If the economy is so bad...

Here are a few informational charts for your information:

reply to post by spaznational


These figures, while interesting to say the least, do not tell the whole story. It is alot more complicated than a few charts from California. I recommend you read the entire Global Meltdown forum so you can see some of the things we're worried about here.

reply to post by spaznational


Well, Ive been around for almost a half a century now.

In the '70s, leading up to the years in your last chart, I remember waiting for hours in gas lines, IF we could find a station that actually had Any gas.

1981, under President Ronald Regan, was just the beginning of what became a VERY Comfortable decade.

There ya' go young'n

this is all a big pile of baloney IMO.. yeah things are bad but it's being exaggerated big time since they really want you to feel the pain of the bigwigs falling down due to the shoddy, inconsiderate and nefarious financial system they set up after the last depression. karma is a kicker!

[edit on 23-2-2009 by kronos11]

And it has a big foot and is kicking us all in the nuts. Including many of the rich. Be careful because class warfare is not the way to go on this one.

reply to post by atoms.2008
And do not forget the free government cheese man!
If I remember rite they used to hand out free government cheese , bread and fruit in the 80's!
My parents stood in line for it because they were out of work and we needed food.
It was about 30% unemployment in my area in the 80's.
Nothing like nowadays though.
And the same crap was being said back then, as is being said nowadays about a coming global depression.

The comparisons aren't what you think. In the 1980's we had runaway inflation and although the prime rate was sky high, real wages and asset values were being inflated at the same rate or higher. Now we have the opposite, deflation of assets and income - your housing sales charts show increased purchases but LOOK at the prices. The median home price in Florida gas dropped $60K and in California $200K. In the 80's you paid 18% for a 30 year mortgage but your house appreciated at around the same rate, now you pay 6% but your house depreciated 30 - 50% last year. Unemployment numbers are also skewed, because in the 80's they reported it as one total number, now it's broken into 3 categories - U1, U2, U3. U3 is the total of all categories of unemployed and is around 14.5% now I think.

Things were NOT worse in the 80's, it was an inflationary period and the debt was shrinking (relative to asset values and income). What we're facing now is DEflation and assets and income are shrinking while debt is expanding. You can control inflation by raising the prime lending rate until it becomes restrictive and curbs growth, you can control deflation by lowering the prime rate until it promotes growth. But the effective federal funds rate is now at 0.0 - 0.25%. ZERO. That means we fall down go boom.

reply to post by mythatsabigprobe


You are right. I've been researching all of this for a paper on the TARP (I was assigned to find out if it had succeeded or failed.... ) and the more I read into this, the more it I find it similar to what happened to Japan in the 1980's, but bigger and compounded by the government's high debt.

Another interesting thought is that one of the reasons why the economy feels bad is because (at least to my generation in college) we have never had to go through times like these. Sure the period around 9/11 was painful, but that's it in our memory. When you go through almost a decade of growth, the downside of that hill feels even more painful, even if it shouldn't.

Originally posted by mythatsabigprobe
Now we have the opposite, deflation of assets and income - your housing sales charts show increased purchases but LOOK at the prices. The median home price in Florida gas dropped $60K and in California $200K. In the 80's you paid 18% for a 30 year mortgage but your house appreciated at around the same rate, now you pay 6% but your house depreciated 30 - 50% last year.

Yes, we have price deflation. I actually do understand that the situation today is worse, I was hoping someone such as yourself would post some good info. Thanks.

But, one positive thing that can be gleaned from those carts is that the markets (at least real estate) is functioning properly. Supply and Demand are still relevant so all is not lost. Home sales are going back UP in response to home prices going DOWN. This is as it should be.

Firstly, I think those charts are extremely cherry picked statistics, but even your charts are evidence of disaster. The second one show a increase of sales, but at almost half the median price.

A 40% decrease in home value is a massive loss in wealth for most people, for whom, their house is their bigest asset. Furtermore, why don't you check out this article about the difference between existing home sales this January compared to January 08. The article also has some good charts, more relevent than yours.

Article

[edit on 25-2-2009 by finemanm]