The Pessimism Bubble
By ROSS DOUTHAT
NYT
This is a day for hangovers and sunburns, discarded sparklers and spent rockets smoking weakly on brown lawns. Yesterday was all euphoria and patriotism — a chance to forget about the unemployment rate, the deficit, the oil spill and whichever political party you hold responsible for the country’s sorry state. But now it’s time to sit around in your undershirt, put off cleaning the backyard grill and contemplate all the things you spent the Fourth of July trying not to think about.
Enough of the star-spangled American dream. Back to the grim American reality.
How grim? Well, after the United States limped through five months of anemic “recovery,” last Friday brought news that our economy actually shed jobs in June, thanks to the expiration of more than 200,000 Census positions. It’s now been 30 months since the beginning of the recession, and it looks as if it could take another 30 or so to regain the level of employment we enjoyed in the autumn of 2007.
If we regain it at all. The public seems doubtful: in a recent survey, conducted before the latest wave of dismal economic news, the Pew Research Center found that less than half of Americans expect that their children will enjoy a higher standard of living than their own. Economists are throwing around phrases like “lost decade” and “double-dip recession,” and drawing analogies to the Great Depression. And those aren’t even the real doomsayers. On Sunday, The Times profiled the market forecaster Robert Prechter, who’s convinced that the stock market is headed for a sell-off that will send the Dow Jones average below not 10,000, but 1,000.
(More here.)
NYT
This is a day for hangovers and sunburns, discarded sparklers and spent rockets smoking weakly on brown lawns. Yesterday was all euphoria and patriotism — a chance to forget about the unemployment rate, the deficit, the oil spill and whichever political party you hold responsible for the country’s sorry state. But now it’s time to sit around in your undershirt, put off cleaning the backyard grill and contemplate all the things you spent the Fourth of July trying not to think about.
Enough of the star-spangled American dream. Back to the grim American reality.
How grim? Well, after the United States limped through five months of anemic “recovery,” last Friday brought news that our economy actually shed jobs in June, thanks to the expiration of more than 200,000 Census positions. It’s now been 30 months since the beginning of the recession, and it looks as if it could take another 30 or so to regain the level of employment we enjoyed in the autumn of 2007.
If we regain it at all. The public seems doubtful: in a recent survey, conducted before the latest wave of dismal economic news, the Pew Research Center found that less than half of Americans expect that their children will enjoy a higher standard of living than their own. Economists are throwing around phrases like “lost decade” and “double-dip recession,” and drawing analogies to the Great Depression. And those aren’t even the real doomsayers. On Sunday, The Times profiled the market forecaster Robert Prechter, who’s convinced that the stock market is headed for a sell-off that will send the Dow Jones average below not 10,000, but 1,000.
(More here.)
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