The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Recession (*) Has Probably Just Been Extended
From the ‘Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide’ Dept. — Here’s a CNN e-mail alert I just received:
There is no George W. Bush to kick around any more.
I blame Obama and his congressional cohort.
(*) – As Normal People Define It.
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UPDATE: So how did the Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa report the above raw news? As you would expect an Obama apparatchik to do it (reproduced in full as it existed at 3:15 p.m.; bold after title is mine):
Fed sees hopeful signs but downgrades ‘09 forecast
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve expects the economy to improve in coming months, even as policymakers have downgraded their outlook for all of 2009.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues believe business sales and factory production will begin to gradually recover later this year as President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and the Fed’s aggressive efforts to end the recession take hold. In new Fed documents, they also pointed to signs that the recession’s grip was easing in the current quarter.
The Fed now expects the economy will shrink this year between 1.3 and 2 percent. The old forecast called for a contraction between 0.5 and 1.3 percent. The unemployment rate may hit nearly 10 percent, up from 8.8 percent in the old forecast.
Here’s a “little” math problem, Jeannine: The economy has already shrunk 1.56% (the first quarter’s preliminary annualized -6.1% expressed on a pure quarter-over-quarter basis). That means, according to the Fed, that the economy will shrink or grow by a teeny-tiny amount (a quarter over quarter average of at most +0.08% or -0.14%) during the rest of the year. All this will occur while the nation’s population continues to grow, meaning that the Fed’s prediction is for a slight reduction in per-capita GDP even if its best-case scenario comes true. That is, the average person will be worse off at the end of the year than they were on March 31.
And what’s this nonsense about “President Barack Obama’s stimulus package …. tak(ing) hold”?
I thought the stimulus legislation had to be enacted immediately to prevent the economy from going in the tank. Why, it was soooooo urgent that nobody even had the time to read it before they voted. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown even had to fly in on a government plane from his mother’s funeral to cast the deciding vote.
What happened? Three months later, the economy’s in the tank and the “stimulus” hasn’t taken hold.
The vast majority of “stimulus” payments thus far has been transfer payments, which, whatever their alleged benefits, do not stimulate economic recovery or growth.
Meaningful tax cuts would have “taken hold” and actually stimulated the economy by now, and could have been made retroactive to January 1 — and I’m not talking about the Obama cut that the vast majority of Americans have said is making no noticeable difference in their lives. Only nine percent say it’s made a big difference, “fifty-eight percent say no difference, and the others don’t know.”
But to Jeannine Aversa, the “hopeful signs” are more important that the belief stated by the Fed that the economy will be worse than it originally thought.
Cross-posted in revised form at NewsBusters.org.
It’s almost painful to watch you try in vain to pin this on Obama, Pelosi and Reid. If I’m not mistaken, the recession started in December 2007 when the NBER went “in the tank,” right? We’ve been losing jobs since January 2008, and most other important metrics (Industrial Production, Retail Sales, etc.) peaked around the same time. Bush’s lame stimulus was far too litte, far too late, because the economy was “strong and getting stronger,” right? And oh, yeah, we’re a nation of whiners, according to Phil Gramm. Please, Tom, accept the fact that your guy drove us off the cliff (in more ways than one). I promise that when you accept that truth, you will feel better. Your attempts to blame P-O-R, or anything of the like, is as intellectually dishonest as anything I’ve ever read on the internet.
Comment by Invictus — May 20, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
#1, sorry, the facts are on my side, and the case grows progressively stronger. I did clarify the title to be crystal clear.
If visiting here is so painful, nobody’s forcing you to come around.
Comment by TBlumer — May 20, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
Tom, maybe we’re looking at the economy the wrong way. Perhaps Invictus is right and the economic problems we are facing today can be explained in three words “Bush did it!” If this hypothesis has any merit, then we should send some Federal Marshalls down to Texas and “frog march” him back to D.C. Once under the control of the “proper authorities” he could be waterboarded or otherwise “enhanced technique-d” until he promises to put things back the way they were before he broke the “economic” china. Not only would this approach save the U.S. citizen a great deal of further pain and suffering, but it would avoid the tremendous mental stress and strain on our social betters and intellectual elite caused by actually expecting them to develop and implement a practical set of effective policies. Plus it would save a lot of energy and trees. Just sayin’.
Comment by boqueronman — May 21, 2009 @ 6:47 pm
The facts are not now, and have never been, on your side as it relates to economic commentary. Sorry, but that’s just a demonstrable lie.
As to why I continue to visit, all I can say is that BizzyBlog is perversely alluring, sort of like watching a train wreck.
Comment by Invictus — May 21, 2009 @ 6:53 pm
#4, my column puts the burden of proof on NBER. They don’t have it on the two things they themselves consider most important: Growth and employment, and the rest of the items they consider less important are in their own words virtually inconclusive.
You have to admit the following obvious things or you’re not even worthy of further attention:
- The first 6-7 months of NBER’s alleged recession is the mildest first 6-7 months of any of the downturns reviewed.
- The economy was recovering in Spring 2008. Its 2.8% GDP growth in the second quarter was the second straight improvement, and is only 0.3% lower than the median of ALL 200 quarterly growth increments in the last 50 years (1958-2007).
I will suggest that I’m at the same point with NBER’s recession call as I was with the presence of WMDs in Iraq in 2005. People spent hours ridiculing me over it, but guess who ended up being right? It wasn’t the “there were no WMDs” crowd (you DO have the integrity to admit that, do you not? I expect a response to this question if you wish to have a comment posted here again). The left’s best hope now is to keep quiet and hope that, like the lies about Joe McCarthy, whom objective history has spectacularly vindicated, the “no WMDs” lie enters the far-left academic folklore and brainwashese future unsuspecting generations.
Likewise, it may be 2011 or 2012, or even 2015, before people look back and say “what in the bleep was the NBER thinking?” But they will.
Comment by TBlumer — May 21, 2009 @ 11:04 pm
#3, this assumes they’re interested in the economy recovering.
Given that they’re doing exactly what did NOT work in the 1930s with Roosevelt, and what did NOT work with Japan in the 1990s, AND that they are bound and determined to impose massive costs on the economy through cap and trade, aka the Energy Tax, to support what may be the biggest hoax in human history (just to name one item designed to hurt the economy of many on the table), the jury is still out on that.
Comment by TBlumer — May 21, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
The NBER correctly dated the start of the recession, as evidenced here. The peak in most NBER metrics was, in fact, late-2007 or very early 2008. Q2 2008 was goosed by Bush’s absurd stimulus checks, and by Q3 that was all gone.
As to the WMD — and the article I drilled down to via your links — I don’t think this is what we were being warned of by the war-mongers, was it:
“The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added.”
Ask yourself this: Would the country have approved going to war to find 20-year-old mustard gas that was “badly corroded”? Or was it more the “smoking gun” that could come in the form of a “mushroom cloud”? Please, Tom. I’ve come to expect more of you.
Comment by Invictus — May 22, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
#7, you’re just like the NBER. You pick what you like and throw out what you don’t. What about all of those real weapons and fissile materials don’t you understand?
I’m still waiting for your required admissions. Seriously, if you won’t make them, you should go away and stop wasting my time and your time. Come back in 2015 or so with your mea culpa at the ready.
Comment by TBlumer — May 22, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
Oh Inviiiiiictus? Your last comment hasn’t been posted because you haven’t admitted that:
- There were WMDs in Iraq.
- The first 6-7 months of NBER’s alleged recession is the mildest first 6-7 months of any of the downturns reviewed at the related post (in fact, it isn’t even a downturn, because it has postive GDP growth in both quarters, but I’m a generous guy, and I’ll let you lie about that).
- The economy was recovering in Spring 2008. Its 2.8% GDP growth in the second quarter was the second straight improvement, and is only 0.3% lower than the median of ALL 200 quarterly growth increments in the last 50 years (1958-2007).
What you described in your unposted comment is at worst a tiny dip recession followed by an incipient recovery that was squashed by the Pelosi-Obama-Reid antics that began in earnest in June 2008. Thanks for confirming.
Still waiting….
Comment by TBlumer — May 22, 2009 @ 2:40 pm
Oh Inviiiiiictus? I’m yawning, but thanks for admitting that there was a “recovery.” I’ll take it in quotes, because that acknowledges the end of a dip and the end of at most a mini-recession.
You won’t have anything posted here until I get the other two admissions. Too bad — I’ve enjoyed kicking your butt frequently and consistently.
Comment by TBlumer — May 22, 2009 @ 2:56 pm
Oh Inviiiiiiiictus? Positive GDP that follows negative GDP is a “recovery,” in plain, bold, quotes, or italics. Thanks for the admission. Later pal.
Comment by TBlumer — May 22, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
Upon further review, Invictus, your insistence that there were no WMDs in Iraq, in the face of OBJECTIVE evidence that overwhelms what NBER is SUBJECTIVELY trying to sell in another arena, is an automatic DQ from further commenting here unless and until you relent.
“There were WMDs in pre-war Iraq” is an objectively true statement. Nothing I, you, or anyone else can say or do will change that. Nothing.
In case you want to amend your contention and come back, here are two quick links out of many, many more to proof that any functioning adult would have to accept:
- HERE (an official determination, with far more objective authority than NBER has any right to claim)
- IDB editorial on the 550 tons of yellowcake, “the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel.”
You can’t get past the idea that it doesn’t matter what people say is true, it matters what IS true.
And in case you feel like bringing up NBER, their belief that the recession started in Dec. 2007 is just that — a SUBJECTIVE judgment/belief that, based on applying their own subjective criteria, including their subjective statements as to what they consider important, to the data available, is almost definitely wrong. There is room for debate on that, because it is subjective, but in this case there is precious little. The OBJECTIVE criterion for determining a recession has been, and always will be, vastly preferable, precisely because it is objective.
Later, pal. Have a nice life.
Comment by TBlumer — May 23, 2009 @ 10:08 am