Why Our Economy Is Utterly Screwed
by ilene - September 2nd, 2009 8:49 pm
Why Our Economy Is Utterly Screwed
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
Steve Liesman once again stunned me with his lack of understanding of matters economic today, when he commented that "in all recessions since 1970 at least the original part of it (recovery) has been jobless."
Yes, Steve, but why is any of this a surprise? What part of this graph isn’t instantly obvious to anyone with more than two firing neurons in their head?
That’s credit and population growth normed to a base of 1970. Population went from roughly 205 million to roughly 304 million during that time, a 50% increase.
Outstanding consumer credit went from $128 billion to $2,525 billion, or a 1,973% increase – and this is only consumer credit, ignoring mortgages, financial firm credit, business credit, commercial real estate and of course government debt!
Why are we not seeing "robust" economic growth when we exit recessions? Why is there no real hiring going on? Why can we not have a robust economic recovery? Why are we are replacing good jobs with "McJobs" that pay half as much – or less? And more importantly, where did all the "so-called prosperity" really come from, especially from 1994 on?
In each and every instance of recession from 1970 onward we have "pulled forward" more and more demand and created fake "prosperity" through the creation of ever more debt that we have goaded consumers to take on. By doing so we have crippled the ability of the economy to grow, redirecting as much money as possible to a handful of people and firms (commonly known as "banks" and other "financial companies") instead of directing that effort and money into productive enterprises such as building cars, television sets and similar items.
THIS time though the recession didn’t come from "ordinary business conditions"; it instead happened because the credit carrying capacity among both consumers and businesses hit the wall – they could no longer make the debt service payments and started to default.
It began with "subprime" mortgages but that was nothing other than the first "hiss" of trouble out of the pressure vessel as the structural integrity of the fraud-laced credit system, where "capacity to pay" became a bad joke, had begun to disintegrate.
We pushed the envelope of fraudulent credit creation and the sale of fraudulently-underwritten debt too far – and it blew up in our collective
Tags: consumer credit, credit, debt, Economy, jobless recovery, Karl Denninger, Ponzi-style scams, Recessions, Steve Liesman
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