Recession, schmecession

Justin Fox, writing The Rites of Recession in the current Time magazine, gets it just right, I think. The economy, which has been remarkably underreported during the presidential campaign, is a major concern of a lot of people. But the reporting, what there has been of it, has been devoted to the possibility of a recession: Are we in one? Will we be in one? How long will it last?

All of which misses the point. The problems that confront this nation right now transcend this discussion. Who cares if we're technically in a recession? As I've written before, much of the country is already in a recession. So our current challenges go beyond whether we're in something called a "recession" or just in a "slowdown." If you lose your home, or your job, you don't feel better if it turns out, years later, that you didn't lose them in a recession.

Even Fox spends 80+% of the article talking about recession - interesting stuff, but not vital. What is important "[are] long-term trends like the rise of China and India, the growth in income inequality, ... U.S. competitiveness, the state of the middle class." That he even mentions the possibility that "America's global role has been permanently downgraded" is journalistic progress that I am surprised to see.

Despite all that, the bandwagon-jumping legislators, who in a remarkable show of non-partisan support are backing the President, in what coincidentally is an election year, are getting behind a fiscal stimulus plan. Tax rebates (that even respected economists say should not be used to pay down debt, despite the fact that Americans desperately need to pay down debt) will be thrown around, but just try getting Americans to spend this windfall domestically. It won't happen, as we endorse our new checks directly over to China or Korea.

One of the downsides to globalization is that you can't control what happens within your own nation any more. The fiscal stimulus package may do very little to create growth in the U.S., but it may allow China and India to continue their surprising progress. Of course, our CEOs will still skim off some of that money as it crosses the border, so some of it will stay here.