The Economy

[--Pete]

Hi,

Here is a chart that might help.

Well, I stand back a bit, squint, and it looks like if you extend the trend (growth, but declining growth) of the mid 20's you hit the curve again about '37 or '8. The bubble starting in '28, the burst of '29, and the whole '30 to '37 (maybe '38) depression looks just like a big blip in a gradually growing economy. Of course, you can't really go back much before '20 (WW I and post war effects) or after '39 (WW II effects). A lot of industrialization going on from about the turn of the century, so a longer baseline really doesn't exist.

Overall, inconclusive any way you slice it. Doubly so as support for counterfactuals.

Oh, and BTW, isn't the bottom exactly where one should measure recovery from? After all, from the peak to the trough is the decline and from the trough to the next peak *is* the recovery.

Frankly, unless we develop experimental cosmology then sociology, economics, government, foreign policy, etc., are all belief systems, not sciences nor even supportable theories. Wake me up when we have a means of running controlled, repeatable, experiments;)

--Pete