The next recession cannot be avoided and it is not far away

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"He who tries to defend everything defends nothing."

[josephpalazzo]

"He who tries to defend everything defends nothing."

Someone who has an opinion on everything has no worthwhile opinion.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Someone who has an opinion on everything has no worthwhile opinion.

"All quotes on the Internet are fake." A. Lincoln.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

To quote Ronald Reagan, "Well....?"
That's the only thing he ever said that made sense..

[Jason Harvestdancer]

What is missing is the discussion of depression, not just recession.

A recession is consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.  It has a technical definition, which unfortunately can only be applied after the fact, but it still is defined.  One can objectively point to a time period and say whether or not there is a recession.  Well, except for government diddling the numbers...

A depression doesn't have such a definition, but is generally considered to be prolonged high unemployment.

Now here's the trick.  While a recession does lead to a depression, you can have economic growth during a depression and still be in a depression.  We had that in Great Depression I.  After the initial recession of 1929 the economy started to slowly grow.  We stayed in a depression until 1945, but the economy did grow during Great Depression I.  And the economy also contracted during Great Depression I, in 1937.  The causes of that recession inside a depression are hotly debated, but that it happened is indisputable.

Republicans are quick to tell us that the recession of 2000-2001 ended, and Democrats are quick to tell us that the recession of 2008-2009 ended, but both ignore the long term effects of those recessions.  Also both ignore that the second recession is actually a continuation of the first and made worse by the covering up of the symptoms of the first.  And the recession of 2016 is another continuation.  Recessions, though painful, have a purpose and that purpose is to liquidate malinvestments and correct structural problems in the economy.  In both cases that didn't happen, so the next recession is worse.

[josephpalazzo]

"All quotes on the Internet are fake." A. Lincoln.

Are you a sockpuppet for Baruth?

[Baruch]

Are you a sockpuppet for Baruth?

I swear ... I am not fisting anyone, not even Charlie McCarthy ;-)

[Baruch]

I swear ... I am not fisting anyone, not even Charlie McCarthy ;-)

Jason_H ... yes, the inventory of bad housing didn't get fully cleared in 2008-09.  So we still have to shit on some real estate ... too bad if you bought a lemon since 2008, suckers!  We created a vast sea of unemployed college graduates, in hock to their eyebrows, who can't discharge odious debt.  This means that excess Millennials will have to be put on the auction block and sent to W Africa to pick sorghum (they don't grow cotton outside of Egypt).  There are also a fair number of folks who bought (zero down) cars ... who will end up losing those cars to repo .. and have to walk to work.  This is why governments/banks/corporations try to avoid the consequences of recessions ... and end up creating depressions.  Short term thinking kills you every time you lose control at a saloon.

Collapse doesn't come fast enough to actually punish the initiators, just the hapless bystanders.  We see this all the time in management ... the first manager has a "brilliant" idea, and implements it.  Then two years later, on the premature view that the idea is a success, the first manager moves on to another company, or moves up the food chain.  Then the next manager comes in, inherits the "brilliant" idea ... and finds out it is an ugly turkey, and has to terminate it ... or because it wasn't his idea, even if it is an actual success (the minority of ideas), he chooses to terminate it to make room for his own ideas.  If you actually know how the world works, you would never leave your mom's basement.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The recession of 1921 was more severe than the recession of 1929, but there was no following depression lasting for a decade and a half.  Collapse can come fast enough, if you don't have government idiots trying to prevent the collapse.

[Baruch]

A bad economy is a near death experience, even if you already have millions.  To rephrase ...

Death can come fast enough, if you don't have government idiots trying to prevent your death.

For our Brit friends, I think the 1921 collapse was a US thing, in Britain it was in 1925, but in Germany it was in 1923 ... with special effects.  This was all because of the US collapse of 1907 ... J P Morgan didn't want to have to bail the US Feds out again, so he set up a private banking cartel to do it for him, with the able assistance of the BoE and the Rothschilds.  Also he initiated the income tax ... originally only on his competitors (I assume he had a get out of tax free card like Apple does now).  It would have been a good thing if J P Morgan hadn't saved the securities markets (and US Feds) and let them go completely out of business.  But at least he got out of having to intervene in later crises ... like WW I, which was being planned early in the 20th century.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Or to put it another way, since you absurdly compare recession to death...

The cheap credit that leads to a collapse is like alcohol, and a recession is like a hangover.  If you avoid a hangover by opting for hair of the dog, you wind up with a worse hangover later.  Or, if you do it too much, alcohol poisoning.

[Baruch]

For money-holics ... losing a million in the stock market ... is death.  Sometimes they make the jump, sometimes not.  For you or me it might be a triviality, like losing a card game among friends.  For little people who lost their house, car, job and family ... it is pretty much like death.

The economy, if we anthropomorphize it, it might be like a hangover ... but then I don't agree with the SCOTUS in regards to corporations being persons.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Sometimes people drink themselves to death, or die in alcohol related accidents.  And sometimes people cannot endure having to sober up and would rather die.  But the only way to end being drunk is to endure the effects of withdrawal.

[Baruch]

Oh, I agree.  That is why I think everyone should live under a viaduct in a cardboard box.  What doesn't destroy you, makes you stronger ... and I think people need to be very strong to survive.  The government, by saving the financial system, prevented a lot of upper class suicides.  Too bad they didn't prevent Bernie Madoff ;-)  The expanding death rate of American men in the 35-55 age bracket, who are not college educated ... is a necessary sacrifice for our greater glory.

I do twinge if I give a beggar some money ... he might buy a drink or he may not.  I don't know how much to give.  Unfortunately I am not in a position to hire him (teaching him to fish won't help).  My failure for not being a tycoon like Trump ... then I could hire all the poor people I want.  But we know that managerially, I should only hire successful people, not failures.  So if there is no hiring, and no welfare ... the poor are justified in cutting my damned throat.

[josephpalazzo]

I swear ... I am not fisting anyone, not even Charlie McCarthy ;-)

I'm surprised that you, as the court jester of this forum, can impose such restrictions on yourself!