6 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy May Never Recover

I can't tell if this is serious. Is this a real graphic or some sort or satire? Please say it's the latter. Rebecca, you are on to something.

Another item that could trigger a collapse would be stagnation or decline in global oil production, which, if the economy were on the road to recovery, would cause the price of oil to rise back towards 5-7% of GDP, which leaves much, much less money to service loans...

Not only may this recession not be close to ending, but this recession may never end, at least not until a new banking / money model is instituted, which can maintain price and employment stability despite a declining global availability of petroleum and other non-renewable resources.

The Fed is at the epicenter of every bubble that has ever been created. They believe in intervention with either artificially low interest rates, or even quantitative easing, (printing money), to benefit the consumer as stated in the previous post. This happens even in smaller recessions as attributed to Alan Greenspan's %1 Fed Funds rate throughout most of the 90's, which he agrees, was a major contributor to the recent free-fall of our markets. Furthermore, he admits that the Fed is responsible for the bubbles that happen in our markets and the system can't work forever as each time a bubble bursts, our currency takes the biggest hit, besides the loss of work and growth. Low interest rates is a form of money printing in our system. A question to Rebecca or anyone for that matter, What good does it do for a person who has an arm about to reset, if in a few years, or months even, if the purchasing power of their money depreciates. To me it offsets any gain one might have in saving on a mortgage payment, if the overall cost of living goes up? I don't see the advantage. Nice chart at the top. Seems like a plausible scenario. The food situation scares me as with a cheaper dollar, those commodities become a heck of a lot more attractive to importers. Agriculture is our biggest export.....jeeez.

The lesson here is:

1. Not only are economic projections subject to a host of unpredictable factors...

2. Even graphic representations of economic projections are affected by unpredictable factors.

A little voice is telling me that Americans must experience the true misery of a Jimmy Carter-like economic catastrophe to fully appreciate the value of the Ronald Reagan-style free market that should (one might hope) follow on its heels.

One can hope!

Can you please remove the 'no' option from the "Are people stupid?" box. :P

There are all symptoms of the real problem, fiat money and a privately owned central bank.

Having real money would fix all of this.

Didn't see this one in the list but it is part of the reason why we are there. Companies are more worried about Quarter to Quarter numbers and the Global Economy rather than on the US job force and reviving our economy. Where is the social obligation lie with these companies?

Perish the thought, but the housing market isn't really stable or close it any time soon. They're hoping to artificially restore the damage but honestly it's in a state of very serious disrepair.

Houses were being sold way past their prime with bloated figures and real estate agents made a killing. They're going to seriously suffer as a result now.

In some Asia countries, situation is not that bad. But surely they need to be careful monitoring the more developed countries since it affects their situation.

Greetings,
Your website of Visual Economics is just brilliant! Described some of the major challenges in a nutshell. However, please explain (illustrate) what will happen when people catch on that the Federal Reserve (cartel) is at the center of this economic superstorm and is responsible for the majority of their troubles. Please include all the bitter details; also include the FEMA detension centers in the scenario, if you will.

Peace

I can't speak for all the "tubes" on this inforgraphic, but the first two categories are unneccessarily alarmist.

I work in the finance industry and the truth is people are refinancing in record numbers. The market is far from closed. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Rates are at their lowest in years and people are taking advantage of that to their financial benefit. Some property values do keep people from refinaning, but the govt bailout plan does have a provision that gives those that owe a little more than their home is worth a loophole, allowing thousands to refinance under nontraditional guidelines.

And yes, it's true option ARMs are due to reset, but those people will also be sitting pretty when their 6% mortgage resets to the current rates, which are in the low 5% range. Anyone with an ARM resetting these days is in a very good position, as the Fed is keeping rates artificially low to consumers' benefit.

These skewed facts lead me to doubt the other categories that I know less about.

Maybe if I could read this this, I could comment on it. On my computer the article/picture, is blurry, just like our government. :(

The graphic for 6 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy May Never Recover is compressed so that it's not readable.
Tried this in Firefox as well as Explorer browsers.
Please fix it so we can read it!
Thanks

I can't read the chart.

you're images are very difficult to look at. they are streched, squeezed, and impossible to read with normal eyes.

Picture squashed:

I'm sure others have reported this problem but running the latest Safari 4 on latest Mac OS x 10.5.7 all big pictures are squashed down so I can't read anything unless I save the picture or drag it to my address bar. Maybe have the picture link to the actual .jpg so the browser can show it in the intended size?

I am not the brightest bulb, but for some reason the various graphs and articles are very difficult to read (blurry), and I do have my glasses on.

Thoughts?

This graphic needs to be resized.

Nice graphic! I do feel more worried now though . . .

One thought, I wasn't able to make the picture bigger on your website. I had to copy and paste it into another program to view it full size. The work is great, so make it easy for people to see!