Economic recession

“ The present state of our economy is disturbing. We take office in the wake of seven months of recession, three and one-half years of slack, seven years of diminished economic growth, and nine years of falling farm income. ”

“ We are now in the early stages of economic recovery following a short recession. Typically, a post-recessionary period has been marked by vigorous economic growth aided by anti-recessionary policy measures such as large tax cuts or big, stimulation spending programs. I have declined to recommend such actions to stimulate economic activity, because the persistent inflationary pressures that beset our economy today dictate a restrained fiscal policy. ”

“ But for many American families, the economy has effectively been in recession for the past seven years. We have just come through the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that was not accompanied by a growth in incomes for typical families. Americans are working harder for less. ”

“ Our recovery from the 1958 recession, moreover, was anemic and incomplete. Our Gross National Product never regained its full potential. Unemployment never returned to normal levels. Maximum use of our national industrial capacity was never restored.
In short, the American economy is in trouble. The most resourceful industrialized country on earth ranks among the last in the rate of economic growth. Since last spring our economic growth rate has actually receded. Business investment is in a decline. Profits have fallen below predicted levels. Construction is off. ”

“ Well, on Friday, we learned that after twenty-two straight months of job loss, our economy has now created jobs in the private sector for six months in a row. That’s a positive sign. But the truth is, the recession from which we’re emerging has left us in a hole that’s about eight-million jobs deep. ”

“ Number one, there was almost uniform consensus among both conservative and liberal economists that when you have the economy on such a free-fall, that you need a big stimulus to try to make sure that goods and services are still being purchased, and that the decline in demand, as consumers pull back, is being filled. If you don't, then the recession gets even worse. ”

“ This week, the economists who officially decide when recessions start and end declared the recession of 2008 to be over. But if you’re one of the millions of Americans who lost your home, your job, or your savings as a consequence of the recession, this news is of little comfort or value. ”

“ We’ve just come through the worst recession since the Great Depression, and while our economy as a whole has been growing and adding private sector jobs, too many folks are still struggling to get back on their feet. ”

“ This week, the official announcement came that our economy has been in recession since March. And unfortunately, to a lot of Americans, that news comes as no surprise. Many have lost jobs, or seen their hours cut. ”

“ We need to rebuild our economy in such a way that our families can feel a measure of security again. Too many of the folks I’ve talked with this year, and whose stories I read in letters at night, tell me that they’ve known their own private recessions since long before economists declared one – and they’ll still feel the recession long after economists have declared it over. ”

“ In our economy, it is a myth that we must choose endlessly between inflation and recession. Together, we build the foundation for a strong economy, with lower inflation, without contriving either a recession with its high unemployment or unworkable, mandatory government controls. ”

“ Our credit in finance today is greater than that of any other country on earth. Our standing before the world in credit is the very highest. Business in our land is prosperous, barring one or two instances, such, for example, as the decrease for a while in the demand for steel as building moves slowly and, if you please, something of a decadence in the -construction or selling of automobiles, caused by war, of nations decreasing export sales. ”

“ Finally, our economy was ravaged by inflation--inflation that was plunging us into the worse recession in four decades. At the same time, Americans became increasingly alienated from big institutions. ”

“ The challenges we face today we have not seen in a very long time. Each of you and every American sees them in very specific ways. We've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began, nearly 600,000 just last month. Many of your businesses are under tremendous pressure, with revenues falling and credit drying up. You're feeling directly or indirectly the reverberations of a financial crisis which has upended the economy. ”

“ Next, this bill also puts needed money back into consumers' pockets, the consumers that need it the most -- middle class families that have seen their wages decline far longer than what the economists say this recession -- for the length of this recession. ”

“ I concede, sir, that, in the ordinary mutations of business and commerce in all seasons, and daily, stock markets rise and fall; but behold this country as it stands as to honest material of just speculation on exchange! ”

“ If nothing is done, economists from across the spectrum tell us that this recession could linger for years and the unemployment rate could reach double digits – and they warn that our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world. ”

“ Thus, with alterations in the so-called Margin of Production, the natural85 allocations from Wealth to Wages would rise or fall as the Margin receded or advanced, whereas the natural allocations from Wealth to Rent would rise with the advances of the Margin and fall with its recession. ”

“ It is very important to understand that the Wall Street crisis took us over the wall in terms of precipitating the severe recession we are in, but we have to remember that during those 8 years, as I mentioned earlier, the middle class was also shrinking. ”

“ What is the matter with America, and what is the matter with the people?
This morning from the press we read that the New York stock market—to take but a single barometer—has fallen precipitously for many weeks; that throughout the East uncertainty and general fear prevail; and that the belief prevails that this major recession has been caused to no small degree by the New Deal policies in general, and the tax laws of the Roosevelt administration in particular. ”

“ The economy, a mixture of private enterprises of all sizes and extensive government intervention, experienced enormous difficulties in the late 1980s, notably declining real growth, runaway inflation, foreign debt obligations of more than $100 billion, and uncertain economic policy. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, growth in the supply of money does not keep pace with the economy's current production, then prices will fall, the nations's labor force, factories, and other production facilities will not be fully employed, or both. ”

“ The way out of this recession, the way to create jobs, is to grow the economy by encouraging investment in factories and equipment, and by speeding up tax relief so people have more money to spend. ”

“ The worst recession since the 1930s had wreaked havoc on the lives of so many of our fellow Americans. Yesterday, the numbers released by the Labor Department reflected a continuing positive trend of diminishing job loss. ”

“ Other causes of Economic depression than “slumps” in speculative Land-values there doubtless are. They spring from such superficial maladjustments in the processes of Trade as are connected with defective banking, fluctuations in the values of corporate stocks and variations in Money standards from lack of effective stabilization. ”

“ At this time we behold, sir, seven great nations of the world tendering us their securities bearing from 5 to 7 percent, while the great commercial bodies all around us of an industrial nature—in many respects of the highest class—heretofore yielding splendid profits, tender their securities bearing from 5 to 7 percent. Yet our people demonstrate their confidence in the administration here in government ”

“ When those gentlemen, whoever they are, which have frightened the poor woman with a small security to have her sell it at a complete loss and robbed the estates of the little possessions which they may have from which income may have been afforded, and then the little-business man shall be compelled to get rid of what he possesses on the ground that what he has is a loss and then induced to enter doubtful investments again, this result will reproduce exactly the situation of 1929-30. ”

“ A crisis in its last analysis is the result of a lack of adjustment between production and consumption, due primarily to mistakes in production. It is significant that crises usually occur in periods of business prosperity when credit [Pg 56] is easy, prices high, and employment general. Such a period of business prosperity and rising credit may have been begun by a series of good harvests. The demand for manufactured commodities increases, prices rise, manufacturers enlarge their factories or engage in new enterprises, wages and profits go up. ”

“ Herein flows the lifeblood of material existence. The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. ”

“ Thus the difference between the period of production and the period of exchange of the commodities, and the difference between the period of economic redintegration and the period of technical redintegration of the productive machinery, give rise to the formation of monetary or capitalistic reserves, which become in their turn the source of intricate developments and interesting complications. ”

“ This year we're hearing a new variation of their gloomy refrain, not about inflation or interest rates taking off, not about the recovery that won't happen, but about the recovery that can't last. Government deficits, we're told, will kill the recovery by draining capital needed by business to keep the economy expanding. ”

“ The prostration of trade has arisen from extravagance, he repeatedly declares. "The commercial depression, so long, so monotonous, so heavy, and so dull, came from the excessive consumption of English capital in unwarranted constructions beyond savings, and unwarranted expenditure in living by all classes, which destroyed wealth without repairing it with new productions." ”

“ Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. ”

“ Given favorable circumstances, the price decline soon leads to a search for new methods of economy in production. Raw materials are likely to fall in price. Supplementary costs are rapidly reduced. The price of labor tends to fall. Even though prices continue to fall slowly, profits may rise to a level encouraging to business activity. ”

“ That the great depression of business, the stagnation of trade, the ‘hard times’ which have prevailed during the past year, and which still prevail, have not been caused by an insufficient amount of currency, but mainly by the great falling off of the demand for all the products of labor, compared with the increased supply since the return from war to peace. ”

“ But the cyclical fluctuations of trade, with the consequent waxing and waning of the aggregate demand of productive industry, must always be counted on; and these cyclical fluctuations in demand for labour, as we have shown, can be counteracted, and the volume of wage-earning employment in the country as a whole maintained at something like a constant level, by a mere rearrangement over each decade, of the Government works and orders that must in any case be executed within the decade, though not necessarily, as at present, in equal instalments year by year. ”

“ It is this arbitrary shifting of cost-burdens, coincident with recent price fluctuations, that accounts for the prevailing outcry against advancing costs of living. Naturally, individuals and groups who fare badly in the process of pecuniary readjustment are prone to complain, and those who account an accelerating balance of income over costs are sanguine.
Whether the United States has reached or passed the industrial condition of maximum per capita productivity is a mooted question; some who have given much study to the problem of production are inclined to support an affirmative conclusion. ”

“ But what the world in fact has seen has been the complex case of a fall in prices accompanied by great improvements in production. The business man and capitalist has had, to be sure, to [Pg 102] deal with falling prices; but the same amount of capital and labor has turned out more commodities than before; and his total money returns, so far from declining, have generally increased. The money incomes of the managers of industry have shown the same upward movement as the money incomes of the other classes in society. ”

“ The continually growing productivity of industry makes necessary a corresponding growth of the market, if disaster is to be avoided. But to enable producers to sell their growing output promptly prices must be reduced and wages must be raised in proportion as the supply of goods increases. For it is only by combining an increase in the money income of the mass of the population with a decrease in the cost of commodities that a country's home markets can be kept expanding with the progress of industrial methods. ”

“ If, therefore, an attempt be made to increase industry, not by increase of population, and thus of demand, the cause of industry—not by industrial freedom, its encouragement, but simply by increase of the rate of the dollar—the attempt will be a failure. It is obviously absurd to suppose industry can be increased by decrease of rate. Increase, while in progress, acts as a stimulus, and thus appears to be successful for a time ”