Recession On Track To Be Longest In Postwar Period

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

(03-08) 13:54 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Factory jobs disappeared. Inflation soared. Unemployment climbed to alarming levels. The hungry lined up at soup kitchens.

It wasn't the Great Depression. It was the 1981-82 recession, widely considered America's worst since the depression.

That painful time during Ronald Reagan's presidency is a grim marker of how bad things can get. Yet the current recession could slice deeper into the U.S. economy.

If it lasts into April — as it almost surely will — this one will go on record as the longest in the postwar era. The 1981-82 and 1973-75 recessions each lasted 16 months.

Unemployment hasn't reached 1982 levels and the gross domestic product hasn't fallen quite as far. But the hurt from this recession is spread more widely and uncertainty about the country's economic health is worse today than it was in 1982.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/08/national/w051008D08.DTL

[Champion Jack]

1. People need to plant their victory gardens. This is a depression.

There is no way to paint this a nice rosy color

[glowing]

6. Mine is going in this week. I'm going to take extra's to the food pantry.

its always nice to have fresh garden grown veggies.. they taste soooo much better than the crap they pass for food in the store.

[Gman]

13. Did it this weekend

[leftofthedial]

2. THIS IS NOT A RECESSION, OR EVEN A DEPRESSION.

This is a paradigm shift.

[BelgianMadCow]

4. People don't seem to grasp that

the financial order of the world is crumbling at an increasing pace - but the band is playing on, and the truth is seeping out slowly.

Read just now what happens when The Federal Reserve (which is neither federal nor reserve) buys up all kinds of paper and gives companies cash for it, which is happening at a TREMENDOUS rate under different emergency plans hardly spoken about / understood.
When the Fed consists of paper with dwindling worth and other toxic assets (they ARE NOT disclosing what they get in collateral for the cash!), ultimately it becomes insolvent.

Guess what happens when the Fed becomes insolvent? It gets to be recapitalised by the Treasury. YOU, that is.

Browse thefollowing abstracts & announcements if you dare:
http://www.leap2020.eu/Excerpts-and-public-announcements_r41.html

[indepat]

7. Was going to say this ain't no freakin' recession or even depression: our treasury is going to end

up subsidizing trillions of dollars of outright fraud just to try to keep the most of the largest investment and commercial banks from failing: the economy has to keep on spiraling downward. :P

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Yes, and exactly how it shifts is still up in the air.

At this point, we do not know whether Schrödinger's cat is gonna come out of this alive or not.

[Ron Green]

3. The thing that pisses me off the most

is that, despite the blithe acknowledgment by the talking heads that this recession began in late 2007, there was almost NO ONE who would call it that during all of 2008. What a bunch of liars, hypocrites and assholes are speaking to us 24/7.

[Lucky Luciano]

5. People don't use the R word until GDP numbers are official. nt

[glowing]

8. which were fudged all along.. People in the real world knew what was happening.

The pinch was 8yrs long, and homes were ATM's. It was only a matter of time.

[JDPriestly]

14. Lost my good job in 2004. Already, my boss could hire younger

and prettier for less than he was paying me.

I got another job, but the pay was pitiful, the hours extremely long and the responsibility unbearably heavy.

[Igel]

15. Not so simple.

NBER looks at a number of factors, including the trend. The first 6 months or so were sketchy as to recession--GDP was actually marginally up. In retrospect--the key word here is, of course, "retrospect"--it's fairly clear when the recession began. Had the economy improved in 9/08, however, there'd probably have been no recession declared.

Some other examples of "in retrospect": It wasn't clear until mid-2001 that a recession began in 3/2001. (You know, the "Bush recession" that began less than two months after his taking office--a firm article of faith, that a president is responsible for what happens 6 weeks after he takes office ... oh, wait, that can't be so.) It's also clear in retrospect that the recession that Clinton inherited in 1993 had actually ended before the 1992 election and long before his stimulus package was passed.

Unemployment lags most other economic indicators. The stock market is usually a leading indicator--something that's very scary if true in this case, and so it makes political sense to try to reframe it as a "political poll".

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Oh, you clowns. The recession began

on January 21, 2009, and it's all Obama's fault. Just ask any Republican. If you can still find one.

[NeoConsSuck]

12. Just listen to CNBC

they will tell you it's all Obama's fault. Instead of funneling more money to the banking industry, he had the audacity to create a stimulus plan that looks out for the interests of the middle class lowlife scum. That's socialism!!

[Odin2005]

11. Over 2 years of contraction now. Is it a Depression yet?