The Constitution Party of Tennessee

It’s time to break out that bottle of good champagne you’ve been saving for a special occasion or whatever else you may use to celebrate great news. The recession is over.

Let me say it again, the recession is over and that’s official.

An almost 10 percent unemployment rate, millions of homes in foreclosure, bankruptcies at an all-time high all mean nothing, because the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has declared the recession over.

What gives the NBER, a private research group of economists, the right to make such a pronouncement? Well, they are the ones who get to decide because they know all kinds of stuff that we don’t know.

Actually, the recession is not only over, but it has been over since June of 2009. June of 2009 is when the recovery began.

You may be one of those doubters, but just listen to the definition and you will believe:

A recession begins with at least two quarters of falling economic growth, and it ends when Gross Domestic Product (GDP) returns to growth, no matter how small. GDP hit a minus 0.7 percent in June of 2009 and then recovered to 1.6 percent.

It has been in decline in 2010 at a rate that makes job growth impossible. When attacked for saying the recession is over, the folks at NBER said “we are only saying things started to get better in June 2009, not that times are good.”

Many people apparently agree that times are not good.

According to a recent article in the Nashville Tennessean, news of the recession’s end will come as a shock to the 7,232 Tennesseans who filed new unemployment claims last week. The Tennessean went on to say, “It may be over, but you won’t be hearing any cheers from the millions of Americans who are struggling to find a job. Or have lost their homes. Or are behind on the mortgage.”

Many others don’t believe the recession is over, either. I would count among them the more than 40 million Americans who subsist on food stamps. I would also count the millions who have part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time work and the millions who are no longer counted because they have given up and quit looking.

What is the Federal Reserve’s and the government’s answer to a stalling economy? Why, more of what is not working, of course.

Is it possible to make the American economy even worse? Why yes, of course it is. I mean more billions of debt poured down the hole as stimulus, but what exactly is there to stimulate? What is the government trying to boost? Perhaps the workers in China and India appreciate the taxpayers of America stimulating their jobs so they can compete more effectively against Americans. Since manufacturing has been exported and an underclass of workers has been imported, there is nothing left to stimulate.

In one sense I agree that there is no recession. I can see that argument and it makes sense to me. There is no recession because this is just what globalism looks like. It is our normal condition now, and if we want to change we will have to work decades to do so. That is the argument presented so well by Jerome Corsi in his book America for Sale. How can we sign free trade agreements which destroy manufacturing and family farms and expect anything other than what we’ve got?

Even the President doesn’t think the recession is over. During a recent town hall meeting, he declared the recession to be very real for those unemployed. He went on to say that since he inherited such a deep hole, it will take time to dig out. Maybe it will take time, but we can busy ourselves by digging that hole so deep that all the debt in the world will not allow us to climb out.

Debt is the problem, not the solution. I wish the President understood that. He could attack our debt and at least begin the de-leveraging process, which would bring temporary pain but long-term recovery. Instead we will continue our slow slide into mediocrity, and eventually collapse.

What kind of nation will we be after the collapse? Will we even be a nation? Nobody seems to know.

- Darrell Castle