We Are In a Modern-Day Depression

Take a deep breath. The industrialized world of the west—very much including the United States—seems to be in one of those horror movies where the monster thought to be slain morphs into something even more scary. The International Monetary Fund phrase for this scenario, in its new report, is that "the global economy is in a dangerous new phase," stark language for a financial institution. The fear is that the double-dip or worse may be upon us.

The most extensive and dramatic fiscal and monetary stimulus policies in U.S. history have failed to trigger a recovery dynamic where growth can be sustained without reliance on government steroids. To put it in context, the United States is a 235-year-old country, yet over 40 percent of the entire national debt has been accumulated by this administration in slightly less than three years, and 60 percent of the total money supply has been created in a similar period. It could be argued we would have been even worse off if we had done nothing. But the hard fact is that money has not bought us an improving economy or restored confidence in consumers or the business community.

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The Obama administration, along with many forecasters, had predicted a V-shaped recovery and expansion based on the historical experience of the 1970s and 1980s, when sharp recessions were followed by equally sharp rebounds, reflected in growth rates of 6 or 7 percent. Not this time. The $4 trillion of fiscal and monetary stimulus has produced less than $1 trillion in growth or about 25 cents for every dollar invested. GDP growth is running at about 1.8 percent this year. Two thirds comes from the growth in business inventories rather than final sales to consumers, which translates into an annual rate of 0.6 percent and a quarterly increase of 0.15 percent.

Meanwhile, real per capita income remains below its 2006 level. The Wall Street Journal reports that the income of a typical American family, adjusted for inflation, is 7.1 percent below its 1999 peak and that the earnings of the typical full-time working male are lower than in 1978. Real wage-based incomes are on the decline. Given the combination of a shorter work week, unemployment, and consumer prices, the year-over-year pace since June is at a 4.8 percent annualized decline. Little surprise that adjusting for inflation, retail sales last month also contracted at nearly a 5 percent annual pace while the proportion of Americans living in poverty has soared to 15.1 percent.

This is a modern-day depression. It is not the 1930s because, as economist David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff points out, "The soup lines have been replaced with unemployment payment checks. Over 10 million such checks are being sent out now for up to 99 weeks."

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Businesses are focusing on enhancing productivity rather than expanding employment. There has been no net increase in full-time employment since the Obama presidency began. These days, hiring is concentrated on temporary and part-time workers. In the last five months alone, we have lost just shy of a million full-time employment jobs. As a result, forecasters are racing to reduce their projections of U.S. growth, reflecting disappointing data across the board on spending, employment, and confidence.

The business community has grown increasingly pessimistic. According to the most recent Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, 65 percent of U.S. executives are gloomy. Only 12 percent are more optimistic. "In the past six months, one third of U.S. companies say they have delayed or cancelled previous plans for capital spending," notes the survey. It did not help that the U.S. government lost credibility by risking a precise prediction (best left to fortune tellers). It asserted that its well-intentioned recovery programs would bring the jobless rate down to around 7 percent and that the multiplier effect from government investment would bring much higher levels of growth.

This was the beginning of a yawning credibility gap between the Obama administration and business. It has been aggravated by the administration's tendency to lay blame on the so-called fat cats of the business and financial communities and to pillory the president's favorite villains: "millionaires and billionaires," by his definition any family or business with an income of more than $250,000 gross. The resort to divisive populism is exactly the wrong approach. It seeds the suspicion that the administration is more interested in campaigning than in rallying the national will. It undermines the confidence that business needs if it is to invest in the face of a costly new generation of regulations, healthcare costs, and an increased bureaucracy.