If it feels like the recession never ended, that’s because economic growth is so low we’re practically in a recession right now.
The Commerce Department this morning reported its initial estimate for economic growth from April to June: an annualized rate of 1.3 percent, which is still less than half the long-term trend, two years after the recession officially ended.
But what shouldn’t be overshadowed by that poor number is the downward revision of growth from January to March to a paltry annualized rate of 0.4 percent — from an earlier estimate of 1.9 percent, which was bad enough but now seems like President Obama’s version of the Roaring Twenties. There were also smaller downward revisions to figures for the last two quarters of 2010, and four of the last six quarters overall.
In short, even the meager growth previously reported has been revised downward to the less-rosy reality Americans have been experiencing all along.
These figures represent inflation-adjusted growth. The unadjusted figures were 3.1 percent in the first quarter and 3.7 percent in the second. That means higher prices have swallowed up just about all of the economic gains this year. (Not-so-fun fact: While the debt ceiling has dominated the news cycle recently, gas prices nationwide have crept back up by almost 17 cents a gallon during the last month and are almost back to being $1/gallon higher than a year ago.)
The growth the Federal Reserve has tried to stimulate through its easy monetary policies has been consumed by the inflation those policies have wrought. The growth Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Congress tried to stimulate through timid tax cuts, gifts to state governments and not-so-shovel-ready public works has not only failed to multiply itself as promised, but simply evaporated.
And new, lasting growth is not going to come as long as the president is determined to browbeat business, punish success, build a permanently larger public sector, suck the middle class into the welfare state, and otherwise impose his notion of fairness as national economic policy.
If you believe otherwise, you haven’t been paying attention the last two and a half years.
– By Kyle Wingfield
111 comments Add your comment
Linda
July 29th, 2011
8:14 pm
The debate going on in DC right now has relatively nothing to do with raising the debt ceiling. It has everything to do with the future of the US, our ability to exist as a country.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
July 29th, 2011
8:19 pm
Boehner 4.0 should be a freeze of spending at current levels. It’s easier for the Obozo voters to understand and it cuts more spending than any plans offered to date.
John Konop
July 29th, 2011
9:38 pm
We cannot fix the problem unless we are all honest about the math. The solution is simple when you look at the mess. Cut military and entailments and raise tax revenues by 4 %. I would rather see this done by a lower flat tax and eliminate write offs
….. CM: Bruce Bartlett is former Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary under the first George Bush and a policy adviser to Ronald Reagan. Bottom line, let’s look at the numbers right now. We’ve got a chart coming up. This shows the Bush tax cuts were responsible for increasing the debts. Now, we have about a $14 trillion debt right now, half came out since the turn of the century, and more than 40% of that has been from tax cuts.
BB: That’s right. When Bush took office, we had a debt of about $6 trillion. The projections from the CBO were that we were going to run a $6 trillion surplus. By this point, if we had done nothing, we would have paid off the dead debt, but we added about $3 trillion of tax cuts. We lost about $3 trillion of revenue because of the slower economy and added about $6 trillion of spending, largely due to two unfinished wars and a Medicare drug benefits and a lot of other things. So, instead of getting — paying off the debt–we ended up with about a $14 trillion debt.
CM: Some of these clowns, not all of them, running around saying Barack Obama is a Socialist, he drove up the national debt to $14 trillion and dance around in a circle and congratulate each other. That’s not true.
BB: No, i think the dirty secret is that Obama is a moderate conservative. If I were a liberal democrat, I probably would be upset.
CM: The point is a $1 trillion debt, and another poring (?) is from the prescription drug bill. The whole rest of that is from a lousy economy under Bush and these two wars he came up with.
BB: That’s right. The Republicans keep saying the tax cuts are the key to prosperity. The 2000s are evidence that that is not true. We had booming economies in the 1980s and ’90s. If we went back to those taxes, we would be better off.
CM: What is the argument against the kind of tax policy– let’s just say it again. It seems like a heck of a great economy with the tax rate of about 39.6, as opposed to 35?……..
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
July 29th, 2011
10:30 pm
BB: No, i think the dirty secret is that Obama is a moderate conservative.
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There’s your sign.
independent thinker
July 30th, 2011
7:09 am
The tea bag zealots claim they want to reduce federal spending but none of them or the Republicans in general want to to touch the waste in military spending. The following is a prime example of what happens when you give cart blanche to the military(as part of Sant Ronnie’s deficit spending on an arms race with the Soviets for unnecessary military weapons later scrapped}:
“”"”"”"”"”"In the era of massive belt-tightening budget cuts, the story of two never-completed, unused Navy ships now being sent to the scrap heap after costing U.S. taxpayers $300 million is a case study in Pentagon waste.
Requisitioned by the U.S. Navy in 1985, the two oil-hauling ships, the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford, “have never gone on a mission, were never even completed, yet they cost taxpayers at least $300 million,” the Virginia-Pilot’s Scott Harper reports.
Now the “ghost ships” are headed from their dock on the James River in Virginia to a Texas scrap yard to be dismantled, Harrop writes. And there’s one more catch–the United States awarded a $10 million contract to dismantle four ships, including the Eckford and the Isherwood, to a UK firm, so no money from the reclamation will return to the United States.
The two vessels were part of a $567 million request for three oilers put out by the Navy, Harrop writes. But the builder, Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Co. in Philadelphia, defaulted on the contract in 1989. A Florida firm contracted to finish the ships cancelled the contract over price disputes in 1993. The ships are now being scrapped, rather than refurbished, because they do not meet modern specs. “”"”
That and over 1000 military bases creates an ongoing drain on the economy to fund the never satisfied military industrial complex. You would think world War II never ended. So how much of this bloated military budget is being cut?? zero.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
July 30th, 2011
7:13 am
So how much of this bloated military budget is being cut?? zero.
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News flash: It’s 2011. Your Idiot Messiah has been in office going on three years. He had a Democrat House and Senate for the first two years. If zero has been cut, put the blame where it belongs.
Hypocrite.
GHWB
July 30th, 2011
4:17 pm
And new, lasting growth is not going to come as long as the president is determined to browbeat business, punish success, build a permanently larger public sector, suck the middle class into the welfare state, and otherwise impose his notion of fairness as national economic policy.
Wow, That has to be some of the most subjective bull crap I think I’ve ever read. If you were more interested in the use of objective analysis in lieu of subjective hyperbole, you might actually show some promise of being something more than a hack. By the way, how are those ad revenues coming along. Anything for a buck, eh. I’m sure you would make Murdoch proud if you could only get his attention.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
July 30th, 2011
7:52 pm
“you would make Murdoch proud if you could only get his attention”
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I guess you missed Kyle’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
July 30th, 2011
7:55 pm
After Carter’s disastrous regime, Reagan turned the economy around and economic growth was 5-9% for the next two years.
Your Idiot Messiah’s recovery, two years and counting, is utterly pathetic by comparison. Given the horrible recession you libtards pretend we had, the ensuing recovery should have been quite strong. There are reasons it isn’t, and Kyle summarized them quite nicely in his penultimate paragraph.
Idiot Messiah: Loser.
Junior Samples
August 1st, 2011
12:02 pm
it will be hard for an empty suit like obama to get elected again.
in the last election it was a stupid little slogan like hope and change (along with being african-american) .
surely we’ve learned our lesson. knowing the gop though probably not
LOU
August 3rd, 2011
7:36 pm
VOTE REPUBLICAN – Cut the poor, sick, and elderly programs.[they drain our economy]…. Support tax cuts for Billionaires, Oil Companies, and Wall Street Moguls….after all, they provide us with lobbying money! End Medicare, Medicaid, & Social Security for everyone but Us. Stop Government spending except in our districts. Finally, destroy the economy & blame it on the Dems so we get elected to help the upper class out of their slump. SOMEONE NEEDS TO PUT THIS ON A BILLBOARD