Saturday, September 20, 2014

Is the US in a Recession?

There is a more than 1:1 ratio of people who work for some government agency (or receive full government benefits) to those in the private sector. And it's killing the country.


46% of US consumers say that the US is in a recession. (The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures consumer confidence on a daily basis, lost another point to 94.5 on Friday. Consumer confidence is down three points from a week ago, 10 points from a month ago and eight points from three months ago.) That's interesting as the US heads into the traditional holiday buying season, because it indicates a tepid economy moving into 2015, or more of the same. People don't spend money during a recession because they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. If money doesn't change hands, the economy can't gain any sort of momentum.

Since the Federal Reserve lowered the interest rate that it extends to banks to ZERO, there is really nowhere for it to go. Zero is zero, and it's printing money as fast as it can...even though there is nobody to buy the debt except the Federal Government (as the snake eats its tail). 

While I'm positive that Summer 2015 will be declared to be yet another "Summer of Recovery", I'm not confident that anyone outside the Beltway, where the recession never reached, will see it that way too.

We're ramping up for yet another war (that you're forbidden to call a war) in the endless war cycle of the past three decades. Twenty percent of all American receive food stamps. And ratio of government workers to private workers is only increasing.


2 comments:

WoFat said...

The Dems have moved us into a "Dammed If You Do, Dammed If You Don't" position.

LL said...

Who ever succeeds Barack will have a genuine mess that needs to be untangled. I realize that GW Bush did preside over a recession -- but Barack kept it going.

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