would take their responsibility as seriously as they pick up their paychecks. for more let s turn to our panel, joy reid and dr. james peterson, great to have both of you here. what do these numbers mean? what do 40 months mean? if this were a normal recession, ed, what you would have had that deep decline, 750,000 jobs. in a normal recession you would pump incredible amounts of federal money at that because what you have to do, you see the demand in the private sector is withdrawn, something has to fill it. if the consumer doesn t fill it typically that s what the government does and that s what you saw t.a.r.p., et cetera. we started to withdraw that stimulus as soon as republicans overtook the house and haul the stimulus so you ve seen this steep dropoff. the first recession in the history of this country where public sector employment