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US economic growth may be mild, but its also really durable
invite response
2015 Mar 28, 1:35pm 1,009 views 1 comment
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Bellingham Bill
2015 Mar 28, 1:44pm
shows how tiny the 1990 and 2000 recessions were compared to the biggie, in job terms.
Employment peaked in Feb 2001 and was depressed until late 2003 (aka the "jobless recovery")
For the Great Recession, employment peaked in Jan 2008 and recovery started late 2009, or Feb 2010 if you don't count census hiring.
(but we haven't yet returned to the full-time employment levels of 2008 yet, alas)
We've got Gen Y absolutely flooding into the job market now (median age of our big-bearded and tattooed progeny is 23 this year), so wages are going to be tight I expect.
Tight wages should keep a lid on overall inflation, as will rising housing costs as Gen Y overwhelms the available housing stock more and more.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-economic-growth-rate-stays-at-22-percent-in-q4/2015/03/27/20e1be42-d47e-11e4-8b1e-274d670aa9c9_story.html
my general opinion of things. Missing from the article is the understanding that the 1990 and 2007 recessions came from consumer credit overextension (plus the oilpatch crash didn't help things in the late 80s)
Rough picture of consumer leverage:
Annual consumer credit expansion as percent wages:
I knew by 2006 that the coming crash was going to be epic.
I don't see what's going to fail now, but there's always exogenous stuff like Russia invading Germany or China finally blowing itself up I guess.
Also possibility is another 2000-2001 slowdown, I don't understand what caused the dotcom crash, other than all the pump & dump bullshit on Wall Street running out of steam, we might have that again, but corporate profits are 3X what they were then:
But maybe corporations are the ones going to run into the wall first this time . . .