While it is difficult to properly attribute blame for the collapse of the US
economy, which commenced in the early 1980s, on either the Fed's policy of easy
money starting with Alan Greenspan (and terminating with today's statement by
Goldman that merely a suggestion of "not easing" may be equivalent to
"tightening" - a symptom of a terminal junkie), or the resultant
self-indulgent lifestyle of the maturing baby boomers, one thing is certain: the
paradigm downturn of the United States began in the early 1980s. And here we are
willing to break the cardinal rule of statistics and assume that correlation
does imply causation. Because the 4 simple charts below don't lie: the US
economy, as represented by its Balance of Payments, the profligacy of the US
consumer, the massive expansion of consumer leverage, and the collapse in US
manufacturing jobs, and specifically its current near-terminal state, is as much
as legacy of the baby boom generation's actions (and lack thereof), as of
everything else that has already been mulled over and scapegoated an infinite
number of times in both the mainstream and fringe media.
Charts courtesy of John Lohman
Charts courtesy of John Lohman
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