The Recession Ain't Over!
Green Shoots My Ass.
I've been saying for a while now that the so called "Green Shoots" in the economy are a fraud. Newspapers and TV have been reporting how sales figures are going up and how the Recession is over. I'm not even an economist and I can see this all as bullshit. Jobless claims still continue to grow each month meaning more and more americans are out of work. I dont' see how there can be any kind of recovery without new jobs being created. I believe that all the "green shoots" that the news talks about are directrly related to the bailouts and now that there are no new bailouts for the time being we are starting to see a decline in all the numbers again.
The latest numbers for December are in they go against all expectations. While major news media was reporting that Retail sales were expected to rise by 0.5% in December it actually ended up falling by 0.3%.
Also reported was an expected drop in new unemployment benefit claims. That ended up rising as well.
This is all happening with interest rates all all time lows. With the interest rates right now all record lows we should be experiencing at least some kind of moderate growth but yet our economy continues to shrink. Does the government need to keep giving bailouts in order for the economy to show any kind of growth? And if so how many more bailouts can the government afford?
With all the bailout money the government has given out so far every single mortgage in the united states could have been paid off so far. EVER SINGLE MORTGAGE could have been paid off.
With the latest decline in sales for December, 2009 has had the biggest yearly drop and clearly shows that we are still in the greatest recession of the last 7 decades.
Related articles
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100114/D9D7LEG81.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/14/december-retail-sales-dro_n_422986.html