This Is Not The Great Depression

Hmm… similar to, but worse than the ’81 recession, which presaged the last great scandal tied to the mass failure of deregulated thrifts.

Makes some sense.

Well, no, but it still sucks.

FLG: That it does.

This chart is actually inaccurate. The current unemployment is much, much higher:

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Economy/idUSTRE5077TM20090109

And the comical way unemployment is current calculated:

http://img.ragea.net/uploads/1234010029.jpg

So no, not depression levels yet, but very close.

How much of our economy was “non-farm” in ’29?
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Suspect that we have (in real numbers) many, many more out of work now but, because we’re basically a service economy now, this shows up as a lower “rate”.
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As has been already said, it STILL sucks, but one can always find stats to make things look better.
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“Figures don’t lie but . . .”

…and we won’t even get into the relative “quality” of many of the jobs available out there right now.

I was feeling better about things until I saw andrewsauter’s link. Now my hair is falling out even faster.

afgiy — more than you think. In ’29, we still had factories that made textiles, clothing and shoes. Lots of ‘em.

@Cliff: eh, you’ll spend less on shampoo (I’ve been trying to explore the upside for some time now).

Unemployment rate is notoriously underreported…there are millions of people who have given up finding work and are not listed as ‘unemployed’.

Also, the self-employed who are not covered by unemployment insurance are not included in these numbers. While it may be safe to say that we don’t have unemployment rates of 20%, when you factor in these two non-reported or underreported populations, it seems likely we have double-digit unemployment NOW.

We will soon enter a bizarre political twilight zone where the administration will shift (already has?) from doomsday talk to sell their agenda to being overly optimistic, and where the GOP will become the “party of no” selling Depression II.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

joyomama,
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I understand that. My mom worked in a clothing factory in Ky until around 1970 or so (there were two in my hometown until then). There were also many many more farmers then too. Those are a dying breed.
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My point was that there was more of an ag economy then that might have skewed the numbers.
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We didn’t have the vast fast food and other service industries that we do now.

Sometimes I just feel that comparing our present economy to that at the beginning of the Depression (’29) is like comparing apples to oranges.
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Different basic structure. And some also have this maddening tendency to compare $20/hour manufacturing jobs lost as somehow equivalent with minimum wage fast food positions created when making statistical comparisons.

andrewsauter has a point, KT. The chart compares apples – a 1929 trend line showing unemployment numbers that include “discouraged workers” – with oranges – all of the other (post-LBJ) recession lines that do not.

Also, the self-employed who are not covered by unemployment insurance are not included in these numbers.
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Great. So I’m not even a statistic?
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Color me “less than reassured.”
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BTW, why no story on AIG? Why no story on Cheney? Why no story on torture? We knew it wasn’t the Great Depression and MS has two posts up about nothing. Y’all can do better than that!

shepherdwong – it’s just that my skull looks like it’s been battered repeatedly with a lead pipe – I really do prefer to cover the unsightly dents up one way or another.

Cliff – you should see my hat collection.

I won’t comment on Obama’s flip flop on the economy or his failure to apologize to John McCain, other to say that Scott McLellan has a doppelganger in Gibbs . . . . .

But if people think that this economy is bad now, wait until we do this carbon tax/cap and trade thing. One thing’s for sure–if we do that, total economic activity will decline (of course, for the politically connected, they’ll do better). Then we may have a depression. Whooppee.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say tomorrow morning, the US banned all cars. How quickly would those greenhouse emissions be replaced by emissions in other parts of the world? Just askin’

When we are using fake unemployment figures it makes the whole world seem rosey! How sweet! We’ve been massaging the unemployment numbers for the past 30 years. We are at least at 15% counting all classes including those who have given up looking for work and the part time employees who because part time because the companies would not hire full time employees because it cost more in benefits, etc.

This whole chart is a lie Karen!

Right now in Tampa there is a church in an affluent area of Tampa that is providing for 19 families. Today a local food bank was contacted by a realtor (one of the uncounted) who was looking for food, she had no money left in the bank, no more credit lines on her charge cards and no food in the house. God knows how she is paying her regular bills. Want me to go on anyone.. I can. Let’s stop comparing apples to oranges, these are different years, different economies and different lifestyles. What happened in 1929 doesn’t matter today.

spob, You suck and I mean like a vacuum cleaner! You take a post that is really serious and also features a bullcrap chart that says nothing and you start spouting off about some apology to John McCain and then go off into an exaggerated tangent about carbon emmissions. Please crawl back under the rock.

Excellent use of invective twice, newfloridian.
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To spob, the “unemployed” are just meat puppets with no individual existence. The important figures in spob’s world are spob, spob, spob’s daddy, Dick Cheney, spob, John McCain, Ann Coulter, spob, two unidentified voices in spob’s head, and Andy Griffith. The rest of us, in so far as we exist at all, exist to be spob’s audience.
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Grateful? Thought so.

Oh gee, you got me.

New Floridian, you are a moron. Got that, a moron. The issue, of course, is NOT whether I meet some bullshit test of “caring” made up by some liberal. The issue is getting the economy back in line. I hear Adam Smith was a really mean guy too. Barack Obama proposes to get the same people who deliver our mail involved in getting energy to every american home and business. And that’s gonna do wonders for our economy. So things could be a hell of a lot worse. And Obama’s energy ideas (remember, this arrogant guy is going to heal the earth and make the oceans stop rising). And with respect to the thought experiment, the point is, genius, why in the world are we going to economically screw ourselves if after screwing ourselves, our reduction in CO2 will be made up by other nations?

As for the apology to John McCain, one would think, of course, that Obama would have some sense of shame. He ridiculed McCain’s “fundamentals are strong” comment, and now, where the measurables are worse, he says the same thing. And Gibbs is too much of an idiot to deflect that.

Worse still, with the government running energy, we’re going to have juiced in people getting rich. And I thought you guys were supposed to be against that sort of thing. I know I am. Only my outrage is bipartisan.

By the way, this is hilarious:

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/03/a-compelling-message-of-personal-responsibility.html

And this is going to do wonders for the economy:

http://www.redstate.com/dan_mclaughlin/2009/03/16/obama-backtracks-on-bungled-mexico-policy/

Gosh, spob! A link to an unsupported slap at Obama! That’s really advancing the discussion there, tiger.

The point is everytime in the depression you see a downturn, it was almost directly an effect of the government implementing a new laws, regulations,program, and/or the taxes that went with it. People are sceptical of change in good times and vary, if not outright fearfull of it in bad times. The more the government changes its plans, the more the people will pull back and ‘hunker down’, causeing a gap in the circulation of USDs and thus inflation. That is why a lot of people are critizing the presidents version of ‘The New Deal’, because The New Deal caused what could have been an 18-30 recession to turn into not only a depression, but one of the worst depressions known to man. History has already proven this effect time and again. That is why everyone is reacting the way they are, they have to. Its the only reaction that is plausable…simple as that.

Well, gee, Friar, let’s get a major trading partner rightfully ticked off about us not living up to our treaty obligations. That’s a really good idea when we are in a serious economic downturn.

But what’s really hilarious is to watch the guy who promised to start cooling the earth and lowering the rising oceans left to fulminate in complete impotence over $165MM in bonuses. (And let’s see if that complete moron Gibbs asks Franklin Raines and Jamie “the Wall” Gorelick to hand over their bonuses from Fannie/Freddie.) Really f’in funny if you ask me. Of course, this is the same guy (who is a lawyer by the way, and supposedly a smart one) who yapped about how the Senate could refuse to seat Burris. (Maybe as a matter of raw power, but not if you examined the law, and that’s what’s supposed to count.) Let’s not forget that AIG has already said that it owed these bonuses. Now I am not an expert in NY labor law, but usually the penalties for not paying earned salaries aren’t really all that good, and the laws, surprise surprise, are pretty employee friendly. So maybe Obama ought to have thought just a teensy-weensy bit before spouting off.

He should have saved his anger for Lula who basically told him to go screw himself over a kidnapped American boy who is being kept from his only live biological parent.

to Strong’s point:

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409

FriarTuck

Thanks! There’s just so many things one can say about spob, but the human language is just not expansive enough to accurately describe what a massive sphincter muscle spob really is.

And neither is the English language expansive enough to describe how stupid you are newfloridian. There is one benefit for you though, you’re not eligible for capital punishment in the US.

Game on spob! Identity solved… spob’s a foreigner Swampland. He refers to the US almost always in the distance. Rarely describes himself in the US. Not even an American who votes in the US, pays taxes in the US or probably has never even visited the country. Fake troll… worse than a real troll.

Not to belittle the loss of jobs, but they are but a byproduct of the flaws in the current economic syatem of government. This is an interesting, rather comprehensive, and even attractivly colored chart…but it really has little or nothing to do with the current situation. Our current problem the fact that there is also a huge credit consumer market that has caused a massive overinflation of the USD. Ever time a line of credit is created it is in essence like printing money…when massive amounts of credit are given out from a US bank to a business or even an individual it is much like they are printing money themselvs, to counter this they of course charge you an interest rate to borrow the money, then when the money when paid offsets the credit they initially gave you. The problem right now(and the 9 years that have led up to this) is that the loans are not being payed back, instead a secondary laon market was created by the government and that has caused what was a small problem to be amplified to the point where even a strong economy would be hard put to absorb. The housing market for example, normally if a person could not afford to pay the mortgage a refinance would be out of the question. The house would then be forclosed and promptly returned to the market so that the banks could recoup a high percentage of their loses. Now when a bank finally does forclose the house is vastly inferior to the inflated mortgage that was attached.The same for the loans to the business sectors, there are only six solutions to a downturning market and as of yet the current government is only interested in implementing 2 of them…so we may come out of this in the next 4-5 years, but it will not be easy and we certainly will not be seeing the dollar stablizing untill the stockmarket is in stap with genaral consumer spending again. People who are on a tight budget are certainly not about to invest their money in stocks anytime soon. When they do it will be the first sign of excess income, a very good sign…but i dont see us hitting 9K anytime soon let alone the amounts it would take for the market to drive the economy back into job creation and thus stability.

But dont kill the messenger, please just write me off as yet another opinion.

I only kill posters who eshew paragraph breaks.

Somebody find a way to give Cheney another chance. He’ll get us into a full-blown depression yet, then he can tell us who else’s fault it all was.

But dont kill the messenger, please just write me off as yet another opinion.
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Done!
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While you’re at it get some coherence.