Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz supports realists who argue for more stimulus. His argument gets an able assist from most other economists.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz said the U.S. recession is "nowhere near" an end and the economy’s third-quarter growth rate of 3.5 percent, the first expansion in more than a year, won’t carry into 2010.
While this week’s figures on gross domestic product are "very good," the numbers would be "miserable" without stimulus measures enacted by the Obama administration, Stiglitz said today at a forum in Shanghai. He urged the U.S. and other countries not to pull back on efforts to shore up economies.
"When we look at if workers can get jobs, if they can work full time, if businesses are able to sell goods they produce, in those terms, we are nowhere near the end of recession" in the U.S., said Stiglitz, 66, the former chief economist at the World Bank. The U.S. job market is still "in very bad shape."
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
Stock markets are gyrating wildly in recent days in reflection of this unresolved argument. But why is this so hard for the V recovery cheerleaders to understand, when surveys of economists indicate a staggering 90% think a job market recovery to 2007 levels won't happen until 2012 or 2013.
A survey by the National Association of Business Economics indicates any job gains won't exceed population growth until the end of next year. That is not a V-shaped recovery and it DOES indicate a jobless recovery.
The latest economy cheerleading diary, which gives a false impression of the state of the economy and which is in turn sends a dangerous message to families trying to plan their next moves in this ruthless economy, was making a case that the economy won't be a jobless recovery. Mostly the diarist in question is trying to prove that they "are right" to use their wording and they don't make any coherent argument supported by real economists.
That argument ignores the realities of job outsourcing and globalization, not to mention, again, what real economists are saying.
According to a survey by the National Association of Business Economics, the consensus forecast of 44 top economists is for an addition of only 12,000 jobs a month in the first quarter of next year.
The economists surveyed also indicated they don't expect monthly job gains to top the 150,000 level -- which is generally thought of as what is needed to keep pace with population growth -- until the end of 2010.
And in the most troubling sign, more than a half of the economists surveyed said they didn't expect a recovery to pre-recession levels in the job market until 2012 while a third said they didn't believe a full job recovery would occur until 2013 or beyond. There are number of reasons for this pessimism.
http://money.cnn.com/...
My bold.
We will be in this mess for a long time because we just barely averted a second Great Depression and like the first Great Depression, we will be dealing with the consequences of the excesses of the rich and their Republican Party protectors for a long time.
It's hard to ignore what real economists are saying.