Is History repeating itself... AGAIN?

I just read an article in Time Magazine that literally left me shocked.  I could not belive what I was reading.  I can't paste the entire article here in my blog, but I am going to take some key excerpts for you to read before clicking the link to the article at the bottom of this post.

The article that I read is titled "The Long haul: the US Economy", and was written my Thomas McCarroll, William McWhirter, and Richard Woodbury.  Obviously our economy is not in great shape, but I think you will be surprised by what you learn from the following excerpts:

"Nothing in memory has prepared consumers for such turbulent, epochal change, the sort of upheaval that happens once in 50 years."..."In a normal rebound, Americans would be witnessing a flurry of hiring, new investment and lending, and buoyant growth. But the U.S. economy remains almost comatose a full year and a half after the recession officially ended. Unemployment is still high; real wages are declining."..."The current slump already ranks as the longest period of sustained weakness since the Great Depression."...

"That was the last time the economy staggered under as many "structural" burdens, as opposed to the familiar "cyclical" problems that create temporary recessions once or twice a decade. The structural faults, many of them legacies, represent once-in-a-lifetime dislocations that will take years to work out.  Among them: the job drought, the debt hangover, the defense-industry contraction, the savings and loan collapse, the real estate depression, the health-care cost explosion and the runaway federal deficit. "

"How to fix the broken parts of the economy has not only become a central issue of the presidential campaign but is also likely to stand as Topic A for much of the (future). Quick fixes will not work, a point that many Americans seem to be accepting."

"America's structural burdens have hit home most profoundly in terms of jobs. The U.S. workplace is "in a profound, historic state of turmoil that for millions of individuals is approaching panic," according to labor consultant Dan Lacey, publisher of the newsletter Workplace Trends. Official statistics fail to reveal the extent of the pain.  A comprehensive tally would include workers who are employed well below their skill level, those who cannot find more than a part-time job, people earning poverty-level wages, workers who have been jobless for more than four weeks at a time and all those who have grown discouraged and quit looking."

This article continues on with much of the bad news that we have heard over and over again in the last few years.  Why am I bothering to repeat it you ask?  Because this article was published in Time Magazine on Sep. 28, 1992.  Yes, you read that correctly, almost 18 years ago.

link to the original article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976602,00.html

I was motivated to go and look this up after Barry Habib referred to it at a public mortgage market event I attended in Bellevue, WA.  He gave only a small excerpt, and I couldn't believe that something so closely resembling our current situation could have been written so long ago.  I had to go to the TIME website and search it out in the archives, but there it was.  I think it is a fascinating article and I wanted to share it with as many people as possible.  I highly encourage you to read the entire story because there are many more statements that seem as though they could have been written yesteday or last year.

I think it is critical for us to understand that as much as we may feel like the "sky is falling", and "this time it's different", we have been down this road before.  Obstacles that seem insurmountable will be overcome.  Real Estate values will recover. 

Makes you think, doesn't it...?

Kevin Hancock

Loan Officer

License # MLO-108328

360.698.6478 office

kevin.hancock@legacyg.com

Please visit our new website at www.hancockmortgageteam.com