Kent Conrad: “I think it is undeniably the case. Something is very wrong with the economic strategy we are pursuing as a Nation. We…”

“I think it is undeniably the case. Something is very wrong with the economic strategy we are pursuing as a Nation. We see the evidence in the job market as clearly as it can be seen. The fact is we are now 5 million jobs behind what we would normally see in a recovery. Looking at the nine recessions since World War II--I will put that chart back up--this should tell us something is off the track. This is the average job recovery of the nine recessions since World War II that you can see 17 months after the peak of the business cycle peak. We see that, for the average for every one of the 9 major recessions since World War II, the job recovery started soaring 17 months after the business cycle peaked. In this case, we are 36 months past the business cycle peak, and we still do not see job recovery occurring. At this point, we are now 5.4 million jobs short of the typical recovery for all of the recessions since World War II. If that doesn't tell us something is wrong--and the President's forecasts over and over have had to be revised on jobs.”