Why is this recovery different from other recoveries

[question everything]

We were watching the PBS NewsHour and it started by having several finance people talking about the rise in the stock market and then about prospects for the economy for 2014.

And then someone said: let me borrow from Passover and ask why is this recovery different from other recoveries. The moderator, Jeff Brown, interjected that it was the wrong time of the year, but otherwise, none appeared surprised or confused about this form of the question.

We chuckled.

Happy 2014

[BlueStreak]

1. I don't quite get the passover reference

unless the point was a lot of people are being passed over in this recovery.

But I would challenge the premise. I don't think we are operating under any new economic rules. What we have is the cumulative effects of 30 years of disastrous economic policy. Each swing is getting worse, but not fundamentally different. If we hadn't sent millions of good jobs overseas with nothing in return -- if we hadn't allowed the top 0.1% to suck up all the wealth created in those 30 years, then this recovery would look just like most of the recoveries in the 20th century.

It really isn't so complicated.

It isn't a "jobless recovery" because there is something unusual abut THIS recovery. It is a jobless recovery because Reaganomics has given us a JOBLESS ECONOMY. It just took 30 years to drain all the blood out of it.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. The Passover reference is the question itself.

We ask, during the Seder, "Why is this night different from all other nights?". It is part of the four questions.

[BlueStreak]

3. OK. Thanks.