Friday Fun Graph: Our Crash in Context

Katherine Mangu-Ward | June 26, 2009

Via the Reason Foundation's Anthony Randazzo.

Comments

|6.26.09 @ 5:30PM|#

I love graphs like this. It makes it so easy to put things in historical perspective.

Ask a FDR new deal worshipper which of these 20th century crisises received the most government intervention? Then ask which recession lasted the longest. Oooh, the one referred to as "the Great Depression"? Hmmmm.

It ain't that hard folks. Since the fecal matter first started impacting the rotating vanes my counsel (roundly ignored by my betters in DC) has been, "Yep, here comes a recession. Let people lie in the beds they made".

|6.26.09 @ 5:38PM|#

The graph seems to show that the current crisis was worst since the great depression (maybe even equal to it) until something ~changed~. I'm not saying this is actually true, but simply going by the graph, it looks like Obama saved the day somehow.

hammeredHead|6.26.09 @ 5:50PM|#

Where is the 1982 and 1990 recessions? I think the 1982 one is still worse than the current one, but no longer very sure of that. It would have been helpful to see them on the graph.

Team America|6.26.09 @ 5:58PM|#

The scale should have been logarithmic: a drop from 50% to 25% is as bad as a drop from 100% to 50%.

hmm|6.26.09 @ 8:44PM|#

The graph seems to show that the current crisis was worst since the great depression (maybe even equal to it) until something ~changed~. I'm not saying this is actually true, but simply going by the graph, it looks like Obama saved the day somehow.

There was an upswing after the 29 crash. I think the greater point, and maybe what you missed, is the slow bleed after the uptick. The market is acting and looking a lot like it did in 29. (this is no prediction of what will happen) Obama's actions are very similar to FDR, large injections, debt, huge projects and so on. A lot think we are doomed to follow the same pattern or worse enter a prolonged period of stagnation.

I don't know if you realize that both rebounds occurred long before any federal money could have possible had any effect. It may look like he did something, but we are looking at half the graph. The last half will tell the tale.

ajv|6.26.09 @ 9:11PM|#

These graphs are of the stock indexes as measured in dollars correct? So the government can easily improve stock prices in dollars by creating more dollars. I'd be interested to see the same graph with stock indexes measured in gold or other commodity index.

|6.27.09 @ 12:22AM|#

So. A steady rise since The ascension of Obama. hehehe. Ya'll will look like monkees fuckin footballs when he pulls it off. Yeah, I know. But he will most assuredly get the credit for it.

God. I hate bein right all the time.

hmm|6.27.09 @ 12:55AM|#

We will not have any more crashes in our time.
Give them time, someone will repeat this in our time.


Lets hope the rally isn't the same as it was in the 30s. With information moving much faster than the 30's I don't thing Obama can pull off an FDR cover up of his fuck up.

|6.27.09 @ 2:00PM|#

Uh, the Great Depression graph ends before the 1932 election (ie, Hoover was still president when the Dow reached 82% down). So that particular graph can't be attributed to Roosevelt's policies (though Hoover was quite the interventionist himself).

|6.27.09 @ 9:42PM|#

"So. A steady rise since The ascension of Obama. hehehe." "Ascension"? Did I miss the part where he flew into heaven amidst choirs of cherubim?

(Well, maybe in one or two Newsweek editorials...)

The market did okay under Obama's latest few months because Obama didn't do much egregiously harmful. He administered a lot of Keynesian placeboes in the form of this or that bailout, but structurally the economy was able to cope.

We'll see how the market does next Monday when everyone on the planet notices that we now care more about punishing the productive class than about fixing our economy. And there's Card Check to look forward to after that, and nationalised and rationed healthcare after THAT. I'm thinking an oil-industry takeover disguised as a bailout is on its way too.

|6.29.09 @ 9:41AM|#

3 words for this recent rally

DEAD CAT BOUNCE!

mark|6.29.09 @ 2:43PM|#

You know, if you line up the 1929 crash with the 2008 crash, you get a dead cat bounce for 10 months and then a steady downward fall. We're almost at 10 months since the previous crash, so the near future will be educational.