After the Reagan Revolution of the early-80s, there were only two recessions an, d both were extraordinarily mild (the early 1990s and early 2000s). That is why the Democrats think they can get away with claiming that the 2007-09 recession was "different, worse than every other recession".
Americans over 50 have an obligation to tell young people, that no, the recent recession was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or the 1980-82 ones. The difference is that those recessions were followed by ROBUST recoveries. GDP growth in 1976-78 averaged 5.5% and in 1983-85 averaged 6.0%. Obama's GDP growth, 2010-12 (with two quarters left to go) has averaged a miserable 1.9%
2.) The dot.com bubble recession saw the demise of most dot.com companies, and was mainly a market recession, though unemployment breifly reached 6%. Unlike the 90s, wages and family income never increased all that much. Not to mention the housing bubble was in it's infancy, which helped the market a lot.
3.) This recession alomst saw the demise of AIG and major investment banks. Without the bailouts and federal takeovers, it would have been another depression. There's a reason people and economists called it the worse financial collapse since the Great Depression, and this was before Obama became president.
Please continue to spin though.
Since you didn't dispute anything I said, I'm not sure how to respond.
To "spin" again, I say that yes, the 2007-09 recession was long and deep -- but it was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or 1980-82 recessions. The fact that there were (real and threatened) bank collapses in 2007-09 did not make it worse. Anyway, the government has now given so much money to the banks that interest rates are, incredibly, going negative! This is because so few Americans have the confidence to take out loans.
The fact is that all these recessions reached their deepest points in the first quarters of their last year -- in 1Q '75, 1Q '82, and 1Q '09. That makes it easy to look at the next three calendar years for comparison. From 1976-78, GNP growth averaged 5.5%; in 1983-85, 6.0%, now (with two quarters to go), 1.9%. This is not how recessions are supposed to end.
Even the mild recessions of the 1990s and early 2000s had better recoveries: In 1992-94, annual growth averaged 3.8%; in 2003-05, 3.2%.
Btw, the cause of the financial collapse in 2008 was the housing bubble bursting. And the cause of the housing bubble was government policies to "close the racial gap in home ownership". Obama (1) supported these policies as a U.S. Senator, 2005-2008, and (2) has not ended them as president.
