By John Aravosis on 5/28/2012 07:00:00 PM

Krugman says we're still in a classic Depression.

Paul Krugman on Bill Maher:
We are in a depression. We are actually in a classic depression. A depression is when nobody wants to spend. Everybody wants to pay down their debt at the same time. Everybody is trying to pull back, either because they got too ( Read more... )

Published on Thursday, August 4, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by John Atcheson
Since Reagan, Republicans have been on a “starve the beast” campaign - by which they mean eviscerate the government by taking away as much revenue as they can.

Starving the beast ( Read more... )

A really telling graph I have been meaning to remember to put up for some time, but never got around to.

The U.S. switched from tracking GNP (Gross National Product) to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in 1991. Many people want to know how the Great Recession compares to other recessions within the last 40 years using GNP, as was in use back then, and ( Read more... )

While most other advanced economies returned to positive GDP/GDI/GNP growth by 2010, Greece, having agreed upon a set of painful austerity measures, remains mired in its now third strait year of economic contraction, and is now enduring phenomenal spikes in joblessness.

Bloomberg
Greek Unemployment Rose in December, Extending Record High

Greece’s ( Read more... )

CNBC
Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession: Rosenberg

Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression, Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday.

Writing in his daily briefing to investors, Rosenberg said the Great Depression also had ( Read more... )

Wall Street Journal Market Watch
U.S. close to Japan-style deflation, Bullard says
Expanding purchases of Treasury securities best defense if needed

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. is in danger of being pushed into the same price-shrinking economy that has been termed the "lost decade" in Japan, a voting member of the Federal Reserve said ( Read more... )

Benchmark revisions to GDP come out every couple of years, reflecting the government's use of more hard data, and less guestimates.

Today's release of GDP revisions going back all the way to early 2007 show that the US economy began seriously slumping as early as 2006, effectively entered a "growth recession" by mid-07, and, as we all know, utterly ( Read more... )

From Reuters:
Lindsey: U.S. entering deflation trap, to ease more

(Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve board member Lawrence Lindsey said on Thursday it will be "obvious" by the end of this year that the U.S. economy has entered a "deflationary trap."

"We know from (Fed) Chairman (Ben) Bernanke's recent comments that it is now at least a concern ... By ( Read more... )

What has been obvious to many of us (an uncomfortably high risk of a Japan-like, or even worse, an 1870s-90s-like deflationary stagnation/depression) is now in the publicly available Fed comments (and who knows what they have been and are really saying behind closed doors).

CNNMoney
Federal Reserve looks to battle deflation

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com ( Read more... )

CNBC:
Double-Dip Recession Fears Creep Back Into the Market
( Read more... )