Business reporter, Floyd Norris, points to numbers showing that America got off easy, comparatively, in the "Great Recession."
The recession caused a greater decline in gross domestic product in the United States than any American downturn since World War II. It is also in the process of setting the record for the longest downturn, measured in the time it takes for the economy to recover to its prerecession level.
Yet among the world’s major industrialized economies, the American recession was among the least severe. And the United States is ahead of most other countries in recovering the lost ground.
From the peak level of economic activity in the fourth quarter of 2007, the American economy shrank 4.1 percent by the time it hit bottom in the second quarter of 2009. Since then, it has recovered most of what was lost, but the size of the economy remains 1.3 percent below the peak, according to preliminary figures for the second quarter of this year.
If you look at the numbers, you can't escape the fact that it is the Bush Great Recession. In the same way, the recovery, following that ridiculously unpopular "stimulus," is Obama's recovery. Tea Partyers probably don't want to be told that TARP helped a lot. The glory of TARP can be shared about equally by Bush and his successor.
None of this is worth a rat's you-know-what in a country which may be recovering its economy but has lost, overall, more brain cells per month (not to mention trust in the system) since Ronald Reagan's inauguration than any of us are capable of counting. In every way one can think of, Americans live a lie, a kind of self-protective lie. Now they're looking for someone else to blame. Muslims. Socialists. Harvard graduates. TARP. Latte-drinkers. And, above all, Others who spell their name with an "O."
