Robert Reich: Forget a Double-Dip, We're Still in One Long Big Dipper

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




It's nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double-dip recession when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We're still in one long Big Dipper.

More people are out of work today than were last year, counting everyone too discouraged even to look for work. The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to the highest level since February. Not counting temporary census workers, a total of only 12,000 net new private and public jobs were created in July -- when 125,000 are needed each month just to keep up with growth in the population of people who want and need to work.

Not since the government began to measure the ups and downs of the business cycle has such a deep recession been followed by such anemic job growth. Jobs came back at a faster pace even in March 1933 after the economy started to "recover" from the depths of the Great Depression. Of course, that job growth didn't last long. That recovery wasn't really a recovery at all. The Great Depression continued. And that's exactly my point. The Great Recession continues.

Even investors are beginning to see reality. Starting in February the stock market rallied because corporate profits were rising briskly. Investors didn't mind that profits were coming from payroll cuts, foreign sales, and gimmicks like share buy-backs -- none of which could be sustained over the long term. But the rally died in April when investors began to see how paper-thin these profits actually were. And now the stock market is back to where it was at the start of the year.

What to do? First, don't listen to Wall Street and the Right. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/forget-a-double-dip-were_b_682334.html

[liberal N proud]

1. But the M$M and the GOP want to have a double dip so bad

They just know it will give them control of Congress.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. No jobs = no recovery

n/t

[area51]

6. +1 (n/t)

[jtuck004]

3. Every day that we delay these four reforms from the article

is a day the uber-rich get richer, and the world gets a little less secure for everyone elese...he noted in his article that the Great Depression lasted 12 years, and there are already indications that we may have double-digit employment past 2020, with the majority of jobs that do appear likely to be lower wage service jobs.

1) Call it the National Defense Jobs Act. Call it the WPA. Call it Chopped Liver. Whatever, we have to get the great army of the unemployed and underemployed working again.

2) Put more money in consumer's wallets by eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20K of income (and make it up by applying payroll taxes to incomes over $250K.)

3)Get more hiring by giving the states and locales interest-free loans -- so they can rehire all the teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and sanitation workers they've fired -- to be repaid when their state employment rates hit 5 percent or below.

4)Get more credit by having the Fed return to "quantitative easing" -- expanding the money supply by purchasing mortgage-backed and other types of securities.

[SocialistLez]

5. +1, especially 1 and 3. NT

[inna]

4. K&R. I wish Obama hired Reich and Stiglitz and let Geithner & Banksters go.

Reich:

That leaves only one remaining source of demand -- government. We need a giant jobs program to hire people and put money in their pockets that they'll spend and thereby create more jobs. Put ideology aside and recognize this fact. If it makes you more comfortable call it the National Defense Jobs Act. Call it the WPA. Call it Chopped Liver. Whatever, we have to get the great army of the unemployed and underemployed working again.

Geithner:

Now, this president understands deeply that governments don't create jobs, businesses create jobs. And our job as government is try to make sure we're creating the conditions that allow businesses to prosper so they can hire people back, get this economy going again.

:banghead: