Re: [Pen-l] Slow motion recession

[Doyle Saylor <doylesaylor@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
On Jul 2, 2008, at 7:43 AM, Jim Devine wrote:

> I get the feeling that it's a "slow motion recession" because (1)
> journalists are paying much more attention to recessions than they
> used to and

Doyle;
Perhaps this is interesting to discuss.  The great depression had the  
stock market crash to define the era. And later high unemployment  
figures to show the crash meant something to workers.

The current situation is like the previous fifty years a stately ocean  
liner turning over a long stretch of water.  Which feels like no crisis.

Doug Henwood writes in response to JD's comments -
Much of the advertised "dynamism" of the U.S. job market has gone out  
the window.

Doyle;
Which to me is the political view of the ship of state meandering  
about listlessly until set back on course.  No rocks to run into, no  
urgent need to put out lifeboats.

In any sense of the word, crisis is happening with the global climate  
change.  But the decaying sense of left measure of crisis, the  
unemployment lines and their impacts is still the only way we can  
think of crisis.  The only way to persuade ourselves to act.  I'm not  
talking about Doug, I'm talking about the whole of the masses.  An  
individual sense of correctness is mania optimism.  But on the larger  
scale the public mind is not prepared to think of climate as crisis.

Economic stagnation prepares the ground for economic changes sometime  
not far away in regard to the U.S.  I think changes must come from a  
sense of leadership failure across the board in the whole system.  The  
reformist mood failing is a step in the move toward radical change  
that crisis surely demands.  So the measure of crisis may be not so  
much a stock crash but high gasoline prices producing a sudden  
collective vision of untenable losses.  Something which reform can  
chew upon for awhile.

This chewing the cud would paint crisis anew in the collective mind.   
Telling them that crisis is not just unemployment but also the loss of  
a way of life.  You can get another job, but no job will keep your way  
of life going.  The scales of illusions about how to live, the racist  
past, the car going elsewhere, the manly man loner needing someone  
finally to hold them and comfort them.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
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