Krugman: Employment recovery from Great Recession better than after most historical recoveries

[pampango]

Josh Lehner does something I’ve been meaning to do: he compares US economic performance since the financial crisis with other episodes of major financial crisis. And guess what? We actually look better than most (sorry about the small print):



First of all, it makes immediate nonsense of the talking point that Obama must be doing terrible damage to our economy by threatening universal health care, or looking at businessmen funny, or something. Listening not just to Republican politicians but to a fair number of credentialed economists, you’d think that our protracted economic weakness is a puzzle to be explained – and that it somehow must reflect the alleged leftist tilt of the current administration. In fact, however, protracted weakness is normal after a big financial crisis, and if anything we’re doing better than average, probably thanks to fiscal and monetary stimulus.

That said, we should have done even better: if stimulus works, and the evidence says that it does, we should have done more, and made the slump even shorter and shallower.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/coulda-been-worse/

History and facts will not leave much of an impression on republicans. The main takeaway from this is that a larger stimulus would have been better for the economy than the one we got. Of course, republicans argue that the actual stimulus was a waste of money.

[ProSense]

1. Here's what that chart looked like in Sept. 2011

And here is a point Bill Clinton made at the time (the chart is from this piece):

<...>

Voters may not care, but it’s worth pointing out the truth from time to time anyway. As Bill Clinton explained on “Meet the Press” last weekend, “First of all, he became president just a few months after the financial crash. Now, keep in mind, even before the financial crash, in the eight years before the financial crash, we had almost no new jobs. Only 10% as many as we had when I was president. Real family income was lower than it was the day I left office. The economy was weak as could be. Then you had this financial crash. Historically these things take five years to get over…. The American people are not used to waiting five years for anything good to happen, but that’s what we’re facing. And if you want to speed it up, we got to do things in the government.”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_09/choosing_a_point_of_comparison032411.php

Snapshot last four recessions
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021302622

[ProSense]

2. More Coulda Been Worse Blogging

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/more-coulda-been-worse-blogging/

[treestar]

3. Good information

The economy is recovering and the Republicans claim it is not.