Yow. I remember the Reagan Recession of 1981-1982. It was horrible.
The prolonged slump in housing pushed construction of new homes in 2007 down by the largest amount in 27 years with the expectation that the downturn has further to go.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that construction was started on 1.353 million new homes and apartments last year, down 24.8 percent from 2006. It was the second biggest annual decline on record, exceeded only by a 26 percent plunge in 1980, a period when the Federal Reserve was pushing interest rates to post-World War II records in an effort to combat an entrenched inflation problem.
Many economists believe that the current slump in housing will rival the dive in the late 1970s and early 1980s when housing construction fell for four straight years before beginning to recover after the severe 1981-82 recession. For December, construction fell by a bigger-than-expected 14.2 percent.
Surely our beloved, fiscally responsible president will applaud the decision of those, who faced with mounting expenses and (at best) level incomes, shrinking savings, and seeing many like themselves becoming overextended on mortgages, make the wise decision to both limit their current spending according to their income AND additionally not take on new financial obligations.
i sure hope i get into madison’s art fair. or this year will suck i see.
It was that first Reagan Recession that also saw an explosion among the numbners of the homeless in America.
I remember never seeing a genuinely homeless person wandering the streets of downtown Phoenix before the age of nine, and then, very suddenly, to the point of being newsworthy, there were thousands.
i was somewhat religious as a child and it made me confused and sad at the thought of all of these people seemingly set adrift and in such despair. It was my first seed of doubt.
yeah, it was “morning in america” all right, but it was the kind of morning that you knew was gonna be a bad day from the moment you open your eyes.
If you were rich, you got richer, and it was bitterly ironic to hear the same rotten fucks whose greed kept them afloat through the 80’s plaintively cry that they were being subjected to “Class Warfare” whenever anyone tried to interrupt, interfere with or in any way mitigate the various forms of socioeconomic sodomy they perpetrated on the middle class and pretty much the rest of the world.
LBJ declared a “war on poverty” but the “reagan revolution” brought on what amounted to a war on poor people
long may Saint Ronnie rot.
he made america turn it’s eye away in unison. what a uniter!