patrick.net

What is this a joke?

Who is this idiot posting campaign speeches as some kind of proof?

Get it right at least: "Obama SAYS he prevented a depression."

Was it Obama? Or was it Helicopter Ben that prevented a depression? ;-)

Heck even Bush did massive bailouts. But when Obama did it the far-right called it pork.

The crash of 2008 and subsequent bailouts forced me to completely rethink my political beliefs.

Stump speech from either side is pretty much devoid of truth. At best it can be called "truthy" as coined by Steven Colbert, which applies to a statement that feels true so we assume that it probably is.

Actual title: Obama says administration prevented another Great Depression

And of course this is ridiculous because we are in a depression and have been for six years. Just because we aren't walking jaggedly in a sepia background wearing 1930s clothing doesn't mean we aren't in a depression. Did you really expect the world to go monochrome during a depression? Just because all the footage from the First Great Depression was in black-and-white doesn't mean people didn't actually see in true color back in the 1930s.

Of course this depression isn't going to feel like the last one. We're not all going to huddle around giant radios running on vacuum tubes. Food stamps have replaced soup kitchens and technology has advanced so much that this depression is less painful than the last, but economically speaking, this depression is as bad as the last one. Unemployment is as bad. Wages have fallen in real terms since 2000. Just because we have iPads and Smart Phones doesn't mean we aren't in a depression.

Furthermore, the depression will last at least another three years, possibly eight more.

This depression could have been avoided if the too-big-to-fail banks were allowed to fail and the housing prices were allowed to quickly collapsed. Doing so would have gotten all the bad debt out of the system and punished only those who gambled on housing. Instead, the government under both Bush and Obama decided to let the speculators avoid loses by spreading out that pain across the general population and across many years, prolonging and deepening the economic consequences.

The depression was created by bailing out speculators at the cost of you and me. It was a wound inflicted on the common man by high ranking politicians who are bought out by banks and other financial firms. And this depression could have been avoided in many ways even up to the year 2006.

It's true because we believe it!

We are not in a depression. We are not even in a recession anymore.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

When Obama became President we were heading straight towards a depression. He gets credit for preventing one, and that is his greatest achievement for the economy.

Lets give the man credit where credit is due.

Raw says

We are not even in a recession anymore.

Really? I can't tell. Neither can the massive throngs of the unemployed/underemployed.

freak80 says

Raw says

We are not even in a recession anymore.

Really? I can't tell. Neither can the massive throngs of the unemployed/underemployed.

The definition of recession is - 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth.
As we don't have that, we cannot be in a recession.

I'm not trying to blame Obama or anything. But we need much faster growth to get back to where we were before the crash.

freak80 says

I'm not trying to blame Obama or anything. But we need much faster growth to get back to where we were before the crash.

I agree.
Faster growth will come, but for now we just have to be happy we did not end up in a depression.

I respect Obama.

However I think we didn't prevent the GD 2.0, we just softened the initial blow of it by extending it for many decades. The structural problems that created a distorted bubble economy, are still in full force, in some ways they are worse. Big stupid banks were encouraged to get even bigger.

Obama said he prevented a depression and Clinton said "I never had sex with that women". Hahahahahahahahahah. LMAO.

The insanity that is Globalization must stop. Nations are pretty much powerless to reign in the power of a global plutocracy.

TARP (now rechristened QE, QE2, and QE3) prevented a depression among Wall Street bankers, who are doing better than ever thanks to their puppets in both major parties. For the rest of the world, i.e. the 99.9% who don't profit directly from TARP&QE, the Depression is at best postponed. Living on credit isn't sustainable, and at this point the FIRE sector of the economy is consuming everything else. Cannibal anarchy will not benefit anyone except maybe Levi and his daughter Breeze Beretta, and I can only hope they prefer the taste of banker.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/09/12/168266/incomes-drop-in-2011-rich-and.html

Incomes are even lower then when the crisis began.

But no worries the income gap between average citizens and the handlers of both Demublicans & Republicrats continues to widen.

So everything is going well, mission accomplished! Oh something for you apple face:

"While the unemployment rate dipped from 9.6 percent to 8.9 percent from 2010 to 2011, the decline was ALMOST ENTIRELY DUE TO PEOPLE DROPPING OUT OF THE LABOR MARKET,"

Raw says

We are not in a depression. We are not even in a recession anymore.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

When Obama became President we were heading straight towards a depression. He gets credit for preventing one, and that is his greatest achievement for the economy.

Not even close.

First, the word recession was created by economists to prevent the public from using the word depression and making economists and politicians sound bad, like they weren't doing their jobs.

As you stated, a recession is two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. But why would anyone give a rat's ass if for two quarters the GDP declined? It says nothing about the strength of the economy.

For example, consider an economy with a GDP of $100 billion/year. Scenario 1, in quarter 1 the GDP increases 50% and then declines 5% for the next two quarters. Scenario 2, the GDP increases at 5% for the next three quarters. Scenario 1 is a recession, but the people and the economy is way better off than in scenario 2 where everything is honky donkey according to the definition of recessions. The word recession serves no purpose but to keep people from talking about depressions, which are important.

Even in depressions, it is rare to have many consequential quarters of decline. In fact, you could have a 100 year depression without having a single recession. Image an economy's GDP declining by 90% in one quarter than than increasing 1% a year for the next century. Would you really consider that century to be an economic boom period?

Now, as for our economic situation, let's look at the real unemployment and underemployment situation.

[I]f the labor force participation rate was the same today as it was back when Barack Obama first took office, the unemployment rate in the United States would be a whopping 11.2 percent. But every month the Obama administration has been able to show "progress" because of the fiction that hundreds of thousands of Americans are "disappearing" from the labor force each month. Frankly, the way that they come up with these numbers is an insult to our intelligence.

http://www.presstv.com/usdetail/261418.html

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

Even counting just the fully unemployed by conservative metrics, the real unemployment rate is about 15%. More realistic estimates are about 23%.

The government's most widely publicized unemployment rate measures only those who are out of a job and currently looking for work. It does not count discouraged potential employees who have quit looking, nor those who are underemployed - wanting to work full-time but forced to work part-time.

For that count, the government releases a separate number called the "U-6," which provides a more complete tally of how many people really are out of work.

The numbers in some cases are startling.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48468748/Real_Unemployment_Rate_Shows_Far_More_Jobless

And by startling, CNBC means in the twenties.

Real Unemployment Rate Is 23%, Not 8.1%

And if you actually counted the underemployed, i.e., all those who are working crap jobs part-time because they can't get jobs they are qualified for and full-time employment, it's a lot higher than 23%.

Now let's compare that to the First Great Depression.

Unemployment During the Great Depression

Average rate of unemployment
in 1929: 3.2%
in 1930: 8.9%
in 1931: 16.3%
in 1932: 24.1%
in 1933: 24.9%
in 1934: 21.7%
in 1935: 20.1%
in 1936: 16.9%
in 1937: 14.3%
in 1938: 19.0%
in 1939: 17.2%

http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html

And you're telling me we aren't even in a minor depression? I call this the Second Great Depression because the facts are every bit as bad as the First Great Depression from 1929-1939.

If our current economic situation doesn't constitute a depression, then WTF will it take for you to call this a depression? Do lolcats have to start appearing in sepia?

Raw says

Lets give the man credit where credit is due.

Oh, I get it now. It's all about politics. So, to answer my question, "WTF will it take for you to call this a depression?", the answer is a republican in the White House.

How about instead of giving credit or blame, we just acknowledge reality for what it is and figure out what needs to be done to make it better. Pretend we're not in an election year, and talking about how bad the economy is and how to fix it isn't an election issue.

Because if you argue that today's economy is the new norm, it will be. The first step to solving any problem is acknowledging it's existence.