Is this recession different from the previous ones?

many people try to rationalize Obama's pitiful results through a variety of excuses. but they're just that.

this recovery has been atrocious by historic standards

 

Yes, it is different, at times it feels more like a depression. With a demographical change underway that will see a larger retiree:worker ratio, we're unlikely to see full recovery anytime soon (pre-recession level unemployment by the end of the decade).

Japan has been battling stagflation: declining government revenue growth, aging workforce, increasing entitlements, rising unemployment, real estate bubbles, etc for the past two decades; something the US is now dealing with (all at once). However, in that time, Japan has not seen serious riots, noticeable declines in living standards, or a general decay in society. In fact, Japanese culture continues to be among the best in the world.

 

This one is different in that people haven't recogonized the core problems and rallied together to root out the problem.

 

QFT...

We are stubborn as a nation because of our amazing power and wealth. We simply have not suffered enough to be willing to make the changes needed to fix the problem. The Republicans only give a **** about the top 5% which are fine, and the Democrats lack the backbone or power to force the issue.

 

I remember an article from the economist published around 07 talking about how housing bubble induced recessions were much different than asset bubble induced recessions (stocks, bonds, commodities) in that historically, the recoveries took longer. 1-4 years for the latter 5-10 years for the former.

No president could've overturned the job loss suffered from the housing and credit financial crises. The rate to recover all of the lost jobs in the next ten years would've outpaced Clinton's legendary job growth rate.

That was the odds we were/is facing.

I wasn't familiar with Richard Koo's work. Thanks for mentioning it.

 

People who are ignorant blame one person for a recession. Really, if you think about it, in a country of 300 million-plus, anyone who puts the majority of the blame for the recession on the President is, truth be told, ignorant. Unfortunately, there are many out there who have a limited understanding of macro issues. They'll use phrases like "Obama's pitiful results" because, let's face it, that's the easy way out. Blame extends to Obama- and to the current Congress, as well. Nary a peep from their side about that, of course.

Hopefully, the kids coming out of the American school system can have a better understanding of how an economy works than some of the adults out there who possess a very rudimentary awareness.

 

The more I'm in IT consulting, the more I see things in corporate IT that defy all rational imagination. Ideally, investment in IT would pare down infrastructural and labor costs in the long run. With the right team, continuous delivery can happen within 6-12 months.

But corporations itself are like giant and aging organisms, and they don't have the luxury of a startup to make the best available decisions on a macro scale. The rules and, in my case, the code, are like self destructive cancer cells that are already at critical mass.

So while I like to think IT is a core component to a running business, it could just be yet another fiefdom of many competing for the same source of power, money and influence.

Or the culture could be like Apple's, where in '08, Jobs famously laid down an edict that he wouldn't lay off anyone out of budget reasons. That foresight paid off when the economy recovered and IT lead the way in reinvestment.

Sorry for the rambling, but I do know that Q3-Q4 have been weak and uncertain for my industry. Many business oriented people claim that a stronger economic direction by the President (i.e. back off and give us tax breaks) would signal a boost in confidence to decision makers. Maybe that would make clients more tolerable to hiring guys like me.

I think it's 20% truth and 80% hogwash. The bean counters will have their own projections and reports to how the economy will turn and they will ultimately make risks off of that regardless of what the President says or is assumed to do.

I was hoping that the President's inauguration speech would set a firmer tone on sacrifice and measured reality through facts and numbers, but given that one of the President's role is to be reassuring and our cheerleader of sorts, I guess he didn't want to sound too pessimistic considering that the damage was still ongoing and evolving.

Oh man, and the WH projected numbers from the stimulus really haunted the admin again and again. The supposed Dream Team of economic advisors was a big mess of conflicting and combative viewpoints. Of course, the timeframe produced conditions that would stress teams on any other Admin, but for better or worse, there wasn't this shadowy consensus of econ. power brokers ala Clinton's Rubin/Summers/Greenspan that pushed things through. I suppose history will judge with clearer lenses.

 

Summers is a brilliant quasi-sociopath who believes that, for example, Africa is "underpolluted", and that women have a predisposition towards being inferior in technical fields.

People like that have their uses, but to expect them to be "tamed" by anyone is not very likely.

Even the Clinton Admin. had huge fractures between the CEA, Fed and Treasury. Stiglitz didn't have very kind words for Rubin and Greenspan. It's probable that economists of different ideologies just cannot hang together on a prolonged basis.

 

Every recession is different.

The Volcker recession that Reagen "triumphed" over was an intentional one designed to wring out inflation, and to have that happy Keynesian ending.

This one is particularly nasty, and is in the same class as a couple of other historical bogeys.

http://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/sympos/2010/2010-08-17-reinhart.pdf

 

The housing bust eviscerated trillions of dollars in average people's equity and with it, decades of consumer confidence.

Also, the emergence of cheap global labor and computers rendering many workers obsolete makes it harder for average people to work themselves back in to solvency.

Hence the Stock Market is doing great, 3 1/2 years of a bull market, but the American worker is regressing to the world mean.

 

It's not called the 'Great Recession' for no reason.

 

Its a Depression, not a recession. Yes.

 

It's worse because we have a President who is implementing anti-business, anti-growth, anti-jobs policies. The business world does not have confidence in Obama's leadership and his policies of higher taxes, more regulations, and more red tape are strangling private investment. Businesses are maintaining huge cash balances because they just don't know what this President will do next to make life difficult for them. It's hard to grow when you have bad leadership at the top.

 

Jesus dude; do you even have an original thought anymore? You're like a...



You are like all the PAC money Romney will be wasting. You are reaching the point of diminishing returns; people start to tune out all of the negativity because that's all they hear from you.

 

I'm one of the few successful businessmen on this forum -- people need to know just how terrible Obama is to business owners. Most business meetings I attend these days have some segment of the meeting where the entire group complains about Obama. I've never seen a more partisan-charged environment in business. The hatred -- pure hatred -- for this man's deceptions and lies is STRONG among what I consider the 'producing class' -- business owners who are responsible for their employees and their families.

 

People just don't like to learn from history but this recession is exactly like Japan's lost decade. Real estate bubbles are the worse bubbles to have because it involves so much borrowing and lending. We are finally hit the floor in regards to real estate prices and the should slowly start picking up.

 

What regulations has the Obama administration imposed that have hurt your business? Over the past four years has your bottom line been severely impacted by those regulations?