I don’t know what makes an economy work, myself. I am beginning to learn what others seem to already know, that group psychology has a lot to do with things. I guess I naively thought that it had something to do with money, and numbers, and value [a concept that is much more volatile than I knew]. So Hale Stewart who is usually fairly optimistic being gloomy here is meaningful.<\/p>\n
Looking at the recessions since the end of WWII, there isn’t any "typical" recovery profile. Generally, once unemployment begins to fall, it falls fairly rapidly [much as it goes on the upswing]. The detail graph below compares the recession that began in Reagan’s first year to the one that came in Bush’s last year [scales adjusted to be equivalent]:<\/p>\n
While such comparisons are rough, this one is certainly hanging around. I suppose that should be expected even if it is unwelcome. Things are very different in 2010 than they were in 1980. In my estimation, one of the main reasons for the difference is, in fact, the almost 30 years of whatever-Reaganomics-meant that have colored those years: deregulation, irresponsible tax cuts, irresponsible pugilism, bankism, debtism, wall-street-ism. There are other changes: the move to a world economy, outsourcing of jobs, the fall of communism, global warming, and dwindling resources. <\/p>\n
I was talking to an old friend who has recently retired. They are planning to downsize like the rest of us aging sorts, but are waiting for the housing market to "come back" so they can get their value out of their large home. She said, "We’re planning on May on 2012. It should be back by then." While it seemed a sensible thought when she said it, on reflection, I’m not sure there’s such a thing as "back." We’ve lived our adult lives during a "boom" time, perhaps more of a "boom" time than we’d like to admit. I have my doubts that the current economy will go "back" to where we were. I would expect there to be a new kind of economy [that we haven’t yet figured out] to be up ahead. Like everyone on our side of the great divide, I worry that the Conservatives will be able to sell people on the idea of going "back," and we’ll have to endure another round of Reagan\/Bush\/Bush insanity before we get down to the business of adapting to the realities of the century we live in.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Horrible Jobs Report FiveThirtyEight by Hale "Bonddad" Stewart 06\/06\/2010 From the BLS: Total nonfarm payroll employment grew by 431,000 in May, reflecting the hiring of 411,000 temporary employees to work on Census 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Private-sector employment changed little (+41,000). Manufacturing, temporary help services, and mining added jobs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/unemp48-10.gif\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/unemp80-00.gif\")
<\/p>\n