fyi
Where's my coffee...
In 1982, there also wasn’t a socialist idiot in the White House.
I remember the job market of 1982 very well. I graduated from college in 1982 and there were no jobs. The jobs that were available were very low paying even in 1982 dollars. During college I worked part-time at a bank and remember helping people fill out applications for a 13% car loan. Things do need to be put into some perspective.
Don’t get me wrong, the job market right now is scary. But I think the NY Times painted a gloomier picture to get the One elected and slowly (maybe not so slowly) they’ll be reporting that things are suddenly better and The One is the reason.
I was real lucky. I was among the last persons to qualify for full Veterans Benefits under the old GI Bill. My company in Navy Basic Training was last in a group to get it. I used that to survive. I went back to school at a tuition free state Voc/Tech and worked on minimum wage contract for the VA at a National Cemetery mowing grass and digging graves with a pick and shovel.
The real difference will be the aftermath. With Reagan we worked our way out of it. With Obama’s policies we may never get out of it.
If a “big stimulus package” is the correct approach to a declining economy then logically it would iprove any economy and should be a permanent feature of government. The laws of economics are not a sometime thing. Either they are laws-true statements of how things work- or they are not. If the government can “fix” things by government action then there is no excuse for the government to permit any facet of the economy to function without careful planning and total control. If government direction is economically beneficial then we are bing foolish and immoral to permit any freedom in the market at all. But back in the real world, compare this economy with every command economy that has ever been.
I remember this. I remember because “going for a drive” was a treat to be held in much esteem and memory. Also, EVERYONE rode the school bus. Parents didn’t want to use up their gas on driving the kids to school when the bus came right up the street.
Like others here, I too remember the recession of the early 80s. Up here the money simply dried up but interest rates on business loans were 22%. Consumer loans were capped at 18%. We bartered for all sorts of things. Thursdays I would walk up and down the Main Street of our town seeing if clients could pay a little on their bills. I still thank God for the local banker and those 90 day notes he’d extend for me when I needed it. They were business loans, I suppose, but we’d secure them with an old Buick I owned so they could be called consumer loans and save on the interest. Unemployment was through the roof. My wife calls them our “water stew and chicken liver days”. But we never fell behind on bills, never missed a payment (thanks in great measure to that banker)and came out fine in the end. What I am seeing now looks a bit like back then, but thus far no where near as bad.
I was still a kid when the ‘82 recession rolled around, but I do remember it well. My dad was out of work for the better part of a year, and my mom just barely held on to her job.
We were luckier than a lot of folks - both my parents had always been frugal, and mom knew how to feed a big family on a shoestring budget. Still, there were some very lean times until the Reagan recovery took hold.
Leave it to the NYT to start talking the economy up as soon as a Dem gets in the WH.
It won’t work this time. This crisis is nothing like the recession of 81-82 (yes, I lived through it also).
We are just in the beginning of this crisis...it is going to get much worse before it gets better. In 82, there was money available, only at a high interest rate. Inflation was the foe.
We are facing deflation and no money to loan today...a far worse threat. Obama hasn’t figured out yet that there is not enough government money to get us out of this...a severe contraction of the economy is unstopppable.
Welcome, one and all, to the "communist states of obammica"!
They are actually being kind to the first Bush, which is when most of that unemployment spike took place.
If you think 1982 was bad, wait until 2011.
The DBM is addicted to gloom and doom. They can’t help themselves. But they’ll always find a way to blame the crisis on the GOP or the “rich”.
When Bush was President, the buck stopped with him - everything that went wrong was his fault. For a while, he will still be the scapegoat, but when that’s no longer believable, someone/something else will get the blame. It will never be Obama, however.
Worse only as in this moment in time. Not worse when considering alll the financial data that suggests this is getting worse by the day. See us in 30-60-90 days and compare.
Sure there was. It was the "Carter Catastrophe".
L