Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Mostly Spin

When people tell you what their opponents are trying to do you should retain a large degree of skepticism.

Sometimes it has a bit of accuracy but generally they have an ax to grind.

The only real question should be how much spin has been applied?

There are facts and then there are interpretation of facts.

In 2008-2009 we saw a contraction in the financial systems due to an overextension of credit to people who shouldn't have gotten it.  This was backed by real estate which was in a bubble.  Once the bubble burst the whole system came close to collapsing.

There were a number of stimulus packages and after hitting a painful bottom we saw a recovery where credit markets, the stock market and the economy started to grow.  It had some flaws because employment and wages in some industries just wasn't coming back.  Still that recovery lasted until the recent virus and while we saw a tax package and reduced regulations these didn't really have much impact, at least from the statistics.

The economy was undergoing a fundamental change from its prior manufacturing past with some service industries to a service model with some manufacturing.  Most manufacturing was done elsewhere.

This expansion has ended because of the virus and that's no one's fault really.

The expansion was also not the result of current administration efforts, it was continuous from 2010 effectively.

The same people were excluded, the conversion to a service, gig economy continued and we had increasing income inequality.

Almost entirely driven by economic forces.

Still it gets a lot of spin.

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