Fed Chairman Bernanke announced today that the recession is over as of the 3rd quarter of 2009.
3rd quarter? Now? Where? When?
How did I miss this miracle recovery ?
The 3rd quarter of this year?
Pinch me so that I can wake up and smell the roses along with the rest of the country.
Excuse me. THERE IS NO RECOVERY!!!!!!!!
Its all a fake aimed at making Americans feel less uneasy about the future.
If we see the truth of how bad the economy truly is, then all of those $ trillion social engineering programs will never get done.
The motivating factor this summer concerning the town hall protests, and the recent tea party express shows the politicians that Americans are afraid of their economic situation, and truly petrified at the direction in which disappearing former prosperity is heading.
Let me be perfectly clear. If you talk to the average American small businessman, you will know that there is no recovery. We are hurting and no one especially the government is helping small business.
All the improvement is directly the result of bailouts. Nothing, not a cent is generic growth, either sustainable or recurrent. NADA!
When subsidies go away, so will the sales. We have used up probably the next 7 or 8 months of auto sales with the cars for clunkers promotion. Great, they were able to get rid of some inventory, and of course auto labor unions were able to keep their members happy, but the general recovery will end with the stimulus.
Our economy is beginning to look similar to the Japanese economy of the past 15-20 years.
When they entered their recession in the early 90’s the Japanese government lowered interest rates to almost 0 % to encourage borrowing. The Japanese people had just come off a disastrous economic fall wiping out almost 50% of their wealth,on their speculative bubble and they did not want to borrow. They wanted to save instead for retirement.
Instead of helping the Japanese people, the net effect of this fiscal policy of low interest rates and economic stimulus , was to encourage speculators from around the world to come to Japanese banks to borrow money at close to 0% interest.
They then used the cheap money to build a factory in China or Brazil or speculate in oil or other commodities.
Japan became the financier of speculation around the world, yet 20 years later their markets and real estate values are still down over 50%.
American banks have plentiful cheap money which they won’t lend to average Americans , who don’t want to borrow and spend anyway. Americans are interested in saving for retirement.
We can only hope that 20 years from now the American fiscal policy won’t be compared to the Japanese fiasco.