Apr 2010 - the repeal of the Bush tax cuts will be felt. One of the first things BHO did upon taking office.
Don't believe the numbers, don't believe the hype. O. himself said "we're out of money".
Permalink | Report

It is hard to set a time frame but I think you hit it on the head. When the housing and job markets start getting better, then people will feel much better about things.

Indicators to watch for are how many conservative's of either party are in office after the 2010 and 2012 elections. Liberals tend to trash the economy.
Permalink | Report

Q: How long will it be between economists and administration's announcement of recovery and mainstream America's confidence?

A: On average, it takes three months for people to believe it enough to start spending like they used to.

This I have heard from several sources, plus I've seen it myself in the patterns of new business as a function of economist's and government statements... on average three months before people believe it.

Q: Millions of American's have lost their jobs and houses. It's going to take more than an announcement that things are improving to convince them. How long will it be, a year? Two years? Any significant indicators we should watch for?

A: Indeed... this time it's not a slow-down or a recession, or even a depression per se, it's a restructuring, which means millions of people are not going to go back to the same thing they were doing before, and millions of others will have to *permanently* adjust to a different (and for most people lower) standard of living.

It's sad, but three years ago both the head of the Federal Reserve and the Chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations stood on a podium together and tried to tell people what was going to happen if things continued the way Bush was letting it...

Those two guys represent the two most powerful NGOs in the US, and probably the world.

The Federal Reserve is a private corporation with a monopoly on the control of the money supply in the US, and the CFR is THE Club of the American Establishment.

Between the two of them there is no more powerful collective voice of conservative financial perspective in this planet, and their interests are 100% blue-blooded conservative, and *they* were trying to tell everyone that Bush was nuts and that things were going to collapse in a couple of years (they were spot on... three years ago they said it would happen in two years at the rate they were seeing things unfold) and they said it would be something too big for the combined financial experience and wisdom of the Federal Reserve and the CFR to predict the consequences of...

And guess what was the only publication to give them a podium?

Now keep in mind... those two guys represent everything about all the is conservative, American establishment blue-blooded old-money, and guess what was the only publication to give them time?

Harpers.

Is it registering on *anybody* just how extreme things were? Is anybody starting to get a tinkling of a notion just how serious things were?

We're not talking about the economy hitting the speed bump of a recession nor veering off the road into the ditch of a depression. We're talking about the engine of the car itself blowing up, and you might wonder how that['s possible if you don't understand how fractional reserve banking works, but in fact, had Obama not spent those trillions in a last-ditch attempt to pull out of nose-dive to keep the engine from blowing up, then *all* of you, rich and poor, employed and unemployed, would have seen 90% of your purchasing power disappear.

After the dust had settled, you'd have found yourself either with prices the same but dollars now worth a dime, or dollars the same, but prices ten time higher. That means $30 for a hamburger... $200 for a bag of flour...

The fact that under an economic system built on fractional reserve banking this could happen has been known since 1847, and since that time extreme measures have always been taken to keep it propped up, and those deregulations from Regan combined with Bush *pushing* banks to make bad loans when the banks knew it was a bad idea is the closest it's come since 1847 to a total collapse. Not recession. Not depression. Collapse... where money becomes worth exactly the paper and ink used to print it... and that's the *good* stuff, because at least you can burn it to heat some soup... unlike the digital money on disks in bank computers.

I know you don't don't feel that scared, and this is one rare time I'm going to tip a toast to those masters of public relations and opinion who were able to keep the population from going into a panic, which would have just made it harder, and probably even impossible, for Obama to authorize any sort of pullout, but it really was that close, and what you're not seeing, not yet anyway, is that it's a different economy now.

Millions are not going back to the jobs they had, and millions are never going to recover the investments they lost. This wasn't a recession or a depression... it was a restructuring.

Which means... even when you have economists and government saying that the "recession" is over, and even though on average it takes three months for the working-spending public to believe them, this time don't expect there to be the same things to spend your money on, nor, if you're a business person, for it to be the same customers coming back to do the buying.
Permalink | Report