I won't pretend to be qualified or knowledgeable enough to assess the data and assertions you have presented here. I'll leave that to the economists to work out. I'll simply state the facts I base my claims on:

1) The recession has been carrying for a couple of years at least. It may not be as long as the Great Depression, but it was long enough to do a great deal of damage.

2) I'm not sure you understand my point regarding inventories. I'm not sure I understand your point either. What I said was that inventories were vastly overstocked following Y2K in anticipation of a panic situation. As a result, production was on the decline for awhile. I believe this factor contributed to job layoffs, which, in turn, negatively affected consumption, and so on and so forth. Now that inventories have been depleted, it seems that production is on the rise again.

3) I'm not sure if tax breaks necessary compel businesses to expand and grow and employ more people. I think that growth comes about as a response to demand. If the demand is down--the economy is recessive--I don't see growth happening. Tax breaks may make a little more money available to a business, but hardly enough to justify widespread re-employment of a workforce. On the other hand, if the economy is expansionary, if production is on the rise necessitating a larger workforce in anticipation of high levels of demand, businesses will start employing even if it means running up a short-term budget deficit. So I don't think your point is valid.

4) I can't comment on your chart, because I'm not aware of the sources. All I can say is that I know for a fact that the stock market went down in a major way in the latter part of 2001, especially following 9/11, and has only begun to recover in the last 6 months or so.