FYI... in my graph earlier, for some reason, ATS chops it off at the end of Greenspan's tenure. "View Image" and you will see the whole graph.
The "Per Worker" are the number of workers that are in the "Civilian Labor Force" as per the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) as of the month
that the data represents. The credit debt data is straight from the Fed.
If you believe in Kondratiev cycles (waves) you will note that this whole bag of worms started at the peak of cycle 5, the Information Technology wave
beginning in 1971.
Nikolai Kondratiev was a Russian economist who theorized that Western capitalist economies have long term (50 to 60 years) cycles of boom followed by
depression. The modern version lists them as 45 to 60 years in length. With the advent of a new breakthrough technology, the prosperity from that
will peak at about 11 to 15 years, then there will be rescession, followed by depresion, then recovery. At the onset of the next breakthrough
technology, the process repeats itself.
At the bottom of the depression areas of the waves... there has been a major war either started by or related to the economy.
Wave one - 1771 Industrial revolution - War of 1812 at the depression side.
Wave two - 1829 Steam and Railways - American Civil war at the depression side.
Wave three - 1875 Steel, Electricity, Heavy Engineering - WW I at the depression side.
Wave four - 1908 Oil, Auto, Mass Production - WW II at the depression side.
Wave five 1971 - Info Systems - No real economic based war yet... Persian Gulf 1 and 2 and Afganistan aren't really caused by a lot of
economic turmoil.. but the jury is still out.
So.... somewhere between 1983 to 1988 we should have peaked and started the slow grind into recession/depression. Greenspan came to power in 1987,
and through policy, created the Nasdaq bubble to pump money through the systems. IT businesses took on heavy debt and expanded exponentially.
Everybody was investing in everything. The DOW peaked around 11722.98 on 14 Jan 2000... and everything fell apart. >>pop<<.
The recession forces started catching up, 9/11 happened the next year, and in 2002, that NYT article states that Greenspan "needs to create a housing
bubble" to mask the Nasdaq bubble. The DOW peaks at 14093.08 on 12 Oct 2007.. and everything falls apart in the last part of 2008.
Here we sit. Crooks at the helm, mired in personal debt. "Drive America" pushed more people into debt... as did "Cash for Clunkers".. enticing
people to take on more and more debt. Few who took that offer have realized that they paid tax on the full price of the vehicle, and will have to pay
tax on the $4500 "voucher" that was paid by the US Government. (effectively taxing you twice.. the State got the first cut and the Fed gets the
second one come April 15th)
On a bright side... if Kondratiev was right the new technology should be showing up in the 2016 to 2034 range... provided we remain capitalist
economy.