Again, Ryan is right...

I'm going to have to admit that Ryan was correct when he labelled the current financial crisis facing the US since 2007 as the "Great Recession", because even the Treasury Department is calling it that now.

Looking back through my text books, this is officially the longest recession since the end of the Great Depression era, and if we go further back from that we need to find the Long Depression, that ran from 1873-96 (with its longest internal recession cycle lasting 38 months) to give us something to compare it to. Carter's Recession only last 22 months, and it gained higher unemployment numbers and higher inflation, which tells me that Reagan's answer was the right one, because it ended a worse recession in a far shorter time.

One article I read this morning from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel said that, on the eve of Obama's visit to Milwaukee, Wisconsin can boast an unemployment rate of 8%, with an underemployment rate of higher than 15%, and a disparity of wage earnings that makes sharp demarcations between demographics. More telling, however, is the fact that WI has such a low average wage overall... $15.87 per hour, which is less than $1 per higher than it was in 1979 (the start of the Carter Recession), when inflation is factored into the equation. The State is drowning in debt and stagnating under high taxes... and Obama wants to use this as a platform for his Labor Day message of "success" in stopping the bleed?

He's had more time in office during this Great Recession than Bush has, and he has had FAR more legislative opportunities to address it than Bush did... yet the recession marches on. If it lasts through till December, it will be 36 months of steady decline and stagnation, with no measurable improvement coming from anything passed and signed by him, his legacy will be forever tied to the newly-christened "Great Depression" as the President that couldn't stop it.