Comparing current macroeconomic conditions to the Great Depression era

Macroeconomic Conditions

The Real State of the Macroeconomy

Me of the author

The Garrison State

The New Deal

A New Deal

A legitimate question currently regarding the economy is regarding what the current macroeconomic situation actually is in the United States. We are being told that we currently are currently in danger of slipping back into a recession. However, given the current severity of the economic situation and unprecedented demonstrations to "occupy Wall Street," it is legitimate to ask if we are not just still in a recession, but are actually in a depression. These would argue that truly we never left economically bad times and have to look for root of the problem further back in U.S. history, comparing the current situation as it has developed in the Obama administration to the 1930s. Due to the brevity of the essay, we will let the current protest movement speak for what is going in the present and focus in the roots of the current problem. This author's assumption is that credit easing for Wall Street does nothing but impoverish Main Street (the real economy, not the speculative economy). It would also imply that all of the administration (and the Federal Reserve, the real government) propaganda data about and improving economy, including unemployment, inflation, GDP growth, expansionary fiscal policy tools and market forces that will export us out this economic canyon are less than truthful and will provide nothing but confusion in a quest for a solution.

The Garrison State

Now, this author presents what may seem to be obvious: we must consider the wars, Iraq, and Libya. While historically speaking almost any historian will acknowledge that it was military spending that brought the U.S. out of the Great Depression by 1941, we did not have the very real effects of a garrison state that has effectively dominated the economy since the Korean War. Another neutral source to use for this is the Council