I have some thoughts on Bill Clinton’s nonsense, over at PJMedia.
A commenter over there makes a good point. If you look at the curve of the current “recovery, it does appear that it started to rebound symmetrically, but something happened to cause it to stall out. His theory is that it was the passage of ObamaCare. I think that’s a good guess.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related thoughts from Jen Rubin:
If you had been dropped from outer space into the Democratic National Convention, you would have thought that we enjoyed full employment, reduced poverty and stared down Iran, leaving us with deeply important issues like paying for birth control for grown women. You would have thought that a large majority of Americans weren’t sympathetic to Israel and weren’t religious. You’d have thought that the federal government had money to burn and no looming debt crisis. You would never have thought that Obama had signed a “historic” health-care bill. And you’d have thought that the political heavyweight in the Obama household was Michelle. (Well, you might have been right about the last one.)
But knowing that the America of 2012 is so very different than the convention portrait, it’s worth asking how the Democrats’ convention became so divorced from reality.
As she says, it’s been a long time coming.
let’s not pretend that Obama’s policies are producing an inconsistent result with their intended outcomes.
Says it all for me.
Note also that in each case, the curves are symmetric, that is, the slope of the recovery was about the same steepness as the decline, except for the present one, in which we had a sharp and deep job loss, and a very shallow recovery.
None of the others were triggered by a financial crisis (historically the hardest to recover from), or a housing bubble (which keeps housing construction from leading the recovery), and none of the others were nearly as deep.
His theory is that it was the passage of ObamaCare. I think that’s a good guess.
I.e. a policy that you don’t like for other reasons. How very insightful.
Perhaps it’s worth noting that the spike/stall in the job numbers lines up with the hiring and laying off of hundreds of thousands of 2010 census workers? Or would Occam’s Razor be better satisfied by a theory wherein signing a law with major economic effects starting in 2014 causes an immediate fall-off in hiring in 2010?
By the way, what’s with the capital “C” in ObamaCare?
Hows this for insight on Obamacare/unemployment, I know for a fact there are businesses who refuse to hire a 50th person that they could use solely because doing so would make them subject to more Obamacare regulations. How do I know? The owners told me so, and I know that these same business owners are turning away work they could do were they to hire additional labor. They would rather remain at their present business size rather than deal with more Obamacare BS.
The employer mandate takes effect in 2014. You’re arguing that companies stopped hiring in 2010 because they didn’t want to pay the penalty in 2014 (and they were sure, unlike the rest of the world, that the mandate would survive the Supreme Court and the 2012 election)?
That isn’t Occam’s Razor; it’s Rube Goldberg’s.
Maybe they don’t want to fire people, downsize their business, and tell customers and suppliers they will no longer be working with them when all the regulations kick in. Easiest to not get in the situation in the first place.
It is interesting that Obama always has things kick in after his first or potentially second term, he doesn’t want to be held accountable for his decisions.
Yes, it’s called a “hiring freeze.” It’s the latest sensation! I’ve dropped my front-end by 25%. Bookings remain strong, but controlling overhead and reducing head-count is more important at the moment.
“You’re arguing that companies stopped hiring in 2010” – JIm
Did I mention 2010? I’m talking about this year, 2012. No more hiring as long as Obamacare stands / Obama is in office. That is the order from the president of one company I’m very familiar with and there are others I know of who’ve issued similar orders (although some don’t state the reason publicly).
And as “wodun” stated, these companies can’t get back to below 50 employees on a whim. Once multi-year contracts are signed they’re obligated to fulfill them, and doing so would require not letting people go to get below 50.
You don’t have to believe this, I don’t expect you to believe anything that fails to fall in line with your ingrained leftist belief system. But it just happens to be true regardless.
The tech bubble burst and the destruction of our financial center on 9/11 were financial crisis.
The 1973 recession was also partly financial and partly real estate (particularly in the UK).
Perhaps it’s worth noting that the spike/stall in the job numbers lines up with the hiring and laying off of hundreds of thousands of 2010 census workers? Or would Occam’s Razor be better satisfied by a theory wherein signing a law with major economic effects starting in 2014 causes an immediate fall-off in hiring in 2010?
The latter. The Census was a very predictable and minor event. Obamacare not only had major repercussions for the near future (not just in 2014), but it indicated that other ill-thought legislation could be passed, creating huge uncertainty for future hiring.
So what your saying, Jim; when Obama (and I remember Gerrib trumpeting it in the comments around here too) that Recovery Summer™ had begun; he was lying. Because we knew then that the slight spike in job growth was a large hiring of census workers. The ARRA really did nothing, and there is no Keynesian multiplier effect from digging a hole and filling it in, like the Democrats claimed.
Occum’s Razor, right Jim?
I think Obama underestimated the ongoing effects of the housing market collapse in 2010, just as he underestimated the depth of the economic disaster in early 2009. That isn’t a lie, but it’s a mistake that hurt a lot of people.
The ARRA really did nothing, and there is no Keynesian multiplier effect from digging a hole and filling it in, like the Democrats claimed.
Virtually every study done on the subject concludes that things would have been much worse without the ARRA. As for Keynesian multipliers, Romney and Ryan are touring the country complaining about all the jobs we’ll lose if the sequester’s defense spending cuts go through. When they’re being honest, both parties believe in Keynesian stimulus.
Obama didn’t realize the magnitude of problems with the economy when he became President? The same guy who spent the previous four years saying it was the worst economy since ever? So Obama was just saying these things but didn’t believe them and was totally unprepared for what was common knowledge when he came to office. Yup, sounds like the Obama I know.
For Obama’s Keynesian stimulus to work, it would require follow-on benefits from increasing the efficiency of transportation and lowering the costs of energy (because it was mostly transportation/energy projects), thus lowering production and transportation costs and spurring more trade. But that can’t happen if transportation and energy costs are determined by fuel prices, and gas prices doubled and most other fuel prices went up becuase of Obama’s policies. The only things that have kept our performance from being even worse is the severity of the recession itself, which reduced consumption, and lower natural gas prices because of a technology that Obama hasn’t been able to stop yet, despite his best efforts at doing so.
However, the DNC convention pointed to a way out of this mess by shifting our economy to the gay wedding industry, using birth control pills as currency instead of dollars, and putting carpenters and tradesmen back to work building doll-houses for aborted fetuses.
and none of the others were nearly as deep.
The whole point Jim. The deeper the bottom, the steeper the recovery. Look at ’75 and ’82 and compare with ’92 and ’02. I think that graph is more damning than the employment/stimulus one Glenn likes.
And… the census??? Something that happens every 10 years? You’re grasping Jim. With an anemically weak grip.
There’s a reason recoveries are usually as steep as their decline. The underlying assets don’t change. Recessions happen because people are afraid to spend. Recoveries happen because people are no longer afraid to spend.
Obama, even before he was elected, added fear to our economy. Watch how fast it bounces back after he’s gone.
Personally, I’m just tired of excuses. Jim has joined the cult – the rapture is always just around the corner for the true believers, as they watch each prophesied date go whizzing by.
As soon as I saw the topic and read the post, I figured: “Uh-oh, any minute “Baghdad Jim” will be checking in to tell us, “The recovery is doing fine! Statism always produces prosperity! Keep the faith!”
Soon Chris (“Chip Diller”) Gerrib will be showing up telling us not to panic even if it LOOKS like the economy is going down the tubes.
Not exactly related but humorous. I received this via email:
How do you tell a Romney supporter from a Obama supporter?
Romney supporters sign their checks on the front, and Obama supporters sign their checks on the back.
Excellent PJMedia column, BTW.
As usual people like to attack FDR without taking a comprehensive look at why the economy recovered in the way it did.
The issues Obama is faced with are many and it will not be with more Fed cash injections that they will get solved. Industry and infrastructure matter. The “solution” used last time to prop up the economy with housing construction inevitably led to a situation where the citizenry got unable to pay their loans and sent the whole house of cards falling down. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out getting people 2nd and 3rd houses will not raise the GDP in a significant way. I used to point this all the time back then over here but people kept laughing at me that I was an idiot for not getting into a loan to buy a house and a car. Whatever. I am one of those guys which bought their car with cash and does not borrow from other people and is now being made to pay for the follies these guys did. I can understand why they fell for it but they had to see it coming. Had we just let the banks go bankrupt and use the FDIC in the US and the equivalents that exist here in the EU this mess would have solved itself in a couple of years like with the S&L crisis. Instead the moneyed interests convinced the governments to bail them out and we get this perpetual malaise.
Regarding US unemployment try checking the rate in 1982.
And, then, check it out two years later. That’s the problem we have right now. There is no improvement. No light at the end of the tunnel. We can blame this or that until the cows come home, but the bottom line is, how are we going to fix it? Because, right now, we’re not.
The idea that the Clinton presidency caused prosperity is a good example of the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. Which may be why the State-humpers use it. Those guys take to logical fallacies the way winos take to Ripple.