bernankes truth, as terrible as it is., page-21

Infose, graphs are just another form of stats, and we all know about stats.

Now have another look at your graph again. Here's what I see. From '96 thru to 2000, end of the dotcom SNAP LED U6.
From 2000 onwards SNAP trailled, but though U6 fell frpm '03 t0 '07, SNAP merely plateaued at best, and maybe levelling again before next rise.

HISTORY: The FED withdrew money supply in the early 30s making the Depression GREAT (under Hoover). In '33 under FDR easing started. Gold confiscation, then revaluation and easing of interest rates to spur the economy. (Between Sept '29 till mid '32 the DOW lost nearly 90%). FDR's easing helped to stimulate the economy. By '37 the FED started to withdraw their accomodative bias and the economy started stalling again into a recession. How would this have ended? We don't know. Because as WW2 was about to start what helped the US and global economy was the rearmament of '39 and subsequent war. War is the mother of all stimulus. Whereas you can only build so many roads and bridges to nowhere, in a time of major wars the buiding of ships, planes and bombs just keeps going.

This, of course, is inflatory. (Australia, for example, adjusted their silver coins from SS, ie. 92.5% Ag to 50% Ag). In the US this stimulus, plus the Bretton Woods Accord meant US continued to grow. As a result the DOW hit it's '29 peak of ~390 in 1954. 25 years later. How long would it have taken without WW2?

PRESENT: 1. Any attempt to stop stimulus now will lead the US staight back into recession IMO. And they must do something, sometime to withdraw stimulus. What happens then?

Meanwhile, in the US, at the end of 2012, 23.6% of youths were unemployed. These are the ones who are to provide for the future. War in Iraq and Afghanistan are nearing an end. How many retired soldiers will be added to U6. AND an interesting bit of research I heard some months ago on the BBC.

Generally speaking, the income a person earns throughout his career is dependant on what he earns in his first full time job. The more he earns when he starts work, the more he earns throughout his life, basically regardless of how the economy ebbs and flows during his lifetime. so that say an engineer in one state earns $50,000 when leaving college, and another earns $75,000 when he starts work, by the time they retire the second one will have an income 50% higher than the first, regardless of how many times they change jobs, or even move to more properous States. With a long period of stagnation, fewer jobs and low pay, it's hard to see how the US will reclaim it's former status and prosperity. The one green light, other than something out of left field IMO is it's renewed oil and gas industry.