"Mission Accomplished" Redux

[J.A. Terranson]

Geithner and his idiot boss is starting to not only *govern* like Shrub, 
but to *sound* like Shrub: Everything's really going swell guys, thanks 
for asking..."

This clown thinks we're in "recovery"?  Hail to the [next] idiot theif in 
chief!

//Alif

-- 
I hate Missouri.  Land of the free, home of the perjuriously deranged.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/opinion/03geithner.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Welcome to the Recovery
By TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER
Published: August 2, 2010

THE devastation wrought by the great recession is still all too real for 
millions of Americans who lost their jobs, businesses and homes. The scars 
of the crisis are fresh, and every new economic report brings another wave 
of anxiety. That uncertainty is understandable, but a review of recent 
data on the American economy shows that we are on a path back to growth.

The recession that began in late 2007 was extraordinarily severe, but the 
actions we took at its height to stimulate the economy helped arrest the 
freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on 
the road to recovery.

>From the start, President Obama made clear that recovery from a crisis of 
this magnitude would not come quickly and that the recovery would not 
follow a straight line. We saw that this past spring, when the European 
fiscal crisis posed a serious challenge to the markets and to business 
confidence, dampening investment and the rate of growth here.

While the economy has a long way to go before reaching its full potential, 
last week.s data on economic growth show that large parts of the private 
sector continue to strengthen. Business investment and consumption . the 
two keys to private demand . are getting stronger, better than last year 
and better than last quarter. Uncertainty is still inhibiting investment, 
but business capital spending increased at a solid annual rate of about 17 
percent.

Together, private consumption and fixed investment contributed about 3.25 
percent to growth. Even the surge in imports, which lowered the rate of 
increase of G.D.P., actually reflects healthy and growing American demand.

As the economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart have written, recoveries 
that follow financial crises are typically a hard climb. That is reality. 
The process of repair means economic growth will come slower than we would 
like. But despite these challenges, there is good news to report:

. Exports are booming because American companies are very competitive and 
lead the world in many high-tech industries.

. Private job growth has returned . not as fast as we would like, but at 
an earlier stage of this recovery than in the last two recoveries. 
Manufacturing has generated 136,000 new jobs in the past six months.

. Businesses have repaired their balance sheets and are now in a strong 
financial position to reinvest and grow.

. American families are saving more, paying down their debt and borrowing 
more responsibly. This has been a necessary adjustment because the 
borrow-and-spend path we were on wasn.t sustainable.

. The auto industry is coming back, and the Big Three . Chrysler, Ford and 
General Motors . are now leaner, generating profits despite lower annual 
sales.

. Major banks, forced by the stress tests to raise capital and open their 
books, are stronger and more competitive. Now, as businesses expand again, 
our banks are better positioned to finance growth.

. The government.s investment in banks has already earned more than $20 
billion in profits for taxpayers, and the TARP program will be out of 
business earlier than expected . and costing nearly a quarter of a 
trillion dollars less than projected last year.

We all understand and appreciate that these signs of strength in parts of 
the economy are cold comfort to those Americans still looking for work and 
to those industries, like construction, hit hardest by the crisis. But 
these economic measures, nonetheless, do represent an encouraging 
turnaround from the frightening future we faced just 18 months ago.

The new data show that this recession was even deeper than previously 
estimated. The plunge in economic activity started an entire year before 
President Obama took office and was accelerating at the end of 2008, when 
G.D.P. fell at an annual rate of roughly 7 percent.

Panicked by the collapse in demand and financing and fearing a prolonged 
slump, the private sector cut payrolls and investment savagely. The rate 
of job loss worsened with time: by early last year, 750,000 jobs vanished 
every month. The economic collapse drove tax revenue down, pushing the 
annual deficit up to $1.3 trillion by last January.

The economic rescue package that President Obama put in place was 
essential to turning the economy around. The combined effect of government 
actions taken over the past two years . the stimulus package, the stress 
tests and recapitalization of the banks, the restructuring of the American 
car industry and the many steps taken by the Federal Reserve . were 
extremely effective in stopping the freefall and restarting the economy.

According to a report released last week by Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, 
advisers to President Bill Clinton and Senator John McCain, respectively, 
the combined actions since the fall of 2007 of the Federal Reserve, the 
White House and Congress helped save 8.5 million jobs and increased gross 
domestic product by 6.5 percent relative to what would have happened had 
we done nothing. The study showed that government action delivered a 
powerful bang for the buck, and that the bank rescue on its own will turn 
a profit for taxpayers.

We have a long way to go to address the fiscal trauma and damage across 
the country, and we will need to monitor the ups and downs in the economy 
month by month. The share of workers who have been unemployed for six 
months or more is at its highest level since 1948, when the data was first 
recorded, and we must do more to ensure that they have the skills they 
need to re-enter the 21st-century economy. Small businesses are still 
battling a tough climate. State and local governments are still hurting.

There are urgent tasks to be undertaken to reinforce the recovery, and 
Congress should move now to help small business, to assist states in 
keeping teachers in the classroom, to increase investments in public 
infrastructure, to promote clean energy and to increase exports. And while 
making smart, targeted investments in our future, we must also cut the 
deficit over the next few years and make sure that America once again 
lives within its means.

These are considerable challenges, but we are in a much stronger position 
to face them today than when President Obama took office. By taking 
aggressive action to fix the financial system, reduce growth in health 
care costs and improve education, we have put the American economy on a 
firmer foundation for future growth.

And as the president said last week, no one should bet against the 
American worker, American business and American ingenuity.

We suffered a terrible blow, but we are coming back.

Timothy F. Geithner is the secretary of the Treasury.