Bad tidings
Looking a lot like 1932?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard thinks so.
Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high.
Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.
The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.
The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s.
Then there's the devaluation:
It is obvious what that policy should be for Europe, America, and Japan. If budgets are to shrink in an orderly fashion over several years – as they must, to avoid sovereign debt spirals – then central banks will have to cushion the blow keeping monetary policy ultra-loose for as long it takes.
The Fed is already eyeing the printing press again. "It's appropriate to think about what we would do under a deflationary scenario," said Dennis Lockhart for the Atlanta Fed. His colleague Kevin Warsh said the pros and cons of purchasing more bonds should be subject to "strict scrutiny", a comment I took as confirmation that the Fed Board is arguing internally about QE2.
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I never thought I would see this kind of economic ugliness in my lifetime. As a history major I spent a lot of time studying FDR and the Depression. This is a case of the winners – New Deal Democrats – writing history and everyone learning the wrong lesson.
For some reason, school kids are taught that the free market caused the Depression, and FDR came along and fixed it – when the exact opposite is true. Recessions happen, they are like storms – you just ride them out and move on. Except in 1929 Hoover thought he knew better and started interfering, and caused a weak recovery and second recession. The FDR jumped into the economy with massive new taxes, spending programs, and business regulations – and the Great Depression was born.
During WWII, we were able to outsource our unemployed to the battlefields. Then FDR died and Congress thoroughly rejected his post-war New Deal programs and the Depression officially ended. Now we have a President and Congressional leaders who think another New Deal is a good idea, unless you believe the paranoid answer.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/07/05/the-paranoid-answer/