The numbers are slowly (very slowly) starting to look a bit better. The recession ended some time ago, but are we finally going to see what looks like a real recovery?
A Shocking Recovery?
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Ha – nice comic. Yes, it is slowly getting better. It will probably dip once more before finally recovering.
I compare things today to that during the Great Depression often. The government’s choices then and now. Changes in dividends being paid then and now. Unemployment numbers. Many economist-historians say there was a double dip during the Great Depression because President Roosevelt allied with his Secretary of the Treasury for some time when it came to government spending. The Secretary thought part of the solution lay in slashing government spending. During the Depression, the Congress and the President even slashed non-disabled veterans’ benefits some 40% through passage of the Economy Act. The Act implemented other cuts to veterans as well. (Many of these were restored in a few years.) Most today believe the cuts in government spending delayed the economy’s recovery in the 1930s.
Today and for the last few years, any practical concern about annual deficits and accumulating debt is absent. So there may not be a double dip.
Then again in the late 30s/early 40s, WWII arose, and government spending had to increase even more. I do not want a second world war. But if this was the secret to the economy’s lift in the early 40s, then today, we might see a double dip.
On the third hand, the historically, lowest ever interest rates throw an even bigger wrench into trying to predict what will happen in the next decade.
The majority of the latest GDP figure is due to stockpile rebuilding by companies… that means this is one of the most (if not the most) anemic “recoveries” in history. It also means that the U.S. is likely on the path to another recession:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/01/gdp-on-recession-track-real-gdp-28.html