This Graph Says It All US 2016 Recession Already Here!By David Haggith In part, the declining growth ratein GDP could be because it isharder to get as large of a percentage increase as GDP gets larger. (In the sense that it is easier to double your speed at tenmiles per hour than it is at fifty miles per hour.) However, I think it alsoreflects how, asUS nationaldebt has piled up, itsability to achieve growth has significantly diminished because of all the ballast it is carrying. The fact that it hastaken enormouslygreater stimulusto achieve these steeply diminishing returns indicates the severe drag created by this ballast. One could also blame increasing regulations; but there is one very interesting thing you cannot blame and that is taxes.We consistently achieved much higher rates of growth back in times when income tax (andespecially capital gains tax) wasmuch, much higher (both corporate and individual). So, the growth decline certainly cant be blamed on higher taxes because they arent higher. It will annoy many Im sure to see thatsignificantly lowering taxes hasnt done anything to boost the USrate of growth. We can dispel the notion for good that we are going to save our economy with anything as simple as tax breaks. Clearly we have a much more significant underlying problem that tax breaks have been unable to overcome, as they have given only temporary boosts and havegiven much less bang for the buck each time. One cannot blame free trade for this trend because the worst declines in the growth rate happened long before free trade; but one can also say that free trade certainly hasnt boosted the US rate of growth, just as lowering taxes hasnt. I think the one thing that is most consistent is the ever expanding chasm of debt that underminesour economy as we attempted to grow without paying for our growth as we went. (Expanding the debt to create stimulus in bad times, but never paying it off in good times. Acting as if debt is forever free.) Whatever the cause, the US growth rate clearlyhas become consistently getting weaker for a long time and has now reached a point whereeconomic growth is so elusive that only with extraordinarystimulus do we keep our heads barely above the waterlinethat is associated with all recessions. While the USdid not officially go into recession every time it dipped to its present level of GDP(given the three exceptions, two of which only averted recessions by extreme measures), every recession the US has had in the last seventy years started at or before the point where itdropped toitspresent level of GDP. Every single one! Recessions, of course, only get officially declared after the fact, never when they first start. By definition, an officially declared recessionrequires two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. That means recessionscan only be officially declared after bothquarters have passed and then only after numbers for the second quarter are in. Usually, they dont get declareduntil the numbers get revised, as all government reporting seems to run optimistic until revised (usuallyunder a subsequent administration). So, at the earliest, recessions are declared about seven months after they have begun. Often, they are not declared until a year or more after they began. We are practically out of them before we officially know we were in one. (And, if youre Ben Bernanke, you can be standing right in the middle of one and declare there is none in sight as far as the eye can see.) Ive maintained for years that we are still in the Great Recession. The graph shows how the first round of quantitative easing took us out of the belly of the Great Recession and back above the recessionary red line, but also howthe economy immediately dove back to therecessionary redline as that round of QE and each subsequent roundended, requiring another shot of QE to keep the economy from going under. The economy relentlesslyplunged toward the bottom every time economic stimulus ended. So, without stimulus, it is dead. The graph also shows a staggering upward line from the last round of QE because that roundwas a dosed out in continuing measures of new money (a new shot every month for a couple of years), rather than a single big hit. Noticehow the US maintained a completely steady move down toward the red line again afterthe last round of continuous quantitative easing (QE3) was terminated in the fall of2014. I want you to see that because that is exactly whatsaid would in early 2014 before the QE ended. GDP growth moved steeplydownhill ever since this steroid was removed from the economy with NO quarter that was an exception. As Ive said throughout my years of writingThe Great Recession Blog, the economy has only been kept marginally alive by repeated rounds of stimulus upon which it is utterly dependent. This graph shows that better than others Ive seen. It took repeat doses of the largest money printing in the history of the world AND the lowest interest rates ever known, applied by central banks throughout the world, just to keep the patient artificially alive. In early 2014, I predicted that, once this massive life support ended, wed find out how dead the patient really isas we sink back into the belly of the Great Recession.This graph shows that we have been sinking back into recession as steeply as we did each time QE ended, that we are now back at the level of growth that is always associated with recessions; and this time there is no QE to be offered. That is not to say that, once we go back below the red line, as we are doing, the Fed will noteat its claims of recovery by creating the most massive combination of stimulus ever seen just to keep the patient ever so slightly above the red line for a few moments more; but it is to say that the next round of QE will come to late and that no amount will be enough to do the job, which is also something I have said consistently that 1) there will be ONE more round of massive stimulus by the Federal Reserve; 2) it will be applied too late because the Fed needs to prove its recovery has worked so it will delay: and 3) it will be almost completely ineffective, stirring only the most meager bleep, no matter how great the stimulus is that is applied. Modern economists cannot see a recession coming even when it is about to poke their eyes out. You cannot beat the Law of Diminishing Returns, but modern economists at the Federal Reserve and in government and on television, dont know that because they stopped believing in economics long ago. They live in a theoretical world of make-believe. Thus, a person with no economic background (me) has to school them in their own field. There has, I believe, in the history of the world never been such a largegroup of intelligent people who look so consistently dumb in the area of their own expertise and who get soconsistently rewarded for looking asdumb as eggplants. This graph is a photograph of the utter bankruptcy of modern economicbeliefs in a debt-based economy. It is a testimony to economists failed religious belief incentral-bank stimulus and their refusal to believe in the ancient, proven Law of Diminishing Return. The rate at which the benefits of stimulus have diminished over the past decades even whilethe size of stimulus has exponentially increased shows clearly that the next round (helicopter money that is being talked about along with negative interest rates) will be the most massive application of life support the world has ever seen and, yet, will result in the patient barely recovering to a comatose state on top ofthe red line in essence, flatlining. In fact, the stimulus, while it may stir a brief heart flutter, will actually kill him to a level of death where even artificial life support can no longer make him appear to be alive. And that is why I call thisthe Year of the Epocalypse the year in which we sink unrecoverable back into the swelling belly of the Great Recession. This is the year in which the greatest rounds of stimulus that will ever be applied only manage to put our heads above the waves long enough to see the next election through. And thats a best-case scenario in light of it being an election year. Worst case scenario, the government and the Fed lose all control before the elections are over. You couldnt ask for a more consistent pattern of falling returns from exponentially greater efforts. The graph shows a relentless track into the belly of the Epocalypse round two of the Great Recession and by far the deeper round. The recovery is entirely artificial and unsustainable, and any economist who ever believed such a flamboyant disregard for true economics could succeed is riding the short bus. This graph is a testimony to their failure due to the bankruptcy of their beliefs. This is a zombie economy, and they are its priesthood. You can read more from David Haggith at his site The Great Recession Blog, where this article first appeared. The zentral (zioinist owned banks such as the unfeder reserver see the unfederal reserve act of 1913) but they use a 7 year pump and dump plan. So in 08 they started the pump (qe) and in 16 they have attempted to start the dump (usury). looks like a lot of these number co incide with the implementation of NAFTA and now the President is pushing the TPP. Nothing free about free trade. 