Is the Recession Really Over?

Is this what is called double dip "Is the Recession Really Over?" posts?

Quite frankly, the subject is an endless enigma that we have hashed out to no conclusion time and time again. There are multiple causes for the current situation, which is quite complex. Needless to say, the current round of economic medications have not served to change the situation and another round of heated discussion on this board will probably serve no better.

"More government stimulus programs, as President Obama suggests? Or do we need more tax incentives for business, or targeted programs to develop more workers skilled in science and technology?"

The market has to find it's own level. The government meddling in the housing market is what got us into it. They should leave well enough alone. All the government can do is a temporary fix, to the cost of the tax payer. What and pay banks for stupid decisions? Auto maker for failures?

Maybe they should ask the TVA. They came up with good answers during the great depression. They created a lot of infrastructure still in use today. Isn't that why they were created to begin with.

Heck we hear there are lots of tree dead from a beetle pest. Take them down make use of the wood and replant. Bridges of our highways need to be repaired.There is a lot that can be done to put the people to work. Instead of lining the elites pockets for their mistakes. And so far that all that I've seen them do with our tax dollars.

Lining the elites pockets with money, yep, look at Warren Buffet, buys Goldman Sachs shares, gov't bails them out, then he looks like a hero for making a "wise" investment decision. Wow.

Two schools of thought on this: give tax rebates to everyone and let the people spend the money, hell you can't stop Americans from spending: if they have money. And the second school of thought goes against my first paragraph: repair our crumbling infrastructure. Bridges, roads, electrical grid, the types of projects that were done during the Great Depression. It kills two birds with one stone. . . think about it.

Obviously there is "dead weight loss" this way, but if its going to be done sooner or later, why not do it now?

Once saw a plan by some to resolve the unemployment issue. It was to give everyone 55 years or older in the work force a million dollars. With the stipulation that they retire, by a new car, and a new home with in the year. Would have cost about 1% of all the money of the bail outs of the big corporations. Most likely would have worked better too!

According to the 2009 US Census, there are 56 million US citizens 55 years and older in the US.

If you gave each 1 million dollars you would need 560 Trillion Dollars to do it.

The total GDP for the US in 2009 was 14.1 Trillion Dollars.

At that rate, it would take the US 39 years to raise enough money to do what your friend proposed.

I vote that instead of handing out 560 Trillion Dollars (that we don't have), we pay down the National Debt (that we do have).

As of today, we owe: $13,631,110,357,893.33 as of October 7th, 2010, 12:44:54 PM GMT

That's still about 1 year of total GDP, but better than 39 years.

For all of those interested, in the time it took me to write this, the National debt has now risen to:

$13,631,117,672,976.72 as of October 7th, 2010, 12:47:25 PM GMT

Which means, in 2 minutes and 30 seconds the debt jumped up $7,315,083.39

Or, at a rate of $2.926 million per minute.

Why that is eloquent and well said, paying down debt will not help an economic recovery. In fact, this would strengthen the US Dollar which would in turn lower US exports, not to mention where will all of the money come from? I think this subject opens up another debate entirely.

Once again I say let taxpaxers spend the money, not the gov't, and if the gov't absolutely insists on spending money to create jobs, let us do it on our crumbling infrastructure, because yes we are still in a recession. The fact is, too many people are collecting unemployment, they are happy not working, and a lot of these people are taking jobs away from people by working under the table at the same time, for less money, which is anecdotal, and yet happening everywhere.

Finally, while we can't liken our recession to that of the Japan's recession 20 years ago, what we can say definitively say is that 2 of the biggest banks in the world disappeared because the Japanese government failed to step in. So while we know the our taxpayers money wasn't spent wisely it did prevent a banking collapse here.

It sounds like we agree on more than just one point. The point about the money being spent on infrastructure came with the caveat that if the government insists on spending money, right or wrong, to boost the economy it would be nice to have something to show for it, ie. infrastructure. Lets' face it, as far as a return on money goes, circumventing trillions of dollars that are being spent on oil every year, for an enhanced electrical grid will have a significant return down the road vs the upfront cost now. Yes, the money would have to be borrowed.

Clearly, cutting taxes and letting people spend the money is how we will get the economy moving again. Finally, while now is the time to minimize spending, it's not necessarily the time to start paying down debt.

As far as China goes, we all have to stop buying the crap they make. That's how you level that playing field. All of our biggest problems can be solved at an individual level, how we influence our politics, how we decide to have our tax dollars spent, how we make our purchasing decisions, and how we minimize waste and excess consumption.

Let's move this conversation forward, stop blaming everyone else or who is right and who is wrong, and collectively figure out how to better influence our politicians and our spending habits while minimizing our excess consumption, while addressing what really brought our country into this recession, expensive oil/fuel. It's not going to get any cheaper, and the more money we send to china, the greater their demand for oil and natural resources will be.

The one thing I think everyone should agree on, no matter what are differences may be is that we are doing this to ourselves.

Yahoo,

The Electrical Grid does not need to be overhauled other than normal maintence.

Let me explain, Im in the solar Biz and the truth is the utility companies are fighting us all the way with road blocks of any kind.

We need to take away their monopoly and have each city run its own utility under a private co., like the biding for trash collection.

ANYTHING BIG IS BAD, BIG GOVT, BIG POLITICAL PARTIES, BIG UNIONS, BIG MONOPOLISTIC COMPANIES.

I believe in the free market but Microsoft and Wallmart were preditory and monopolistic.

Sometimes big corporations are a must. There are things that only a large corporation can do because they have the deep pockets to fund ventures and research that would be impossible for small businesses to do.

No small businesses could ever hope to develop some of the breakthrough drugs or oil drilling platforms we have today.

Quite frankly, without the muscles of these 800 pound gorillas we would be living a very hard life.

While it is true there are some very negative things about big, you must also consider the things that can be accomplished no other way. Also consider that BIG ≠ MONOPOLY.

Unfortunately, the word BIG has been hijacked by politics these days and given a very negative meaning just for political gain.

And while big companies like Walmart may seem predatory, they do provide goods at a cost within reach of the less the fortunate and those on fixed incomes and employ thousands doing it.

And let us not to forget the Walmartians.

LOL! I love those guys. My daugher and I find endless amusement watching them.

Hey Hero, too bad the GAs aren't equal to the answer, good one, however you forgot the repeal of the Glass-Steagle ACT and how it affected the selling of the mortgages and the fact that rating agencies gave the garbage AAA rating, that was criminal and they should be prosecuted.

I agree with letting the taxPAYERS spend the money. That also includes the rich. Nobody can spend money faster (excepting the professional spenders in the US Congress) or on bigger toys and things like companies that employ people. Couple the unemployment double hit (not only are these people not being productive, we're paying them to be that way) with the fact that nearly 50% of our fellow citizens DON'T PAY TAXES, add the payments to non-producing federal and state employees, and ballooning retirement payments to unions, we are at a point where an ever increasing majority will be supported by an ever decreasing minority.

Technically yes, by the traditional definiton, "2 positive quarters of GDP in a row".

Is ther any point in rehashing this economic rash again, shall we discuss capitalism,

How free market capitalism works, is the only thing that works, and is being ruined by people that were taught that capitalism was bad.

We can fix this given 40 years and a new education system, start at the root, teach honest capitalism to the kids. You get what you work for, getting with out working is taking from someone else, this is called theft.

We are currently in a prolonged economic downward spiral, that may improve for short periods, but in the long run the bills will come due and given our inability to pay them will force the colapse of the dollar. This will wipe a lot of dept out but there will be a cost. Picture this, We owe china zillions of dollars, they call our debt and ask for Alaska as compensation. This has happened before with other countries in the past when they needed money, part of their "holdings" was sold and the residents went with the land.

Good Luck all

Spacecannon

We will have to start from ground zero to cure our predicament and only through education. let the first year of school be a fun time and starting in the 1st grade, begin a 'work to win program' with hands on projects. Teaching projects like a stack of blocks is not a pile and the beauty is in how well they are stacked and a job well done is the reward and the fun of labor. Proceed through High school with the hands on projects and when they want to work, 'let them' do not make them and when they do a fine job let the fine work be their reward. The ones that want to be Doctors, Lawyers, and Indian Chiefs will reach for the sky and they, as the rest will profit from a hands on remarkable day of labor and a job well done.we did not get to this point overnight, where work was a problem and not an enjoyment and pronouncing the recession is over will not cure our needs.

Why education is nice and necessary, why can't we start voting for politicians who are well educated in business and economics. I am not saying gov't needs to be more involved in business or run the gov't like a business, but what they need to do, is 1) stop spending money we don't have, 2) stop coming out with new programs when the programs that we have, say for instance education, are not receiving adequate funding because that money is being pulled to fund said new programs. It makes no sense, it's just pandering to special interest groups.

The problem isn't that there isn't enough money being spent on education; the problem is that the wrong people are in charge of what is being taught and the operational structure is out of whack, with different types of unions and beauracrats dictating how things will be done, for their own self-preservation rather than for the good of the student so they will be contributing members of this great experiment we call America.

Robert Kiyosaki lists three keys to wealth in Cashflow Quadrant; they are long-term vision, delayed gratification and the power of compounding. We as a society, and especially the government know very little about this or have the discipline to operate this way economically. We operate on the assumption that we will earn the money in the future for what we want today and "just can't live without". And if it doesn't work out like we "planned" there will be someone else to bail us out because we deserve it (entitlement mentality). The idea of personal responsibility and accountability is all but gone from our American thinking. When things are bought on credit, either by an individual or a government, the last part of Kiyosaki's strategy, compounding, works against us and not for us.

Whether President Obama's strategy of the government spending more money, that we don't have or have the ability to generate legitimately, is kind of a farsical question because it has never worked on a longterm basis throughout history. It doesn't take an economist to figure out that if you spend more than you take in as your normal modus operandi, your goose is cooked. It isn't just President Obama who has operated this way, there have been many presidents and legislators who have and are still doing the same. It is just that the degree to which it is being done now is on a unprecedented scale.

As has been stated before, the government has to operate on a much more limited basis and also get out of the way so that those who develope business and generate income which in turn funds the government will be so incentivized.

As one of our Founding Fathers stated, "the government that governs best is the government that governs least."

GAs to both the Yahoo and the Hero, However IMHO the best option would be to cut taxes and cut spending drastically, somehow reduce the current debt and the promised debt (Social security and Medicare), the truth is we dont have the money to pay for these programs and all of us 50 and over need to let Govt make those cuts. This will be painful, we will have to throw some people overboard or the whole boat will sink.

Yes. Cut government spending more than cutting taxes, so that the net government tax income is slightly larger than its expenditures.

However, the reality of that seems further fetched than a manned mission to Alpha Centauri.

I know this may well piss off some engineers, but one thing that needs to be cut, is this whole manned mission to Mars bull$hit.

Even if the entire planet was made of gold, uranium and diamonds, so what?

It's uninhabitable.

The federal gov't is drunk on power and spending. If we can't reign this in, we are done.

Anonymoushero is on the right track.

Some very interesting reading, that can be applied to how we got into this mess and how we can get out of this mess can be found here.

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.txt

While there are many merits to the academic nature of how the recession took place, I sometimes tend to oversimplify the world in which we live so bare with me for a moment: oil is a major input in everything we do and use, when oil goes up input prices go up. Adjusted for inflation, oil has gone down in price, period. But, when gas is 1 dollar a gallon, 9 years ago, and 4 dollars a gallon 6 years later, that effects everyone's disposable income. . . not a little, but a lot, despite being adjusted for inflation it was a shock to the system. Now while there was a housing bubble and credit did dry up I say this: there is always a bubble, now its gold, before it was the stockmarket, then housing, that's the cyclical nature of things. The fact is, when your disposable income goes down, it's harder to pay your mortgage, I know, I lost my house. Gas was so expensive I made my wife quit her job because it was so far for her to commute, we were spending more money on her going to work then we were making when we factored in car repairs, insurance, gas, and day care. I was smart enough to see that we were losing money. Also when oil shot up, we thought, heh, we live in Maine, let's get wood instead of fill our oil tank for heat! Hell you think the stuff grows on trees, but guess what, demand went up, and all of sudden it's not cheaper than oil. We had friends who were lawyers who were freezin their asses off cause they couldn't afford a mortgage and heat. Yes credit did dry up, I owned a small business, but it didn't happen for me until long after the damage was already done. I lost my customers long before I lost my credit, by that point I didn't need credit to buy more product that wasn't going to sell anyway.

I lost my business, my home, my wife. Do I simplify things, yes, but this is how it happened for me, my neighbors, and my friends. I sold food supplements, but guess what, when the prices at the grocery store shot up, it wasn't because credit dried up, it wasn't because of a housing bubble, it was because diesel fuel and gas was over $4 a gallon, and when you can't afford to fill up at the gas station, and you can't afford heating oil, you sure can't afford to buy food supplements if you can't afford food. That's my story, I am a forward looking dude. We can all argue about how each of us got here, but my question once again is what are we going to do about it?

So how do we all come together collectively to minimize gov't spending and business intervention, and stop special interest groups from bilking us out of our tax dollars, and give refunds to taxpayers to spend the money how they see fit?

How? What can I do? I know what I want, everyone on this post in some way wants the same things, so what is our plan ladies and gentlemen? Let's quit the academic arguments, or in my case the layman arguments, and focus on what comes next :)

My old boss always said, "Anyone can point out problems, what are the solutions?"

ps-this forward looking dude found solutions and bought a house a year later in cash.

GA, Solution? there are 2 ways to solve the current economic problems, quick and painful which no one will go for, or long and slow over generations, by educating our young the right way America works. The latter will be very difficult to acheive as the progressives have controll of the schools and a powerful teachers union.

The 3rd way is the only way where I see it working and that is waiting until the collapse and taking controll, but the progressives are planning on doing the same thing.

What ever plan chosen needs to be accomplished in the same manner the progressives have used to acomplish there goals, a lot can be learned from their activism. We need our own paid community organizers, they have books that tell step by step how to do it, we need to know these techniques.

My business has slowed down to a trickle. If it weren't for the wife working, we'd be living in in the streets.

I've developed a new product that I want to produce and sell, but.........I'll say it......I'm just scared. I don't want to spend money getting a new business up and running if it's going to nose dive. I think scared and nervous can describe all businesses right now.

It took me the better part of a year to streamline my design and get my production cost per unit down to the point where I can make a profit. If the tax breaks are allowed to expire in Jan., and especially if the current admin. implements a value added tax on everything purchased through the entire supply line, I'll be blown out of the water before I even get started.

Any new taxes on business, utilities, etc. will passed on to the consumer. And since consumers either don't have, or are unwilling to spend their money, it will only further erode business.

Most people dont realize how far down the rabbit hole we have gone and what it will take to get out of it.