, stimulus is just plain old government spending that doesn't do jack to help out an economy.