I suggest a correction to this statement: IF your household spends more than it makes your household is or will soon be in a depression. About 90% of America is already facing this problem on a daily basis. (I made that statistic up. but you get the picture)
There's no set, uniform definition of depression, but we're most likely heading to a double dip recession. Even China is slowing down. Unless and until we stop the war against the entrepreneur, we'll continue to have weak growth. However, if we adopt the tax and regulatory model of Hong Kong, we'll start booming. If a Republican gets in in 2012, I hope he or she really is aggressive.
Has anybody even considered the possibility that the economy may actually complete the cycle and go back to full health? Nothing that has happened recently indicates that this is no longer possible. Unemployment is still high but that may be structural (as in forever) and could at peak performance stay as high as 6-7%. Also what if the stimulus has actually worked? It usually takes a while before its effect starts to show up. What if Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner are really geniuses who in a few years we will praise and burst into song about at random moments for saving the economy? What f-cking if this government spending binge will turn out to have created the biggest economic boom EVER? You people seem to have your mind made up that this economy is headed down the drain even though not even professionals can predict the state of the economy 2-3 years ahead with very high accuracy. Why would Joe on the hill be able to do it? Cos dey tuk r jobs, that's why. P.s. I don't think it's very likely we'll have a huge boom but I certainly don't think it's 0% and the chance of having a recession within 12 months is certainly not very high either.
Over 2.5 Million jobs have been lost since Obama took office. To put this into perspective, unemployment was only about 5% under George Bush. The latest unemployment rate is 9.1% but if you count those that gave up looking, it is much higher. If George Bush, Clinton, or Reagan were president today we would probably be generating more than 500k jobs per month in the US, every month. But Obama has an anti-job agenda and last month only 54K jobs were created in the private sector in the US. Most of those were McDonald's jobs, to boot. 89% Say New Graduates Will Have Tough Time Finding a Job. yet Obama says he is happy with the recovery in the US? Obama's bailouts were to save jobs but America is losing jobs. Where did $10 Trillion+ disappear?
man some of you need to think before you speak. it was about 8% when bush left office and look at this chart. does it look like we would be gaining jobs if bush were still president. http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2009/feb/wk2/art02.htm
Believe that President Bush got fewer than 50% in 2000... "It was the closest election since 1888 and only the fourth election in which the electoral vote did not reflect the popular vote." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000 http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm
I can sense the desperation in some of the posts in the last week. You just witnessed the "boom" of the last two years. Bernanke and Geithner are probably scared shitless. It will take increasing amounts of QE to maintain this level. It is over as Rome begins to burn.
How about just stopping ALL wars? What would a republican do in 2013? It's not like the tax rates are high?! http://www.tax.com/taxcom/features.nsf/Articles/0DEC0EAA7E4D7A2B852576CD00714692?OpenDocument http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/stockman-tells-the-hard-truth-on-taxes-spending/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/are-taxes-in-the-u-s-high-or-low/ http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/us-tax-rates-1916-2010/
Many idiots believe it will happen. Many other idiots are equally convinced it won't happen. Conclusion: only an idiot would make a choice based on what idiots think.