by Damozel | Even the Bush Administration admits it. Marc Zandi, "chief economist"---there's a chief economist?---and Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, both agree that a large number of states have arrived.(ABC News)
The Council of Economic Advisers is that group of economic boffins that gets to decide when it's time to call the recession a Recession. ""We are seeing what I think anyone would characterize as a recession in certain parts of the country," Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said on CNN's "Late Edition."(ABC News)
Good for them for finally catching up with us here in Florida. Everyone here knew about the recession back in March, when they were still not quite sure. Back in March, Marc Zandi (chief economist) said Florida was one of only five states in a recession. (ABC News) Now it's 27, with 14 "dangerously close."
ABC sensibly asks what's changed. This:
The job market has eroded measurably and industrial production has weakened sharply in the last couple of months. Those are the two key things. The other thing is that retail sales have also sharply weakened," Zandi said...
David Wyss, managing director and chief economist at Standard & Poor's, said the worst problems are in the old rust belt, Michigan being the worst hit. The state now has the highest unemployment in the country.
"The recession began, really, with the housing sector and then also very quickly with automobiles," Wyss said. "The states that have been hardest hit have been the manufacturing states, in large part because of what happened with cars."...
Now the recession is spreading to other states where the housing bubble never burst. For instance, Wyss said, the Boeing strike is starting to drag down Washington state's economy and spread over into Oregon.(ABC News)
But! Some states are still doing okay. Come on, folks, don't lag behind! Join the party!
Just kidding.
The one bright side is part of the middle of the country. Agriculture and energy are still strong and providing jobs.
Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire are still growing and that is because of health care and educational services...
"The exception is the part of the country between the Mississippi River and the Rockies, which is still doing pretty well," he said. "High farm prices are good if you are in Iowa. High oil prices are good if you are in Houston."....
[T]he economy still is very regional and industry-specific.
"It always varies. Even during the Great Depression, there were people that hardly felt it," [Peter] Morici [economics professor at the University of Maryland] said. "Recessions and depressions always have varying effects on people and locations."...
Agriculture is doing well because of ethanol development and a growing demand for grains by people in Asia. (ABC News)
Reading between the lines, things are going better in states that actually produce stuff that people want. For example, "the financial sector" in New York isn't doing well because people don't want to buy their instruments signifying imaginary wealth anymore.
Who knew that a nation's wealth could be tied to its productivity (in the sense of "producing something"?) Who knew that letting American industry out-source the nation's jobs to the far east without penalty or hindrance would impoverish the areas where the jobs disappeared?
I did; that's who. It happened in my hometown. That's why Obama's wish to stop giving tax breaks to companies that do that really resonated with me.
Stormy at Angry Bear wrote a great piece a couple of weeks ago that discussed the reality underlying our hard times in bleak and pragmatic prose comprehensible even to an ignorant layperson like I am.
As one of my friends used to say, "I don't know it, but I feel it." And---hell; we're all Americans here, aren't we? For us, feeling is almost as good as knowing, yeah? Anyway, here's the word on how we got here from someone who knows:
[W]e loved our financial institutions; revered the golden boys that hauled in the big bonuses. Manufacturing and production of real goods had no glamour, no pizzazz.
If anyone talked of seriously addressing the issue of trade, they were immediately dismissed as dangerous tariff-mongers--as if tariffs were the only way to redress the trade problem. Any talk of penalizing our own companies for off-shoring was considered quite unfashionable. Instead, free traders talked about Americans becoming more competitive, as if the U.S. worker could compete with dirt cheap, unprotected labor in third world countries. And, yes, China is a third world country....[F]ree traders talked about how better education would solve everything, as if anyone could become a financier, a physicist, or a well-paid economist.
As I have said repeatedly, globalization as it has been structured has been a disaster. The two most poisonous events were NAFTA and China's entry into the WTO. Neither included any of the labor or environmental standards its opponents rightly wanted.
That our trade deficit ballooned after these two events is not accidental....Manufacturing and real investment went to China and other emerging countries. America was left with an empty shell in manufacturing and a shameful, deceptive investment strategy we now call the housing bubble....
Has anyone in this government or the last spoken honestly about trade? No country can indefinitely continue to buy goods from abroad. America has maxed out its credit card. It has no way to repay the debt. It has nothing to trade. Its great industries went elsewhere. Its captains of industry knew where the bread would be buttered. They fashioned the WTO. Ask IBM's Palisano, ask Walmart, ask Dell, ask Intell, ask Delphi, ask any of them: the furniture industry, the pharmaceuticals where they want their labor force...
Didn't anyone suspect that no country can continue to borrow--and, as real cash becomes problematical--to rely on credit cards and subprime mortgages-- as if money and wealth grew inside banks and on trees?
Didn't any suspect that trade and production are essential to a nation's wealth? (emphasis added) (Angry Bear)
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