Quote:
Originally Posted by TSchwarck
Personally, I blame "free trade" for much of our economic problems. So many jobs have been lost since NAFTA and GATT were enacted. China does not practise free trade, neither does much of the rest of the world.......
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I think you've hit the nail on the head. Free trade did create some jobs but those paled by the the comparison of the implosion of employment in almost every American industry. There just isn't any doubt about it. This recession is deeper and longer than anyone realized going in and even though it's officially ended, it really hasn't and ultimately, when you look deep enough, Free Trade is behind it.
Take a look at key industries.
The auto industry is on pace to sell 28 percent fewer new vehicles this year than it did 10 years ago — and 10 years ago was 2001, when the country was in that recession.
Big ticket items like sales of ovens and stoves are on pace to be at their lowest level since 1992.
Do we even have to talk about Home Sales?....worse than the Great Depression... not even close..
If this is Free Trade, we can't afford any more of it. It's bankrupted the country.
The Fed is trying to tell us something, is anyone listening???
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published a report that can only be called 'jarring' on what it calls discretionary service spending, a category that excludes housing, food and health care. It includes restaurant meals, entertainment, education and even insurance. Going back decades, this spending had never fallen more than 3 percent per capita in any recession. However in our "recovery", it is down almost 7 percent, and still has not really begun to recover.
How about the NY Fed paper by Jonathan McCarthy "
Discretionary Services Expenditures in This Business Cycle"
I quote:
"....The pronounced weakness in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) for services has been an unusual feature of the 2007-09 recession and the slow recovery from it. Even in 2010:Q4, when real PCE increased at a relatively robust 4.1 percent annual rate, real PCE on services rose at only a 1.4 percent rate. This weakness has been especially evident in “discretionary” services (to be defined below), which fell more in the recent recession than in previous recessions and since have rebounded more sluggishly. In this post, I suggest that the continued sluggishness in these expenditures lends a note of caution regarding the sustainability of recent PCE strength. ... this in turn raises some concern about the future strength of the recovery."
These reports are important because this has never happened before. The Fed's own analysts are actually calling our "recovery"
bull crap and I suggest to all readers that this is no recovery at all. I also suggest that the American public is being mislead as to the depth and breath of this recession, and that our leaders aren't interested in addressing the underlying issues as the corporations who own them caused these issues in the first place.
As to a real recovery? What recovery??
Our economic issue in the "Great Recession" is lack of demand. This lack of demand sounds so simple when the experts say it. But do they mentioned what's causing Lack of Demand? Over 22% of the American workforce is unemployed or underemployed. If that's not bad enough, the really scary part is that there's still too much excess capacity in most areas of the economy for a large contribution from new investment (except in equipment and software). We see this excess in housing, and excess capacity in overall industrial production.
There is also excess existing supply in office space, retail space, and other categories of commercial real estate. Just where exactly can any kind of a recovery begin to take shape. Our economy has been fractured. About the only plan that makes sense is the repair the infrastructure idea that Obama floated. Immediately shot down by Republicans. The only segment of the economy that showed recovery is the stock market. Main Street USA got thrown under the bus.
Where's the Plan....anyone in Washington got a plan???
Without any kind of a plan, just how are we supposed to get back to real GDP growth? Neither Congress nor the Administration is doing a thing about the economy. Without a plan in place to jump start a real "recovery", there is no end in sight to the Great Recession. The Future will bring us more of the same.
The data is out there if you dig deep enough. I feel very strongly that my conclusions are inescapable.
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