The Greatest Recession

Townhall.com ^ | March 25, 2013 | John Ransom

[Kaslin]

Hey good news everybody.

People are still losing jobs at a faster rate than we’re creating them.

Thank God for the best recession in the history of mankind.

And thank God for Barack Obama being the best recessionary president in the history of mankind.

"This is the best looking contraction in GDP you'll ever see," says Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

Yeah, just think about how great everything would look if Barack Obama wasn’t president, er… I mean: how bad everything would look.

“Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 366,000, the Labor Department said, “ writes Reuters about the politically-adjusted, “seasonally-adjusted” numbers. “That was a higher level than analysts had expected, although the downward trend in layoffs still suggests the economy is strong enough that employers will need to add to their staffs.”

So in plain words: We suck worse than we thought, but just not as badly as we could.

That’s because last month employers added a whopping 17,000 jobs to their staffs nationwide, or a staggering 340 jobs per state. At this rate it will only take 42 years for us to get back all the jobs that we’ve lost under Obama. I don’t know how many people the average circus employs, or the lower chamber of any state legislature, but 340 seems about right.

Way to go government! Thanks to God Almighty for your seasonal adjustments.

It’s almost as if seasonal-adjustments didn’t exist naturally as a gift from God, government economists would have to invent them for us.

Between seasonal adjustments and getting people to drop out of the labor force the government seems to have the whole employment picture handled.

I wonder if government economists have shared the “seasonal adjustment” trick with climate scientists?

Yes? Hmm, I should have guessed.

Despite the farcical forecasts of government economists, Columbia journalism students, and assorted illiterate money scribblers of all varieties, this is not the best recession in the history of mankind, although history might dub it the Greatest Recession.

The best recession in the history of mankind would be a recession minus Barack Obama as president of United States.

The best recession in the history of mankind would be a recession that finally rights the American economy.

The best recession in the history of mankind would be one in which the Federal Reserve does not contend that the pee in the punchbowl is, um... the punch.

Nothing more adequately exemplifies the bankruptcy of our fiscal and monetary policies- and dare I say moral?- than the effort by the Federal Reserve and politicians to continue to pump more useless money into our system.

What has this money bought us?

Just debt financing for the political class that needs more and more of it to keep their con going.

And that’s why it’s harder to get real, honest money to make real, honest returns.

“Today, at $56 trillion and counting,” says the world’s largest money manager PIMCO’s Bill Gross, regarding American credit markets, “it is a monster that requires perpetually increasing amounts of fuel, a supernova star that expands and expands, yet, in the process begins to consume itself. Each additional dollar of credit seems to create less and less heat. In the 1980s, it took four dollars of new credit to generate $1 of real GDP. Over the last decade, it has taken $10, and since 2006, $20 to produce the same result.”

It’s hard to argue with that.

If government spending was the answer to our problems we would have entered a golden age long ago. As it is, our spending binge has only helped gold replace the dollar as a place of safety in the world.

During the Cold War, when two monolithic civilizations stared each other down over the tips of warheads that contained enough energy to destroy civilization many times over, investors looked to the dollar for the safety and freedom it provided.

Who knew back then that the only thing we had to fear was in not fearing ourselves enough?

Generations before us thought they fought for our freedoms.

The only free thing we care about now is “free” money. And that’s a freedom we can’t afford.

[cuban leaf]

Hey, the stock market’s up and housing prices are up! That’s really great economic news according to NPR.

I remember the latter used to be bad news. Also, when both are up at the same time, the implication is that neither is up. Rather, the unit of measurement is down - the dollar.

Would this be good news if you were a young person aspiring to purchase a home?

[CommieCutter]

I remember listening to the AP wire just about every single day GWB was president. And I don’t ever remember jobless claims reduction being cited as positive news.

I always remember the jobs increases being 150K to 250k a month which was good but the the AP ALWAYS inserted the caveat of concerned economists.

The other one they (the AP) always pulled was if there was 201,000 jobs created in one month they’d say that economists were expecting 220,000 for the month. There was always a negative spin.

Now, if there is 1.4% growth in GDP, they will cite housing numbers or something like that for positive spin.

It’s truly criminal what they’ve done.

Plus, I thought I read somewhere that China was buying a lot of these houses fueling the newest surge thanks to excess dollars. If true, that’s hilarious for liberals to point to this surge because they’re always complaining about China like it’s a Republican exclusive.