'Recession' Pain or Obama Policy Pain?

Posted: September 20, 2010, 5:37PM

►Recession pain still real, despite end, Obama says

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Under Bush unemployment was near 5.0%, the Dow was 14K, monthly job growth was positive and we were in the midst of a record 52 straight months of GDP growth. The Democrats with the assistance of their operatives in the media tried, and succeeded, to convince everyone that we were in a recession before we actually were. They were dying for it to happen.

Stories and op eds like Growth or recession in 2007? and Recession 2007 that were predicting or saying we were already in a recession, were headlines of the day, every day.

Today, with unemployment including discouraged workers who gave up looking over 17%, the Dow stagnant in the 9 to 10K mark, and anemic GDP growth, Obama and his operatives are promoting that the recession is over, and have been actually since June 2009.

The NBER defines a recession as a period of falling economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.

These "rules" of a recession don't apply in our economy today because we know whatever growth sustained from June of 2009 to now is not real growth. Massive financial infusion, restocking of inventories, government entitlements and spending can create a temporary upswing in the parameters that define an end to a recession. They are not real because they were not created in the private sector by free-market, supply and demand economics. The piggy bank is not bottomless.

The parameters that show an end or a start of a recession can be, and they have been, manipulated and manufactured to create and sustain a period of growth that can allow for an announcement that a recession is over. That's what we have here.

It doesn't mean anything politically to say that we are out of a recession when people who are hurting know they are hurting. They can't be told to believe that their lives and times are good when they aren't. They could, however, be convinced that their lives suck when they actually have it pretty good, as was the case under Bush. Let's face it, most of us naturally have higher expectations for our lives.

This is simply a late summer "surprise" that is as anemic as Obama's GDP. It won't work because it doesn't feel like the recession is over. It won't work because the future of the economy is in even worse peril because of the ideology and policies of Obama and the Democrats running Congress.

The phrase "recession is over" is a nice sound bite a few months prior to a major election, but it means nothing to the American people who are economically suffering right now. A better word to use might be Biden's three-letter word:

The pain American citizens are experiencing right now are not from a word called "recession" but from Obama's policies. These policies will create an even worse recession in months to come and nobody likes to double-dip.

 Chuck

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