Break Out the Champagne

If you listen to business reports you would be convinced that we are in the clover and that flowers a popping up everywhere. Everybody is announcing "the end of the recession" with the implication that things will only go up from here.

Here's a graph from the Calculated Risk website that shows a more honest picture:

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This shows that retail sales have flattened out at about the level of 2001. In other words, any "growth" over the last eight years has been lost.

Maybe the economy will grow from here. Maybe it will stagnate (some talk of a "lost decade" like Japan suffered). But all the jubilation about the "end of the recession" is quite odd.

Sure, there should be relief that the free fall is over. But a sober assessment is that the US economy has lost eight years of growth. It must now slowly rebuild and gain back those lost eight years. How long will it take? Hopefully not eight years. But it might.

In short, the horror of the Bush years has left the country back where it started when Bush took office. He not only brought war, disaster, incompetence, but a collapsed economy with a lost eight years. That is an unmitigated tragedy. Why doesn't the press ever talk about this? Instead, they give us glossy, feel good assessment as if the nightmare was unreal and we have stepped back into sunshine and will pick up where we left off. No. There are eight lost years. And there may be a few more since the economy is not guaranteed to start up with a roar and charge ahead. Things are actually quite grim. Why isn't that "the news"?