Recession 2009 and race

Barbara Ehrenreich, who is due to have a new book out debunking positive thinking, especially of the religious variety, says that for many black Americans, the recssion that started nine years ago never really ended.

So, is recovery just around the corner or not?

Answering yes, if faintly, are several indicators, including a slowing pace of layoffs, a slowing pace of manufacturing contraction, etc., along with the prognostications of economists, labor analysts, etc.

But, note that those just indicate recovery seems to be around the corner. They don’t say it’s here yet.

Answering no, or at least, that the corner is at the end of the next block, is a still-rising unemployment rate, expected to hit 9.6 percent. And, some analysts still think it could eventually break the post-World War II high of 10.8 percent.

And, now, later today, both the NYT and the WSJ note that the June unemployment picture was not good.

Take note, though, we’re not there yet, so, this still isn’t yet the worst recession in post-World War II history. Besides, that one, from 1980-82, had a kick-start with the second oil embargo.

Internationally, the Eurozone supports the positive, Japan supports the negative.

AP joins the economic fearmongering team

The AP story saying that, if the current recession last past April, it will be the longest in post-World War II history technically isn’t in accurate, but does a lot of “bending “ of reality.

It compares the current recession with 1981-82 only, failing to note that that recession was itself the second, and sharper trough of a double-dip recession that started in 1980.

That’s why on tags for this blog, you’ll always see “1980-82 recession.” I’m guessing, as I’ve blogged before, that AP writer Deb Riechmann is under the age of 40, perhaps under 35.

The story also ignores that, although the primary trough technically ended in 1982, serious job losses continued into 1983.

Economic fearmongering at TPM

It HAS TO BE an age-related thing, with bloggers and other online-heavy folks, presumably under the age of 35, or at least under the age of 40, totally ignorant of the 1980-82 recession, even to the point of seemingly salivating at the chance of using the “D” word. Paul Kurtz at Talking Points Memo is the latest guilty party.

Yes, it is true that, in terms of raw numbers, the U.S. economy lost the most jobs since 1945. But, even that is long after the Depression.

But as a percentage decline, it’s nowhere near as bad, considering the population of 305 million today is almost double that of 1945.

In fact, per CNN’s own graph, the 2008 losses aren’t as bad as 1982, as percentage of total population; it’s 8.5 percent for last year vs. 9.5 percent in 1982.

Tis also true that the unemployment percentage is going up, but it is nowhere near as bad as the last real recession, of 1980-82.

If you're not over 40, you may not remember the "double-dip" 1980-82 recession. But can we hold off saying this is the worst crisis since the Depression?

Now, it is true, as Kevin Phillips has so well noted, that unemployment calculation methodology has been, to be blunt, "fudged" since 1982. That said, some of the fudging had been done before then, as Phillips has also written.

And, as Phillips also has noted, fudging numbers has been a bipartisan affair, with Democrats back to JFK "trimming" on unemployment and the GOP "trimming" on inflation.

That said, as I note, there's a full percentage point difference between 2008 job losses and 1982. Even with allowance for fudging, I don't think you can say problems now are significantly worse than they were then.

I’ve said it before: Sometimes, whistling past the graveyard is nothing but false optimism. But at other times, becoming too afraid of the “graveyard” is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And, at least for now, I think the MSM is too much in “self-fulfilling prophecy” mode.

Also,2008 losses were less bad than two different consecutive years from the last serious recession.

First, per information from Jim Glass, about which I wasn’t sure and hadn’t checked, CNN, et al, doubly blew it, as has WM poster "Joe Friday."

Turns out 1983 was a worse year for job losses, by percentage of workforce, than both last year AND 1982.

Yes, the "augmented unemployment rate," of part-timers, discouraged and semi-discouraged, plus traditional unemployment, may be at 13.5 percent.

I found further relevant data back to 1970 at Brad DeLong's site going back to 1970, data about the employed as a percentage of the total workforce, just to further confirm what I've already said.

The ratio was .60 in 1982 and about .63 this year.

Adjusting for that, jobs lost to number of civilian employed, as percentage, was worse yet in 1982, at 15.67 percent, than the 13.45 percent last year, thus strengthening my argument.

Yes, there are other ways of skinning the cat, but per the job-loss measure which, as I said, is not fudgeable, 2008 wasn't as bad as 1982. Nor as bad as 1983; I noticed

Now, 2009 may well be worse. I'm not denying that. But, let's not yet get too much into doom and gloom.

Otherwise, folks like Mr. Kiel exemply why, although I'm on the demographic borderlands between Baby Boomers and Gen X, I don't want to be considered part of either group.

I am certainly not in the older end of the Boomers... the folks who screwed this up in the first place and inflicted narcissism on the future.

BUT... I'm not in the often-solipsistic mindset of Gen X, especially the younger part of that cohort.

Frankly, I think those of us born about 1961-66 are parts of a "lost generation."

C-H-A-P-T-E-R 11 is spelled GM?

With sales numbers like these from February, the General can’t survive.

Nor can Obama have a good chance of giving it any more money short of it filing for a “guided” Chapter 11. Let’s be realistic here.

It was the worse auto sales month since the middle of the 1980-82 recession, when the population was only three-quarters the size of today. In population adjusted terms, it’s probably the worst since World War II.

The 2 percent slump – but it ain’t THAT bad

A group of economic forecasters expects that much downturn in the U.S.economy this year.

That starts with an expected 5 percent dropoff for the first quarter, followed by about 2 percent in the second quarter.

Activity is supposed to pick up in the second half of the year, but at a lesser pace than previously projected.

So, that all said, the current recession sounds like it will still turn out to be not so bad as the 1980-82 recession, despite what all the hyperventilating Gen-X pundits say.

More proof of economic fearmongering – by Obama himself

As the AP notes, in discussing President Obama’s Indiana whistle-stop, we haven’t even hit the worst unemployment level of 1992 yet, though we may well be doing that as we speak.

The AP then gets it VERY right on the severity of the current problem vs. the Carter-Reagan recession, the last serious recession we had. And the fearmongering, starting from the Big Cheese himself:

“We also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression.”

BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT. And Internet-screaming all caps is the only way to respond.

Folks, we are more than 3 percentage points below the 10.8 percent unemployment rate of November and December 1982.

Stop your fearmongering. Especially you bloggers, primarily the so-called mainstream liberal bloggers.

Really, if you’re under 40, especially if you’re under the age of 35, get a historical clue, or else STFU. Because you weren’t old enough to really experience what it was like then.

As I said before, I think the full-blown gen Xer, on average, if not historically clueless, may be a bit narcissistic on the degree of the current problem.

That said, President Obama is older than I am. He should know better.

I do suspect a messianic side to him. And, claiming this is the worst situation since the Depression is a way to claim to be the Great Deliverer.

That said, I’ll call bullshit on that, too.

If he really believed his own rhetoric, he’d have pushed for a bigger, far bigger, far broader, economic program from the start, and he’d do something real with ARP 2.0, not Tim Geithner’s ass-kissing big banks.

So, we have more than economic fearmongering; rather, we have economic lying.

One stimulus – no earmarks, but still pork … and fearmongering

In an AP story that will be a burr to the MSLBers, Obama’s stimulus bill gets a fine-toothed comb.

And, yes, something like a clean slightly less dirty coal plant in…. why, Illinois of all places, fits the definition of pork in my book.

That said, the AP story is craptacular later in the same paragraph. The Coast Guard needs, needs badly, new icebreakers; that’s not pork. Neither is federal R&D for better hybrid batteries.

But, the AP then gets it VERY right on the severity of the current problem vs. the Carter-Reagan recession.

Folks, we are more than 3 percentage points below the 10.8 percent unemployment rate of November and December 1982.

Stop your fearmongering.

Speaking of fearmongering, the AP catches BO claiming that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.

Oh, effing shit.

When you’ve already been critiqued from a more liberal point of view for being tardy on taking charge, it seems to me that adding even more cooks to the broth is a risk proposition.

Is mainstream media fearmongering the recession?

I not only hear that thrown around as a general rhetorical question; as a newspaper editor, it sometimes comes to me personally.

Being over the age of 40, and remembering well, the Carter-Reagan recession, I’d have to give a qualified Yes to that question. For example, this Time graphic compares recent job losses to the 1992 and 2001 recessions.

BUT… if you’re over the age of 35, you know both of those recessions were mild.

Even worse, since the Internet world, especially the Internet commentary world of blogs, blog readers, etc., skews quite young demographically, the “kids” there seem historically clueless about the U.S. economy before Bill Clinton became president.

But, the reality is the Carter-Reagan recession was worse than this one’s been so far.

How much worse? In BOTH 1982 and 1983, job losses, as a percentage of workforce, were , worse than 2008.

But, thanks to historically cluelessness of much of the wired generation, historical amnesia of the “old media,” and, I suspect, a bit of narcissism among Gen X, or at least the younger portion of it (I don’t consider myself to be fully a Boomer OR fully a Gen X person), we get doomsaying that, for right now at least, is indeed over the top.

In fact, the more and more the “ohhhhhh, so bad” line grows as a talking point in the wired world, the more I wonder about whether narcissism, rather than historical cluelessness, isn’t the primary driver

Yes, 1982 was worse!

Far worse, in fact, than 2008.

Small comfort, that, but respected economist David Leonhardt shows why I was right when I pointed out – primarily to the under-35 crowd, two weeks ago, that wailing over 2008 job losses was overblown and lacking historical context.

Anyway, here’s Leonhardt’s nutgraf, courtesy of information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

It’s not even that close to being as bad. The ranks of unemployed and underemployed, controlling for the size of the population, were much larger in 1982 than today.

He then tackles the issue of those wet-behind-the-ears bloggers and would-be online pundits who have no historical context:

The recession of the early 1980s doesn’t have a catchy name, and almost half of Americans are too young to have any real memory of it. But it was terrible — qualitatively different from the mild recessions of 1990-91 and 2001.

As someone who’s over 40, not just 35, and was wrapping up high school at this time, I can tell you it was serious indeed. Leonhardt says on the employment side, the total of unemployed/underemployed/discouraged, while high right now, is still 3 full percentage points or more below the worst spot in 1982.

If that’s not clear enough, the graph at left is crystal clear. In terms of employment, at least, we’re nowhere near 1982 right now.

Now, could things get not just a little worse, but a lot worse? Yes; Leonhardt says that, too. But, his bottom line is, 30-somethings, and especially 20-somethings, should shut up and stop acting like Chicken Littles.

Read his full column.

It’s stuff like this that makes me feel “older,” to the point of feeling a semi-curmudgeonly “older” about today’s “kids” and their lack of suffering or whatever.