wilburcarp
03-02-2010, 09:12 PM
Chart of the day: The USA’s lost decade
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/03/02/chart-of-the-day-the-usas-lost-decade/
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2010/03/ChartsUSDecade_0.jpg
^^^ Free Exchange reprints this fantastic chart from the Economist ^^^
The really fascinating charts, for me, are the second two. The one in the middle shows how consumption grew a little bit faster than income through the 70s, 80s, and 90s — but then the gap between the two completely spiralled out of control in the 2000s. There’s your credit boom and inevitable crunch right there.
And I can’t help but look at the payrolls chart in the light of the anti-immigration sentiments of Lou Dobbs and the like. It’s a lot easier to welcome foreigners to your shores when your payrolls are growing by 20% a decade than when they’re shrinking.
Incidentally, I think there’s a misprint in the graphic: the third chart shouldn’t have that asterisk, since the growth rate in that one is per decade, not per year. It seems silly to do it that way, I would have made all the growth rates annual, and maybe added a population-growth or bar to the final chart.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/03/02/chart-of-the-day-the-usas-lost-decade/
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2010/03/ChartsUSDecade_0.jpg
^^^ Free Exchange reprints this fantastic chart from the Economist ^^^
The really fascinating charts, for me, are the second two. The one in the middle shows how consumption grew a little bit faster than income through the 70s, 80s, and 90s — but then the gap between the two completely spiralled out of control in the 2000s. There’s your credit boom and inevitable crunch right there.
And I can’t help but look at the payrolls chart in the light of the anti-immigration sentiments of Lou Dobbs and the like. It’s a lot easier to welcome foreigners to your shores when your payrolls are growing by 20% a decade than when they’re shrinking.
Incidentally, I think there’s a misprint in the graphic: the third chart shouldn’t have that asterisk, since the growth rate in that one is per decade, not per year. It seems silly to do it that way, I would have made all the growth rates annual, and maybe added a population-growth or bar to the final chart.