Fair Enough...

One of the text-book definitions of a depression is a decline in overall economic output of more than 15% with a recovery that takes more than five years.

Fair enough.

Today's Wall Street Journal runs this headline:

The Obama Economy

How trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus produced a 1.6% recovery.

Fair enough.

Consider this: this may actually be the good news.

Bluntly, it will be at least another 2-3 years before the economy starts to approach pre-recession levels. Given the time already lapsed, we are looking at least five years before the economy recovers to where it once was.

Hence: one condition of a depression is fulfilled.

Now, one of the mantras coming from President Obama and the Democratic Party is that the massive upswing in government debt is really all Bush's fault, that they inherited this.

Fair enough.

Of course, that really means that the avoidance of Depression 2.0 (or at least the really, really bad parts of it, i.e. that -15% growth) can't be claimed by President Obama and his administration.

Make up your minds, Democrats: either pony up, accept the debt as the necessary evil to avoid Depression 2.0 and claim the moral ownership of recovery, or blame it on Bush, but then accept that avoiding Depression 2.0 is something that Mr. Bush can lay claim to. Not the Obama Administration, which seems hell-bent on redistribution policies that are so 20th century.

Can't have both.

Fair enough?