Thread: Why So Glum? History Suggests a Strong Recovery

Why So Glum? History Suggests a Strong Recovery

By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: April 8, 2010

That is what usually happens after particularly sharp recessions, so it is surprising that many commentators, whether economists or politicians, seem to doubt that such a thing could possibly be happening.

Usually you can depend on the White House to view the economy with the most rose-tinted glasses available. But it was not until last week, after a strong employment report, that President Obama started to sound a little optimistic.

“The tough measures that we took — measures that were necessary even though sometimes they were unpopular — have broken this slide and are helping us to climb out of this recession,â€

I think one of the the flaws in this argument is that we are now deeper in debt than any nation on earth has ever been, with no end in sight to that indebtedness short of hyper inflation leading to the collapse of our currency. The financial situation we're in now is much worse than in the past, except for maybe the Great Depression. Some examples off the top of my head: in 1982 we had a manufactuing base, Social Security wasn't bankrupt and we didn't owe the Chinese government trillions of dollars. Oh yeah, and in 1982 we didn't have the Obamacare boondoggle's massive expenditures looming ahead of us in just a couple of years.

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