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Surprise: U.S. in RecessionPublished 12/02/08 Dustin Ensinger - Print ArticleE-mail - editor@economyincisis.org Just as EconomyInCrisis.org has been stating since 2004, the economy is officially in a recession. Now economists are finally admitting what the rest of us have been feeling for quite some time. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of economists that characterize American business cycles, the U.S. has been in a recession since at least Dec. 2007. “We will rewrite the record book on length for this recession,” said Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics in Lexington, Mass, according to the New York Times. “It’s still arguable whether it will set a new record on depth. I hope not, but we don’t know.” The current recession is already longer than the average of all the recessions since WWII. The average length of those recessions was 10.5 months. The longest recessions on record, occurring in 1973-1974 and 1980-1981, lasted 16 months. Most analysts predict that this recession will easily surpass those in length. “This may be referred to as the Great Recession,” because of its length, Norbert Ore, chairman of the Institute for Supply Management’s factory survey, told Bloomberg News. “It looked like we were headed for a shallow recession earlier in the year because of higher energy prices. With the meltdown in the financial sector, it has become something more serious.” Analysts say that the economy has not yet hit bottom and are expecting not just the longest, but the most painful recession in modern history as well. The drop off in consumer spending, the crumbling housing market, the credit freeze all ensure that the economy will not recover soon. Wall Street responded accordingly to news of an official recession, with the Dow Jones Industrial average plunging 680 points or 7.7 percent. That marks the fourth worst day in the Dow’s history. Only the Monday after Sept. 11, 2001, Sept. 9 and Oct. 15 of this year were worse days in terms of point loss. Now, the newly elected Obama administration will have to figure out a way to pull the U.S. out of a prolonged recession that the government was partly guilty for. Our officials pushed economic policies that may have been good for business but were bad for the average American worker. "This one has a potential to be longer and deeper than other postwar recessions," Lee Ohanian, a professor of economics at UCLA, tells The Los Angeles Times. "People are very, very scared and worried. In my opinion the government has created much more uncertainty about the economy than it should have done. So it's really hard to tell how long this recession could last." Source The New York Times:
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Our government actually wants us to believe that the bailouts are good for the economy. The truth is that they are intended to bailout the wealthy and are of no benefit to anyone else. Why should we bailout the executives that created this mess in the first place? In addition to being immoral and ineffective, the bailouts will add a whole new host of problems. They include runaway inflation, increased national debt, and exacerbated economic conditions when these bailouts become no longer possible.
Indeed, it was corporate greed that caused the current DEPRESSION we are now in. This economy is now hurting, and it's going to keep getting worse. In times like these, we need to recognize and appreciate the things we too often take for granted (i.e. FOOD, SHELTER, CLOTHING)
My advise to all common men is this: learn to do without. You'll have to learn if you want to survive in the hard years ahead. Stop buying crap you don't need, grow your own garden, learn to hunt, and get to know your neighbors. We will all need to work together if we are to ride out this economic storm of the century!