Economists Think We’re In A Recession

By On April 29, 2008 · 12 Comments

USA Today polled 52 economists asking “Do you think the U.S. economy is currently is a recession?”

67% said Yes.

Another 12% said we would be this year.

President Bush, however, still refuses to admit it- instead calling our current situation just a ‘very slow economy’.

His solution: make his 2001 tax cuts for the rich permanent.

Seven years after implementing these tax cuts that were supposed to stimulate the economy we are, by most measures, in a recession. Gas prices are at an all time high. The housing market in shambles.

And now George wants to make them permanent?

No wonder 73% of Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy.

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  • They did stimulate the economy as did the 2003 or 2004 I forget tax cuts. And the cuts werent just for the “rich.”

  • It’s the economy stupid!

  • Matt N.

    Recessions are natural and healthy for the economy. You can simply not stop all recessions through fine tuning by the federal reserve. Printing more money and sending out checks causes an increase in demand in the short run, and high inflation in the long run.

    Ultimately, the only way to help an economy is to cut taxes and make our country more attractive to more foreign direct investment. America is at a disadvantage with a corporate tax rate which is among the highest in the world. That sounds like the best place to start cutting taxes.

    But no, instead we have a couple of dopey Democratic presidential candidates tripping over themselves to promise to raise capital gains tax. Brilliant!

  • @3: Yes. 8 years of tax cuts have done us a world of good. Keep making that argument. The irony of a dude named Laffer coming up with this idea is not lost.

    Actually, I hear Laffer now actually advises John McCain – who once voted against Bush’s tax cuts. Hilarity!

    Stay away from the voodoo kool-aid Matt!

  • “sending out checks”?

    Who thought of THAT crazy idea?!

  • Matt N.

    It is part of the foolish “stimulus package.”

    It is hilarious just to read about how expensive mailing the checks are. Maybe they could have just flown over Columbus and dumped money out of helicopters? Or shot them out of t-shirt guns at OSU games? Both would still fit the sloppy short-term Keynesian models at work here.

  • T-shirt guns, while pretty cool in their own way, certainly do voilate Keynesian economic theory in that somoene (i.e. ME through my tax dollors) had to pay for that t-shirt gun- regardless of the positive outcome it might engender.

  • Matt N.

    Who do you think paid for the New Deal?

    The easiest way to explain Keynes’s economics is to have government pay a man to dig a hole, and then pay another man to fill that hole up with dirt. That is the key to his model of economic growth. And all I can say is, thank God for Milton Friedman.

  • Matt, Keynes and Friedman were both wrong – and right. That’s the reason you see a mix of their thinking in current economic policy.

  • Matt N.

    Where was Milton wrong? He proved the Phillips curve to be wrong by showing that “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

    Keynes is only right in the short run. And Keynes said, “in the long run, we’re all dead.” Politicians prefer such policies because by printing more money and increasing government spending, they can see a quick reduction in unemployment- And they will leave the long term negative effects for future generations to worry about.

  • monetarism

  • I might also add that I think that economics as a whole is a bunch of hooey and hardly science. Seeing how they just substituted variables in physics equations that are now obsolete.

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