Posted on 01/22/2009 3:09:01 AM PST by expat_panama
You often hear that we are now living through the worst recession since the early 1980s, and the comparison is not wrong. But it’s ultimately unsatisfying, because it is a little too vague to be useful.
Is the economy only a little worse than it was in the last couple recessions, as some have said, and still a long way from the dark days of 1982? Or are we instead on our way toward something that may even approach the severity of the Great Depression?
[snip]
The ranks of unemployed and underemployed, controlling for the size of the population, were much larger in 1982 than today.
[snip]
The recession of the early 1980s doesn’t have a catchy name, and almost half of Americans are too young to have any real memory of it. But it was terrible — qualitatively different from the mild recessions of 1990-91 and 2001. The first big blow to the economy was the 1979 revolution in, which sent oil prices skyrocketing. The bigger blow was a series of sharp interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, meant to snap inflation. Home sales plummeted. At their worst, they were 30 percent lower than they are even now (again, adjusted for population size). The industrial Midwest was hardest hit, and the term “Rust Belt” became ubiquitous. Many families fled south and west, helping to create the modern Sun Belt.
Nationwide, the unemployment rate rose above 10 percent in 1982, compared with 7.2 percent last month. But that rate has a couple of basic flaws, as I’ve discussed in previous columns. It counts people who have been forced to work part time, even though they want to work full time, as fully employed.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
OK now I rember some of that. Thanks. I do remember after the UAB and SIBC failed people were dumping their City and County or C&C business names.. To some the Butchers were saints and still are to them.. To many more they took nearly every dime they had.
It's a difficult comparsion because there were so many smaller banks back then but my recollection is that there were about 80 failures that year. That's probably right plus or minus 5. Until the total and complete melt down of the S&L mess there weren't any big institutions that failed until 1984 when Continental Illinois, at around $40 billion, folded.
I reckon that's why 574 failed in 1989 alone with, what, about 2,000 failing during the entire S&L meltdown?
True, but we were still recovering from the one that occupied it two years prior (Carter.)
I remember 1982. I graduated college early and was job hunting into early 1983. Took me 9 months to find a job back then, it was horrible.
I know the numbers today aren't as bad as back then, but boy it sure does feel like it. My heart goes out to those who've been looking for employment.
These were small s&L ‘s involved with bad Realestate projects mostly...not even comparable to our situation...of credit default swaps and 60-1 leverage.
It was the systematic and deliberate sacking of the S&L system with hundreds, if not thousands, of criminal prosecutions.
Whitewater, for instance, wasn't just another "bad real estate project".
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