The Great Recession of 2011-2012
Feb 25, 2010 6:47:57 GMT -5
Post by avordvet on Feb 25, 2010 6:47:57 GMT -5
The Great Recession of 2011-2012
By James Srodes from the February 2010 issue
Are you ready for the Great Recession of 2011–2012? You should be, for it is getting under way even as you read this. Just as the 2009 “greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression” actually began back in 2007, so we are in the early days of the next cycle. Only this recession is going to be a doozy. And the aftershocks will be felt long after President Hillary Clinton leaves the White House in 2024.
The coming crisis should be no surprise, for we all have had plenty of advance warning. If it is a surprise, blame those chat-show economists who have become so politicized that they ignore the truths of their own science in order to acquire celebrity. Nor should we forget those politicians who deliberately suborn national interest for the security of zero-sum pork-barrel politicking. Combine it all with a news media largely made up of self-referential ignoramuses and it is small wonder that most of the world has been diverted as Dorothy was in Oz by the lightning bolts, explosions, and billowing smoke screen being generated by the men behind the curtain. The truth is our wizards dare not admit that the levers they pull are not really connected to the true crisis that confronts America or its place in the global market.
Despite the self-congratulatory assurances from the White House, Congress, and part of Wall Street that we have been saved from a slide into a 1930s depression, our most serious trials still lie ahead of us. We are unlikely to be able to get back to those halcyon days of perpetual prosperity and optimism that Americans (and most of the industrial world) enjoyed for the last 50 years. A tectonic shift is occurring beneath our feet and the world’s economic climate has shifted. We face not just a few abrasive years of getting back to normal, but a generational hard slog of constricted markets, limited resources, and rolling setbacks. And in each episode of crisis, some will prosper, the weak will suffer most, and radical visions propounded by political snake-oil salesmen of all persuasions will make rational discourse nearly impossible to conduct.
This is not to say that the Apocalypse is upon us, as morally satisfying as that might be to some. Nothing so dramatic is going to happen. The future offers no therapeutic collapse of civilization, with roaming bands prowling the rubble for Soylent Green. Folks will try to live just the way they have been but those lives will be more pinched, the opportunities more limited; caution and bitterness will replace the open-handed optimism that made it a wonder to be a 20th-century American, or even a Western European. If the stolid Swiss now quake at the sight of a minaret in Zurich, it is just one of the many new worries for all of us to fret over in the years to come. Civil privileges now considered “rights” will be up for renegotiation.
One has to feel a twinge of sympathy for the people who have chosen careers of service in government—not just in Washington but in all the capitals of the industrial West. Life just is not going to be as uplifting as it once was back when policy innovations were both credible and idealistic. But it must be especially hard for the crowd of wizards in Washington these days. Building consensus is hard when no one will talk to anyone else. Little wonder then that so much of the dramatic rescue being claimed by the White House in reality turns out to be merely putting rouge on the patient’s cheeks and exclaiming how well the poor soul looks.
Underscoring the difficulty in charting a new economic course is the truth that the government’s own statistics have become so distorted by age and the dynamics of change that they really don’t reflect the depth of the crisis that is upon us. So the wizards continue to twiddle the levers of stimulus and regulatory rules changes without realizing that the dials and barometers have long ago broken connection with what is going on. Houston, we have a problem...
Continue Reading: spectator.org/archives/2010/02/23/the-great-recession-of-2011-20
By James Srodes from the February 2010 issue
Are you ready for the Great Recession of 2011–2012? You should be, for it is getting under way even as you read this. Just as the 2009 “greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression” actually began back in 2007, so we are in the early days of the next cycle. Only this recession is going to be a doozy. And the aftershocks will be felt long after President Hillary Clinton leaves the White House in 2024.
The coming crisis should be no surprise, for we all have had plenty of advance warning. If it is a surprise, blame those chat-show economists who have become so politicized that they ignore the truths of their own science in order to acquire celebrity. Nor should we forget those politicians who deliberately suborn national interest for the security of zero-sum pork-barrel politicking. Combine it all with a news media largely made up of self-referential ignoramuses and it is small wonder that most of the world has been diverted as Dorothy was in Oz by the lightning bolts, explosions, and billowing smoke screen being generated by the men behind the curtain. The truth is our wizards dare not admit that the levers they pull are not really connected to the true crisis that confronts America or its place in the global market.
Despite the self-congratulatory assurances from the White House, Congress, and part of Wall Street that we have been saved from a slide into a 1930s depression, our most serious trials still lie ahead of us. We are unlikely to be able to get back to those halcyon days of perpetual prosperity and optimism that Americans (and most of the industrial world) enjoyed for the last 50 years. A tectonic shift is occurring beneath our feet and the world’s economic climate has shifted. We face not just a few abrasive years of getting back to normal, but a generational hard slog of constricted markets, limited resources, and rolling setbacks. And in each episode of crisis, some will prosper, the weak will suffer most, and radical visions propounded by political snake-oil salesmen of all persuasions will make rational discourse nearly impossible to conduct.
This is not to say that the Apocalypse is upon us, as morally satisfying as that might be to some. Nothing so dramatic is going to happen. The future offers no therapeutic collapse of civilization, with roaming bands prowling the rubble for Soylent Green. Folks will try to live just the way they have been but those lives will be more pinched, the opportunities more limited; caution and bitterness will replace the open-handed optimism that made it a wonder to be a 20th-century American, or even a Western European. If the stolid Swiss now quake at the sight of a minaret in Zurich, it is just one of the many new worries for all of us to fret over in the years to come. Civil privileges now considered “rights” will be up for renegotiation.
One has to feel a twinge of sympathy for the people who have chosen careers of service in government—not just in Washington but in all the capitals of the industrial West. Life just is not going to be as uplifting as it once was back when policy innovations were both credible and idealistic. But it must be especially hard for the crowd of wizards in Washington these days. Building consensus is hard when no one will talk to anyone else. Little wonder then that so much of the dramatic rescue being claimed by the White House in reality turns out to be merely putting rouge on the patient’s cheeks and exclaiming how well the poor soul looks.
Underscoring the difficulty in charting a new economic course is the truth that the government’s own statistics have become so distorted by age and the dynamics of change that they really don’t reflect the depth of the crisis that is upon us. So the wizards continue to twiddle the levers of stimulus and regulatory rules changes without realizing that the dials and barometers have long ago broken connection with what is going on. Houston, we have a problem...
Continue Reading: spectator.org/archives/2010/02/23/the-great-recession-of-2011-20