How did we get Here Again?

Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., 38th president of the USA

I turned my computer on this morning to this lead story on the BBC.com:

US job losses reach 34-year high

US unemployment rose by 533,000 in November, official figures show, the biggest one-month rise since 1974.

Not exactly remembering who was president when I was seven, I Googled:

president 1974

I actually Googled "presedent 1974" as I'm not a great speller, but that's beside the point. And I guessed Nixon and for the first seven months of 1974, Nixon was pres. But I digress.

Ford took over when Nixon resigned. The first link that appeared in my search was the USA government website on Gerald R. Ford. This was the third paragraph:

Ford was confronted with almost insuperable tasks. There were the challenges of mastering inflation, reviving a depressed economy, solving chronic energy shortages, and trying to ensure world peace.

So it was Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States, who brought us to a place not too unlike today. And my next thought is, "The GOP: destroying the USA for the masses (at least in my lifetime)." But we keep on electing these people. Nixon, Reagan, Bush & Bush. And the same thing always happens: more USA instigated wars around the world, more economic hardship in the United States (for everyone not in the top 2% economically at least).

My friend Oliver once told me part of the definition of insanity is, "doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome," or something along those lines. And this makes sense. America must be insane.

My assistant as school recently told me that he heard SUV sales are on the rise again since gas has gone bellow $3 a gallon. Insane.

Hate to Say, "I Told You So"

Add, "We are not in a recession" to the nonsense from the right. Put it in the same bucket as "global warming is a myth," "Obama is a Marxist/terrorist," "Evolution is false," "Fox News is fair and balanced," and "the world is flat." I listen & read to a lot of news and it has been amusing to hear all these "experts" shout that we are not in a recession for the last year.

We don't know we are "in a recession" until the the NBER (see below) tell us we are, and guess what? We have been in recession for the last twelve months!!! If I knew this, why didn't so many economists know it?

Excerpts from the BBC:

US recession 'began last year'

Machinary" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="226"> US manufacturing has now contracted for four months in a row

The US entered a recession in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Its business cycle dating committee, which is considered the arbiter of whether the US is in recession, met on Friday to make the decision.

The NBER says that the US economic expansion lasted 73 months, from November 2001, before contracting.

It used a broad range of economic indicators, such as employment and production, to make this judgement.

In a statement, the committee said that the "decline in economic activity in 2008 met the standard for a recession".

It said that employment peaked in December 2007 and has been falling every since.

And it said that personal income all began falling in the first quarter of 2008, while industrial production peaked in January 2008.

The NBER uses key monthly indicators of economic output, including employment, industrial production, real personal income, and wholesale and retail sales - to determine when economic growth has turned negative, rather than relying solely on two quarterly declines in GDP.

It defines a recession as a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income and other indicators."

Although a private sector body, the NBER has been dating the business cycle since 1929.

It does not forecast the length of the recession.