What You Should Think About Recession

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

–William Arthur Ward

My first experience analyzing the cultural resonance of the word “recession” comes from the media treatment of conditions leading up to the 1992 Presidential election. It is clear that the first President Bush presided over a weakening American economy as the end of his term approached. Yet it is also clear (all the more with hindsight) that a some of this was the inevitable adjustment of indicators and indices tugged away from realities by the fervor of Reaganomics jingoism.

Today, jingoism is almost too soft a term for an institutional predisposition to spin economic news. Anchors with almost every major network tiptoe around the fundamentals and treat “the R word” as if it were a vulgarity that should never be uttered in polite company. In fact, recession is a technical term that should be fluently employed in any applicable discussion of economics. Alas, it is also something of an ambiguous term, made all the more fuzzy by the abuses of journalists, pundits, and politicians themselves.

Perhaps the most sensible definition of “recession” holds that it is a period of time when economic growth across two consecutive quarters does not keep pace with population growth. Yet economic growth is itself a much fuzzier concept than tends to be widely believed. If an expensive and fragile device is replaced by a cheap durable device that fulfills the same need, adopting the innovation registers as a negative on the scorecard of economic growth. Acting promptly to minimize the damage caused by a natural disaster may also compare unfavorably with the activity involved in rebuilding efforts.

Then there is the matter of war. While much of education, child care, resource conservation, domestic toil, etc. is not included in the calculations that shape growth assessments, even the most destructive of military activities registers as economic accomplishment. For years the present Bush Administration has turned out mediocre economic performance — a feat that might be considered more than mediocre in light of the damage the attacks of 9/11 inflicted on key institutions as well as public morale.

Yet it is legitimate, even important, to have some sense of context in these matters. Attributing the economic components of declining public morale to terrorist attacks seems a serious error in judgement. If anything, the United States was energized and mobilized, more than at any other time in recent decades, as a response to the 9/11 attacks. A strong national leader with real vision about how to solve real problems could have accomplished amazing things while marginalizing apathy for the foreseeable future. As our sitting leader chose a different approach to directing the resources of the nation, we have experienced a different outcome.

Insofar as there are problems with public morale today, they have little to do with fears Al Qaeda is about to take the roof off the local Pamida store and more to do with weariness. People have grown weary of the persistent disconnect between the stated purposes and the predictable outcomes of White House initiatives. People have grown weary of the persistent deference to market forces in almost all matters, as if trickle-down thinking was still considered to be a perfect panacea to all social ills. Perhaps most of all, people have grown weary of a horrendously bloody and costly counterterrorism strategy that does at least as much to produce new terrorist recruits as it does to neutralize existing terrorist operatives.

The war in Iraq continues to bleed this nation, both literally and economically, to a significant degree. Yet that significance also registers as a net positive in the Gross Domestic Product. An end to the wartime spending binge would mean less spending to stimulate economic activity (unless policy also called for expensive peaceful initiatives like universal health care, universal access to higher education, and whatever else could be funded with the mountains of money funding the occupation of Iraq.) A short term thinker cannot help but see perpetuating the war as vital from the perspective that it also perpetuates wartime spending.

Yet focusing exclusively on short term thinking is almost never a sound approach to economics. So much spending creates more government debt. More government debt means more difficulty in securing creditors for the Treasury. Other than raising interest rates, there is little legitimate action a government can take to expand support from investors. Yet this all happens against a backdrop of interest rate cuts. Even now, Wall Street svengalis continue to promote loose credit as a way of encouraging business growth.

Somewhat like a balloon, applying hard restraints to the economy in one area at best merely transfers pressure to a different area. If our nation spends more and more while issuing bonds that are less and less rewarding, ultimately the medium of exchange itself takes a hit in value. While this eases debt pressure by reducing the real value of that debt, another inevitable consequence is increased pressure on working class citizens (or really all citizens with ordinary levels of personal income.) Less value in the dollar means more dollars are required to obtain goods or services of value — but the process does not provide more dollars to income recipients until terms of employment change.

On top of this great tangle of fundamental problems, oil speculators have driven energy prices up, and thus by extension made inflation that much more severe. If there is any bright spot in the big picture here, it is that the speculation cannot persist indefinitely. Unless the Bush-Cheney team starts a shooting war with Iran, the climb of oil should be arrested in spite of the continued decline of the American dollar. In fact, a general sense that U.S. belligerence is a declining phenomenon could drive a long-needed correction in the price of that particular commodity.

Still, when President Bush’s chief economic advisor Allan Hubbard declared that the prospect of a recession was more likely now than it seemed one year ago, he was doing so with some awareness of these hard facts. As this moment of frankness was almost immediately followed by a resignation, it is hard to say if many others inside the administration have even tried to wrap their minds around the particularly complex and particularly messy state of the national economy today.

Will the unraveling of Dubyanomics have such a severe impact as to bring about a national recession? This is a difficult question to answer, even if one accepts a concrete technical definition for the term “recession.” It may well be the case that American industriousness will sustain some measure of real growth even as the ongoing series of small shocks continue to reduce the median purchasing power of the American consumer. It may even be the case that a sense of hope brought on by a pending change in national direction could inspire major changes for the better.

Yet there should be no doubt — military aggression and widespread corruption fostered by this President have done no favors to the American economy. If we fail to get out economic house in order relatively quickly, the price we have already paid for his follies will be multiplied as it rests on the shoulders of future Presidents and even future generations of American taxpayers.