Police arrest you. Beat you to a pulp in the station house. Then let you go when they find you’re innocent of any crimes. Do you feel good about the incident because you’ve been exonerated?
You have a stroke. It leaves you paralyzed and unable to speak. But the doctors assure you that you’re lucky because the stroke didn’t actually kill you. Do you feel healthy now?
You’re left impoverished by a SLAPs suit that had no basis but was used by a large corporation to punish you for the sins of criticizing it — even though the suit was ultimately dismissed. Your lawyer congratulates you on your victory in court, saying it should make you feel grateful to the justice system. Are you grateful to the justice system?
Do any of the above statements make sense to you? Do pronouncements such as these accord with the realty of your personal pain and suffering? Or should they be treated as insensitive jabber from people in positions of power justifying their own ability to pontificate at your expense?
The latter statement fits the facts, of course. Which is why today’s official announcement from the economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that the recession ended in June 2009 is not only utterly idiotic but disgusting. This group bases its astounding conclusion on the fact that GDP began to rise again im that month after declines that began in late 2007 — without regard to how most Americans’ economic lives have actually fared since that time.
You don’t build a business by putting accountant number crunchers in charge of your product development and marketing. And you don’t build an economy by putting it in the hands of economist number crunchers — the kind of folks whose metrics concluded that the recession ended in June 2009.
President Obama doesn’t understand that. Perhaps his successors setting national policy will. But don’t bet on it.
America once had an economy based on useful product and service innovating and a very broad spending base. With the blessings of GDP-obsessed economists, it’s now based on capital sucking financial product innovation and wealth concentration at the top.
The NBER was the group that declared the Great Depression ended in 1933. Any person actually living between that time and 1940 when war production got underway big time knows this to be absurd. Watch for a similar elongation of a non-officially recognized recession to follow in our own time — thanks, in part, to policy makers whose planning is in thrall to economists.
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