Krugman's Recovery

Let the church bells ring, start the parades, hold te deums in the churches; we are in recovery. Paul Krugrman, whom I used to respect, says so.

Of course, if you need to work for a living, if you need a job and a paycheck, he doesn’t include you in that recovery. Recovery has nothing to do with jobs, employment, the ability to earn a living and feed your family, any of that. If you actually need to work for a living, you don’t count. Recovery means that the stock market is up, banks are sound (?!), and financial service firms are making profits.

Home mortgage defaults reached a new high last month as unemployed homeowners were unable to meet payments, and the defaults included a record number of thirty-year fixed rate prime mortgages. Paul Krugman conveniently ignores this. We are in recovery.

If you are in the last two weeks of your unemployment benefits and have little hope of finding a job, I suspect this does not feel much like a recovery to you. Go talk to Paul Krugman, he will cheer you up; will tell you we are in a recovery. His voice may have a slight echo as he speaks down to you from his ivory tower.

Paul Krugman says that, “the 2001 recession formally ended in Nov. of that year, but it didn’t feel like a recovery until the second half of 2003.”

I’ve got news for Professor Krugman. To people who work for a living it never felt like a recovery. As organized labor was defeated by business interests and wages stagnated, as manufacturing and technology jobs got shipped overseas, and as the middle class eroded further and further, the “jobless recovery” benefited the upper class and left the working class in the cold.

The Republican election campaign made much of the “arugala-eating elites” who were not in touch with “mainstream America” and, if Paul Krugman is any example, they may have had a valid point. He defines the situation in breezy fashion as a "jobless recovery" as if jobs don't matter.

There is no such thing as a "jobless recovery", because a recovery without regaining lost jobs is not a recovery, you arrogant jackass.