Larry Summers: "Everybody Agrees The Recession Is Over"

Larry Summers is the same crook who in the late 90's barbecued Brooksley Born for pushing regulation of the derivatives markets, saying if she persisted she would cause a financial crisis the likes of which hadn't been seen since pre WWII. Alan Greenspan and little Timmy Geithner were there, too, telling congress that we should let the free markets regulate themselves. Greenspan now admits it was a mistake... but stupid ass Summers is in CHARGE of our president's economic team???!!! As soon as Obama got elected he started putting crooks on his team... Wake up mainstream America, we need to start electing ACADEMICS to high office, not the slickest lawyers money can buy.

Man, I sure do wonder what happened to all those foreclosed homes that no one is buying and all those FHA loans people are taking out. Surely nothing will go wrong with those and we won't be bailing more people out in a few months. Oh no, that couldn't ever happen.

"the recession is over", "santa claus is real", "i did not sleep with that woman miss lewinsky", nobel peace prize, keep 'em coming

The people out of work and scrambling to avoid foreclosure/bankruptcy or who've already succumbed don't agree with you asshole.

What pure baloney on the part of Summers. The lack of significant concern about unemployment (and underemployment) by guys like Summers is horrendous. Obama made some bad choices in picking Wall Street insiders like him as economic advisors. The one former Wall Street guy w/o his head in the sand is Paul Volcker, and he's been marginalized by Summers and co.

And Bernancke? The Fed's mission is keeping employment up, but he doesn't seem to care about that much at all.

There's not much the Fed can do at this point since interest rates are already zero.

True that.

But what Bernanke should *not* do (but which he did) is make statements downplaying the need for fiscal stimulus, as he did before Congress a few weeks ago.

If your head's above water, I guess you're no longer drowning...but you're still in the middle of the ocean.

If there's one thing I've learned, when "everybody agrees," duck.

Recession is over for gov't employees. Even before benefits they average 71K, have guaranteed pay increases & job security. Private sector pays only 40K on average.

From USA Today: "When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000." That's a real scandal.

The recession will not be over until America figures out how to proceed without the automobile.

The end.

Thank you Mr. Gore. Enemy #1 is not the gargantuant debt that may sink this country, nor the network of Islamofascists that wants us dead, but the internal combustion engine.

You're an idiot, just like everyone else -- live by the car and die by the car. What do we produce that anyone would want? Shitty corn and grade F- meat? Quality clothing? Electronics?

We have no real manufacturing in this country anymore, and we're simply dependent on being rich enough to boss other people around. That ain't the case anymore, you know.

Agreed. Continue to visualize peace and prosperity for all without the automobile.

And to add to that until it actually does something about its crumbling infrastructure.

Look at Japan, a country that has been on a reccesion since 1991 and they have an excellent infrastructure system and an amazing public transportation system.

It's not over until the unemployment rate dips below 8%.

By that measure France has been in a recession for about forty years and I think you'll have a hard time finding an economist that will say that.

Ah France. The country of cheese eating surrender monkeys and overpriced wine.

"... we've walked back from the brink.'" I believe he means we are crawling very very slowly back from the brink. And wipe that smirk off your face. Douche.

In other words, the recession is over for Summers and his wealthy friends. Not that people need work or anything with all the social safety nets there are these days to make sure they don't become homeless or anything. To paraphrase a remark wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat Larry Summers".

The recession never began for Summers. For that matter it didn't begin for anyone working for the Federal government (aside from some postal workers).

With federal jobs now paying more than private sector jobs, we are on our way to a Cold War-era Eastern European-style economy, where people who actually produce goods and services live like peasants, while menial government bureaucrats become the new petit-bourgeois.