Stagflation: A Rant
February 27th, 2008 | by Molly's Brother |I am all for freedom of the press. I have a blog for God’s sake, so of course I believe in free speech. But I wonder if somehow all the reporting on economic woes actually feeds into the woes. Do you ever wonder this?
For the past twelve months during my morning commute, I would listen to NPR story after NPR story about the housing woes, which turned into the housing crunch, which led to the collapse of the housing market, which then led to the credit crunch and now we are in the midst of the credit crisis.
In between, there was talk of a recession and then talk of us not being in a recession and then a discussion that, yes, we are definitely (probably) in a recession.
Mixed in with this were reports of new jobs being added to the economy and jobs being taken away from the economy.
Consumer confidence was up, up, up and then it was down, down, down. And now we have the lowest consumer confidence we’ve see in five years in the midst of a housing market that has not been this bad since the Great Depression and news that consumer credit card debt has increased over 300% since 1989. Sigh.
Now my monotonous mainstays at National Public Radio have been throwing this “stagflation” buzzword around for the past couple of weeks. (A stagnant economy + inflation = Stagflation. Although the words been around for some time, I think its the economic equivalent to “Bennifer” and “Brangelino.”) Were things really this bad? Or did hearing about things being this bad make things this bad?
Sigh. Back to saving money for a rainy day.
Which, by the sounds of it, is here.
One Response to “Stagflation: A Rant”
By Mark on Mar 3, 2008 | Reply
Seriously, this is so true. Obviously, there’s a reason economics is considered a social science. I think so much of how we deal with our dollars depends on our perceptions of what’s going on.
Great rant, though. I often feel the same way.