A World of Hurt
By BOB HERBERT
NYT
President Obama took a bit of a victory lap on Wall Street on Monday, declaring that the economy had been brought back from the abyss and “the storms of the past two years are beginning to break.”
The president and his economic team (and the Federal Reserve) deserve credit for moving quickly to prevent a full-blown collapse. A year ago, amid the panic that accompanied the implosion of Lehman Brothers, there were serious fears that the U.S. was headed toward another Great Depression.
Now, with the financial sector stabilized and economists predicting that the Great Recession is nearing an end, the sighs of relief coming out of Washington and Lower Manhattan are understandable. But this is no time to lose sight of the wreckage all around us. This recession, a full-blown economic horror, has left a gaping hole in the heart of working America that is unlikely to heal for years, if not decades.
Fifteen million Americans are locked in the nightmare of unemployment, nearly 10 percent of the work force. A third have been jobless for more than six months. Thirteen percent of Latinos and 15 percent of blacks are out of work. (Those are some of the official statistics. The reality is much worse.)
(More here.)
NYT
President Obama took a bit of a victory lap on Wall Street on Monday, declaring that the economy had been brought back from the abyss and “the storms of the past two years are beginning to break.”
The president and his economic team (and the Federal Reserve) deserve credit for moving quickly to prevent a full-blown collapse. A year ago, amid the panic that accompanied the implosion of Lehman Brothers, there were serious fears that the U.S. was headed toward another Great Depression.
Now, with the financial sector stabilized and economists predicting that the Great Recession is nearing an end, the sighs of relief coming out of Washington and Lower Manhattan are understandable. But this is no time to lose sight of the wreckage all around us. This recession, a full-blown economic horror, has left a gaping hole in the heart of working America that is unlikely to heal for years, if not decades.
Fifteen million Americans are locked in the nightmare of unemployment, nearly 10 percent of the work force. A third have been jobless for more than six months. Thirteen percent of Latinos and 15 percent of blacks are out of work. (Those are some of the official statistics. The reality is much worse.)
(More here.)
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