That's a thought. The unemployment figures were much worse* and for much longer during the Reagan recession, underlining the fact that 2010's Congressional Republicans, not Democrats, are responsible for reining in help to small businesses and the unemployed.
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*This came from Jerry Seib of the Wall Street Journal this morning. I had to wait till the audio was available to transcribe his actual words and numbers. They're not pretty.
A little context here. You know this was bound to be bad. This is a serious recession here the country's trying to pull out of. This is now 16 straight months of unemployment at or above 9% and that's terrible. But if you think back, last time there was a recession like this in 1981-83 there was 9.5% unemployment for 19 straight months. From the time that recession started in July of '81 until the recovery and unemployment got back to where it started, 35 months had passed. It took three years to get unemployment back to where it started in that recession. So the realistic analysis here says this is still a long, dark tunnel and maybe there's a light at the end of it. But it's going to take a while.
If Obama manages to pull us out of this more serious recession in less time -- and without any cooperation from Congress -- it probably should be considered a miracle.
