Guest Post: The Recession That Never Ended: 2008 -2013 (And Counting)

"The reality is that the recession never ended for 95% of U.S. households, and by many metrics the recession has deepened.

 

If you want to claim the 2008 recession ended, you have to find a metric that reflects "growth." For instance, gross domestic product (GDP), which has expanded since 2009.

 

 

But as Lance Roberts, Gordon T. Long and I discuss in Is the US in a Recession? (43 min. video, 52 slides), this metric of "growth" is suspect on a number of counts.For example, does this chart of full-time employees relative to the population look expansionary?

 

 

Or how about this chart of median household income, which adjusted for inflation is down 7.2%?

 

 

Or how about real personal income less government personal transfers on a 5-year basis (the red line)? Notice that the red line only popped briefly above 0% into "growth" in late 2012 as those who could declared income in 2012 before the 1013 tax increases kicked in.

None of these charts is remotely expansionary. We can further question broad-based measures of expansion such as GDP statistically: in economies with high income/wealth inequality such as the U.S., the top 5%'s expansion of income and wealth creates an illusion that the entire workforce is doing better when the opposite is true.

 

If you doubt this, please examine this chart of income disparity. Note that the vast majority of income increases have accrued to the top 5%:.."

at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-26/guest-post-recession-never-ended-2008-2013-and-counting