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Ben Stein's Diary
Recessional
Hope and the recession that just grinds on and on.
The recession grinds on and on. Some economic research bureaus say the recession ended over a year ago. Maybe so, but the pain lingers bitterly. All around me, I see close friends who are unemployed, lifelong pals who have lost their homes, a chronic fog of fear over the nation.
Just a few days ago, one of my very closest friends, a kind and lovely middle aged woman, called me in tears to tell me she was packing. Her home had been foreclosed upon and she had been served with an eviction notice, along with her two beautiful children.
“Will it ever end?” she asked me. “Will it ever end?”
So, while it will not get that sweet woman’s home back, I hereby offer some words of hope.
We have had well over a dozen recessions since the end of World War II. Some were extremely severe. They all eventually ended.
We have had at least three and maybe more genuine Depressions in the United States since the nation’s birth. They all ended.
All recessions end. Or, I should say, there has not yet been a recession that did not end. There is no reason to believe that this one will not end as well. The recessions end because credit gets easier or because government spends a lot of money or because the mood of the country shifts from pessimistic to optimistic, just as our personal moods change wildly in the course of a week or even a day. Or for reasons we don’ t know, it ends.
Of course, it still hurts like the devil when we are in it. But the recession will end. All booms end. All busts end. All inflations end. All deflations end. And the most dangerous words in the English language about economics are, “It’s different this time.”
At one time in the incredibly painful Civil War, the beginning of whose sesquicentennial we mark this Spring, Abraham Lincoln was asked what the wisest words he had ever read were. He answered, “This, too, shall pass away.”
Words well worth remembering.
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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Appleby| 1.21.11 @ 6:57AM
Thank you for bending down from your catbird seat to offer hope to the proletariat who ask in reply, *But will I be alive to see it?* As you fly (First Class) over us, give a though to those who will take two hours in line at the unemployment office just to get in the door. Then have another free drink and write another paragraph about your expensive hotel and the limo you will take to that high-priced restaurant, driving in comfort past all those who wait in the rain for the Recession to end.
Now go and read the chapter in the Book of James that contains this verse:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
Denver Todd| 1.21.11 @ 8:19AM
In all fairness, Appleby, Mr. Stein, in has written in past essays that he does give a lot of his money away, including to his friends. I imagine that Mr. Stein would be a good friend to have in time of recession, offering business advice and monetary aid to his friends.
Stormzeye| 1.21.11 @ 8:30AM
Are your mean-spirited comments designed to create resentment of the financially secure? Are you promoting class warfare? Your allies on the Left have been doing this for generations. It works well everywhere but in the United States so peddle your goods elsewhere.
Appleby| 1.21.11 @ 3:23PM
The toad beneath the harrow knows/where every separate toothpoint goes; the butterfly above the road/preaches contentment to that toad.
-- Rudyard Kipling
emilio lizardo, PhD| 1.21.11 @ 8:51AM
Yes, it will end alright. It will end when the totalitarians who hold our debt decide to call it in, and the rest of the world is sick and tired of watching our bankrupt asses pay $3.09 for a gallon of gas. Then comes Carter-era stagflation, hyperinflation and collapse. But Ben, God bless you, will still have your place in Malibu, your first class airfare, your limo and your meal ticket. Beginning with your maudlin reflections of Nixon, I am thinking you have said about enough from your perch in this rarefied air
Publius| 1.22.11 @ 9:59AM
So much vitriol aimed at a man who keeps his financial affairs in order.
Keep talking, Ben. We can use more of your council.
Mr LeMans| 1.21.11 @ 4:32PM
Keep this in mind: If all the economists ever spawned were laid end-to-end, they still
wouldn't reach a conclusion..........
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 1.21.11 @ 7:18AM
The recession will end when the central economic planning out of Washington stops. That hasn't happened and in fact is getting worse. The Republicans may lead the way if they go through with all their plans including significant long term cuts in the federal work force.
cclusn| 1.23.11 @ 9:14AM
Amen, Bill! The entire bureaucracy of the federal government under Teddy Roosevelt could have been placed in just ONE of the buildings lining the mall in Washington, D.C. Today, you can't swing a cat without touching a government office. Can anyone name one government agency that has been abandoned because it outlived its usefulness (which many have)?
wodiej| 1.21.11 @ 7:22AM
I am fortunate in that I saved the last 20 years and can now sustain being unemployed for a few years but I would much rather be working.
It's all I can do some days to keep my faith when an employer tells me that 500 people applied for one job. Yet, giving up is not an option either.
Yes, this too shall pass but not without great pain to many. Perhaps God is trying to tell us something about the flippant disregard we have when electing leaders. Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and now Obama. None impressive. Even when the GOP took over congress while Clinton was in office, they fumbled and dropped the ball. The fault is ours for being too busy with our gas guzzling SUV's, big screen tv's and Ipods to pay attention to the erosion of our freedoms for the last 30+ years.
Pelligrino| 1.21.11 @ 10:15AM
wodiej, I mostly agree with your sentiments but not wholeheartedly.
There are a lot of people who have never ever been fooled by any of the policos (national or at state levels) throughout the modern era. None of them any good.
We know they are no good; they know that we know this.
And that is the problem. We have a system that permits ineptitude throughout.
In academia, in our legal profession, in our local schools, in our state capitals, in LA, on Broadway, and in the capitol.
The recession and the many other national ills won't end. There are too many at the top who would never do the heavy lifiting. It is not in their fiber.
Big Tony| 1.21.11 @ 3:37PM
The fault is ours we deserve the leaders we have elected. I don't know when or what the exact tipping point was but the moment we went from being a constitutional republic and turned into a democracy our fate was sealed. Democracies always bankrupt themselves and totalitarianism follows the collapse. Yes the economy will moderate but we are now on a longterm downhill slide with no end in site. Don't expect the party of big government to save us from the party of huge government.
Donna| 1.21.11 @ 7:57AM
Ben, You sounded like Obama: condescending, uncaring and flat out elitists. This too will pass?????? really???? It will take 10 years to undo this.
Vern Crisler| 1.21.11 @ 8:19AM
"The recessions end because credit gets easier or because government spends a lot of money or because the mood of the country shifts from pessimistic to optimistic...."
I'm surprise that Ben is trotting out the usual Keynesian or monetarist line on recessions. I'd recommend Robert Murphy's *The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal*. Government made everything worse, not better.
Doctor Simplicity| 1.21.11 @ 8:24AM
Mr. Stein speakth in words befitting a member of the ruling class. May I shine your shoes, milord?
Intelligent Design| 1.21.11 @ 8:24AM
The recession will end when Obama goes back to community organizing, or perhaps he will be Professor of American Unexceptionalism at Columbia?
al| 1.21.11 @ 8:25AM
I've labeled Stein an elitist more than once in this forum. seems some others are catching on.
Louis Jenkins| 1.21.11 @ 8:41AM
As long as we have that man in White House, the recession will not end. While most presidents make time by bringing the economy up, Obama gets his credits by bringing it down. It isn't his style. While he may pay lip service to a better economy, his actions speak copiously about him. He is most happy when the "wage earners" are miserable.
russel| 1.21.11 @ 10:37AM
Exactly and all that needs to be said . As long as we have zero , we have Nero . He pays a little lip service about " creating jobs " as is back to his own agenda - keeping us mired until it becomes the norm . The ' lost ten years ' Japan had . It has been said we could never have a recession if government stayed out of our business . But he and his socialist congress have no intention doing that whatsoever .
JP| 1.21.11 @ 8:43AM
I think Ben's intentions were correct. Its just that thing look quite different in places like Enid Oklahoma or Zenia Ohio than they do in Malibu. I am luck to still be employed. I was laid off from my IT job at factory in Oct 2008, but found a contract IT job 2 weeks later. I was blessed to find fulltime employment 4 months later, but must commute 80 miles a day. But all around me there are signs that "This too will pass" will not occur for sometime. I drove through a small union town in Michigan recently to find 80% of the storefronts boarded up; the 5 or 6 factories empty; For sale signs littered too many homes. The only places that looked busy was a 7-11 and the county city building.
But all is not bad in fly-over country. The farmers are having a great recession. Fortified by ethanol subsidies and mandates, as well as a weak dollar, the farmers are doing just fine. Driving through a small farm town in Northern Indiana one can see propserous feed mills, tractor dealerships, and full parking lots at the grocery stores. A factory that manufactures grain silos just added a third shift. From what I hear the Chinese can't get enough of our beans, corn, or wheat. To them, those commodities are better than dollars.
But, in my decaying urban neighborhood, the closed tool and die shops, metal fabrication shops, as well as food pantries with long lines is a depressing picture. But, most of my neighbors still remain Democrats. As long as government support continues most will remain Dems for no other reason than inertia.
This has been a long, cold snowy winter. And like many in the Rustbelt I wonder why I don't pack up the family and move to perhaps Dallas or Boulder, or Sante Fe. But, then again a local businessman flush with federal dollar is opening up an electirc truck factory nearby. News has it that he has landed major contracts with delivery companies that in turn are given taxbreaks for buying Green. The government seem to be the only game in town.
Redstateboy| 1.21.11 @ 8:46AM
I don't begrudge Ben Stein for his success and I also didn't take from this that he was being condescending but trying to be encouraging. It is official for me though.. I received my W2 and since Nazi Pelosi, Harry-the-war-is-lost-Reid and Hussein took power.. my income has dropped 50%. I'm broke, had to file bankruptcy yet I AM working but Boy! does it hurt to see my elderly Mom and Dad - who I was helping to support when I was earning some doe - suffer so much... that's why I say... Curse Pelosi, Reid and Hussein!
Bob K.| 1.21.11 @ 8:51AM
It is always "different this time." And the word "economics" is not exempt either. Economics is not exempt from history which is unpredictable.
There may have been a dozen recessions since the end of WW2 but there has not yet been a depression since then in 65 years and the last one lasted 15 years and was only corrected by that World War!
It did not end because "credit got easier;" it ended because the government "spent a lot of money" on a War!
When times change things change; including economics which is affected by governments and their policies.
The question is not whether "this too shall pass," but how it will pass?
Bill| 1.21.11 @ 8:54AM
Recessions in command economies appear to be worse and last longer. Just consider the USSR recession, that lasted from about the time of the Civil War in 1918-1921 to the collapse. Their recession only ended when they ran out of other peoples' money to steal, in 1990.
Redstateboy| 1.21.11 @ 9:17AM
I agree with several of the posts that say this will end when Hussein is out! He talks a great game but then... HIS EPA and HEW are Sticking it to our economy.
Dixie Pixie| 1.21.11 @ 10:07AM
I will say it again.
Depression Era economic policies produce Depression Era economic results.
The current 2nd Great Depression will not end until Obama and his neo-Keynesian economic staff are driven from office. The only "good" to come out of this is by rerunning FDR policies and getting Depression Era economic results, Obama is proving it was FDR and his henchmen that caused the Great Depression.
Old Soldier| 1.21.11 @ 10:21AM
Yep. I remember an economist who was asked when the Great Depression officially ended. His answer: "the day FDR died."
An even bigger planned post-WWII New Deal 2 was immediately canceled. Businesses could start planning again without fear that regulators and rule changes would destroy them.
Hopefully, Obama will be sent packing in two years and this series of recessions will end.
Ken (Old Texican)| 1.21.11 @ 1:29PM
Mr. Stein,
I am getting seriously bored with your "Diary".
DO BETTER OR RESIGN!
Oldefarte| 1.21.11 @ 2:36PM
This recession/depression will ONLY END after 11/4/12, when we can elect another president [and more conservatives to congress]. America's experiment with politically correct, racial guilt erasure is a failure of mass proportions [and akin to allowing a five year old child to attempt to fly a 747 airplane, or a plumber to perform heart surgery]. We screwed up, big time, folks on 11/2/08 [and now we're paying for it]!!!!!!!!
Franco| 1.21.11 @ 3:21PM
So....Ben. Did you offer to help your very close friend and her two beautiful children? Maybe let them stay for a bit in one of your homes?
jstwndring| 1.21.11 @ 10:54PM
Take it easy on Ben guys/gals. He's not all that bad. Thanks for your optimism Mr. Stein. Although, I would like to point out that the Keynesianism they teach in college economics classes and what is being implemented by Obama and company is what is continuing to exacerbate our current problems. You should know that the government using a bigger shovel to dig us out of this hole will not work. Of course, that depends on how you define "work", and what exactly you're working toward. From a certain perspective, one may say that it's working exactly as planned.......
jstwndring| 1.21.11 @ 10:59PM
Oh, forgot to point out that the arrows in the thumbnail for this article are pointing in the wrong directions. "Recovery" should be pointing to the right, and "Recession" should be pointing to the left. ;)
FTM| 1.22.11 @ 3:54AM
I really ought to stop reading this website, all I ever get here is gooned anyway.
Please consider for a moment, the American political game since the close of World War II has been one of, "Who can stave off the final financial collapse for four more years." We've been playing a game of financial "Musical Chairs" since the end of the first "Great Depression." We engage ourselves in wars that were never meant to be won (Korea and Viet Nam anyone?) at the behest of a patiently corrupt world government, the UN. We pay useless people to procreate and watch Ophra and Jerry Springer on the TV.
Case in point, how can it be that there are twelve to twenty million illegal immigrants in the US supposedly working jobs that "Americans" refuse to work and ninety-nine weeks of unemployment benifits? Now how the hell can that be?
How can it be that a little girl can have a kid in high school, return to school and brag to all the other little girls that she gets $300.00 a "mumff" from the "gubment" and as soon as she "graduates" gets her college tuition payed for, free child care, public housing, food stamps, a medical card, free public transportation back and fourth to college and $150.00 a "mumff" left over because she's a "single mom" while my kid gets to bust her ass every waking minute, along with mom and dad I might add, just to stay in school. You want to prevent teen pregnancy, stop paying the little savages to have kids. I can't see that it takes a room full of PhDs to figure that one out.
"Woe the them that call good bad and bad good."
How can it be that since the American government took the American economy off of the gold standard, and implemented the Federal Reserve I might add, that the American Federal government has accrued in excess of $14 trillion dollars in debt? Add in the debt accrued by the individual states and the actual American debt is probably a lot closer to $30 trillion.
Please consider, I tell the kids when I was a kid I used to hear gramma and grandpa tell about a coke costing a nickel and a stick of gum costing a penny. Now a coke costs a dollar or better and I don't know what a stick of gum costs because I don't buy the stuff. Now, it's not that a coke has become more expensive, in reality due to economies of scale and improved production efficiencies the cost to manufacture a coke has gone down. The reason that a coke costs a buck is because a buck is worth a lot, lot less. I read a couple years ago that a current dollar was worth less than two cents compared to a 1928 dollar.
I wrote a letter to McConnell and that other guy, Rand Paul. Whatever.
If you want to talk to McConnell you gotta wave thousand dollar bills ant the guy. I don't know about the Paul guy yet. The other guy, the one that Paul replaced was clinically insane. It didn't matter if you talked to that guy or not.
Anyway, I sent in via e-mail a laundry list of how to cut $100 billion out of the federal budget. One of those, "If I were king" letters. I could do $100 billion the first day on the job. Get the US out of the UN, get the UN out of the US, get the US out of NATO and Japan and South Korea. Implement actual fair trade, abolish the NEA and the NSF and on and on and on. I got a form letter back thanking me for taking the time to write these knuckle-heads a letter that some staff droid tallied onto a list of known nuts then deleted the e-mail. Like Stevie Tyler says, "Same 'ol story, same 'ol song and dance."
Basically what it all comes down to is this, from my chair, the financial crisis that the United States confronts is at least as serious a threat to the United States as the two weeks after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the War Department sent a report to the President saying that the American military might be able to stop the Japanese Imperial Army at the Mississippi River. There were kids sitting on the street curbs peeling aluminum off of gum wrappers to make airplanes and ladies saving up the grease from what little meat that they were able to cook in order to make TNT for explosives to fight the barbarian Japanese and the barbarian Germans who were sinking unarmed US commercial shipping within sight of the US east coast. In my most humble opinion folks we're in that shape.
And the crying damned shame of it all is that neither of the political parties seem to have the political will to do what is necessary. Not to mention that you can't get most people to put their cell phones down long enough to even say "good morning." I hear the political left whine about Europe having universal health care but no one says that the reason that the EU has universal health care is because the American taxpayer pays for European continental defense through NATO. The Germans and the French BETRAYED us the the Iraqi "Oil for Food" program. It's time that the American taxpayer tells these folks that we've finished paying their way. WWII is over, you guys can keep the savages at arms length for a while. Same with the Japanese and the South Koreans.
Meanwhile we get to hear a left wing diatribe about how the evil conservitaves in the house wasted their time voting to repeal Obama-care which amounts to putting a band-aid on an amputation instead of focusing on stopping the bleeding right now if not sooner.
As I've said before and have been roundly ridiculed for it, America is headed for a military dictatorship sooner rather than later. The day will come when the big people have to take over and deal with the problem at hand. Prepare yourselves for that day.
old progrmr| 1.22.11 @ 4:39PM
Not much I can add to that! You are right, at some time the grown-ups are going to really lose their patience and attempt to take control from the incompetent adolescents who believe thay are "ruling" us. It better be sooner than later.
Will| 1.22.11 @ 5:06AM
Out of work fourteen months and counting, Ben. No end in sight in these parts. Have not seen it this bad since the late seventies. Very worrisome for a guy my age. McDonald's will hire part-time, but I can't understand the language, and only a couple of people there speak mine clear enough for me to understand it. My ex-employer needed to make cuts, so he cut most of those employees born in this country. The other guys don't appear on the books and have their health care and needs met through Federal programs I cannot qualify for, and through advocacy groups and community organizations. So here we sit, existing on one paycheck instead of the mandatory two. No health care, no insurance. No more vacations, no unecessary expenses. There are people working it appears, but for the segment of the American workforce that I spent the last thirty in, I fear not, and I fear there never will be again.
beebop| 1.22.11 @ 12:55PM
It will end, but it is never ever again going to be the America our parents knew. There simply are better ways to do the work that was once done by people. The sooner we start hearing the straight "poop," the better prepared we will be for the new normal.
But to belittle Stein is simply childish. Don't you think? Imagine that you had saved, invested and spent wisely. I think you will find that is the case with Stein.
Appleby| 1.23.11 @ 8:29AM
Its not a matter of *belittling* Mr. Stein; it is a matter of treading water on an angry sea and having somebody in a large and comfortable boat raising his margarita glass and shouting, *Hang on! Help will come sooner or later!*
beebop| 1.23.11 @ 8:47AM
Other than offer comfort -- in his own way -- what would you have him do? Wring his hands? Say its even worse? Can we just agree that our unique human experiences impact our take on events and leave it at that? Four weeks ago I was working three part time jobs and had taken in a young room mate to make ends sometimes meet. I now have one full time job (thanks be) which will yield benefits in 90 days and am using the sum paid each month by the tenant to replenish my ravaged savings. I can't begin to tell you how improved my attitude has been -- even while out shoveling snow. Suddenly things seem possible ... and until they actually do get better, possible is a real move in the right direction.
Rich Rostrom| 1.22.11 @ 4:58PM
"...there has not yet been a recession that did not end."
How about the recession that ate the Roman Empire in 300-450 BC? Throughout that period, trade, agriculture, and manufacturing all declined continuously, despite every effort by well-meaning Emperors to turn it around. The burdens of excessive regulation, political corruption, and social welfare could not be reduced; the population declined and the once-invincible military collapsed before waves of violent immigrants.
Other countries have seen not just years or decades but generations of economic decline or stagnation: Japan, for instance, and Argentina.
Gaius Baltar| 1.23.11 @ 2:11PM
"The burdens of excessive regulation, political corruption, and social welfare could not be reduced; the population declined and the once-invincible military collapsed before waves of violent immigrants."
That scenario sounds ominously familiar.
"All of this has happened before and it will happen again"
jharp| 1.23.11 @ 4:21PM
And the Ben Steins of the world, dumbasses with no credibility, are still sucking the wingnut welfare teat.
Christian Louboutin | 6.23.11 @ 6:05AM
The recession grinds on and on. Some economic research bureaus say the recession ended over a year ago. Maybe so, but the pain lingers bitterly. All around me, I see close friends who are unemployed, lifelong pals who have lost their homes, a chronic fog of fear over the nation.
weddingdresses | 6.27.11 @ 5:09AM
And the Ben Steins of the world, dumbasses with no credibility, are still sucking the wingnut welfare teat.
Adidas | 8.11.11 @ 4:57AM
is good
العاب بنات | 4.11.12 @ 2:19PM
Keep this in mind: If all the economists ever spawned were laid end-to-end, they still
wouldn't reach a conclusion