Right. OK Chicken Little. You must be right. The economy will tank/hyperinflation will hit any dayweek month year decade now. Meanwhile I'd avoid the more specific dire predictions that have obviously not panned out that you made previously below, and stick with more vague ramblings like "long haul" and "false sense of security". Much easier to retroactively defend these sorts of pronouncements.
Fine,
Why don't you pick apart my rebuttal to your claims. Did I get something wrong ?
There is a word not spoken much recently, unsustainable. While you and many others think that the good times are back, it ain't looking good for the long haul. QE has so distorted our economy and reality and created a false sense of security. Once again, where are the jobs, enough jobs to keep up with population growth ? It just ain't happening.
Right. OK Chicken Little. You must be right. The economy will tank/hyperinflation will hit any dayweek month year decade now. Meanwhile I'd avoid the more specific dire predictions that have obviously not panned out that you made previously below, and stick with more vague ramblings like "long haul" and "false sense of security". Much easier to retroactively defend these sorts of pronouncements.
kurt, there are very few people I know who would consider investor gains of over 200 percent over five years, sixty three straight months of economic expansion, and 25 straight months of manufacturing sector expansion as evidence of a national economy that is, as you suggested, "crumbling". Who on earth is your optometrist?
Middle class shrinkage and the wealth gap are both phenomena that have been going on for the last two or three decades. They should definitely be addressed now that we've gotten the economy back on track. But they are not the primary yardstick used to gauge the overall health of the US economy.
jeez, you just keep throwing softballs ...
the second bolded first ... the growing manufacturing sector ? really ? It is so small a part of our economy as to be almost meaningless.
12 million jobs overall, down from 17 million at year 2000. Any growth is better than nothing, which essentially is what our manufacturing sector has been reduced to.
On to the point about expansion, investment and the booming stock market.
We have not had 63 consecutive months of economic expansion. Remember last winter ? 2014 Q 1 ? The weather was so, so bad that it actually knocked our "strong" recovery into a contraction. There have been other quarters as well.
Why is the stock market booming ? QE and no other reason. We were printing so much money that it had nowhere else to go. It was a race to devalue the dollar and make our exports affordable. Howze that working now ? US QE is over and the dollar is at a 5 year high against the Euro as well as most other currencies. Its still climbing because the EU has embraced QE and Euro's are being converted into dollars as cash is leaving the Eurozone. It will be interesting to see what happens to the estimated 2 to 3 trillion dollars in cash that US companies have parked outside of the US because of the US corporate tax structure.
The only bright spot right now is oil. Its not falling purely from oversupply, its falling because of the strengthening dollar and lack of global demand due to economic slowdowns.
There is a word not spoken much recently, unsustainable. While you and many others think that the good times are back, it ain't looking good for the long haul. QE has so distorted our economy and reality and created a false sense of security. Once again, where are the jobs, enough jobs to keep up with population growth ? It just ain't happening.
kurt, there are very few people I know who would consider investor gains of over 200 percent over five years, sixty three straight months of economic expansion, and 25 straight months of manufacturing sector expansion as evidence of a national economy that is, as you suggested, "crumbling". Who on earth is your optometrist?
Middle class shrinkage and the wealth gap are both phenomena that have been going on for the last two or three decades. They should definitely be addressed now that we've gotten the economy back on track. But they are not the primary yardstick used to gauge the overall health of the US economy.
OK, then, where's your graph showing the failure of the economy by 2012 that you predicted back in 2011? Doesn't seem to have failed to those of us living in the real world. We're in, what, the 57th straight month of economic recovery?
“Labor participation is affected much less by short-term job creation, and much more by long-term demographic trends. As this chart from the BLS shows, as the Baby Boomers entered the workforce and societal acceptance of women working changed, labor participation grew.
“Now that ‘Boomers’ are retiring we are seeing the percentage of those seeking employment decline. This has nothing to do with job availability, and everything to do with a highly predictable aging demographic."
The second bolded first. The LPR has nothing to do with retiring babyboomers. It only surveys those 64 years old and under. So as one turns 65, they are removed from that group and do not constitute a variable in determining the number. It is widely accepted that in order to keep up with only population growth, 250,000 jobs must be created every month, which is 3 million jobs per year, again to keep things flat.
On the first bolded, just who is the economy getting better for ? Again, where are the new jobs that grow beyond population growth and affect the LPR ?
Awe, you shouldna. You just to thoughtful for words !
I can have fun with graphs, too !
OK, then, where's your graph showing the failure of the economy by 2012 that you predicted back in 2011? Doesn't seem to have failed to those of us living in the real world. We're in, what, the 57th straight month of economic recovery?
“Labor participation is affected much less by short-term job creation, and much more by long-term demographic trends. As this chart from the BLS shows, as the Baby Boomers entered the workforce and societal acceptance of women working changed, labor participation grew.
“Now that ‘Boomers’ are retiring we are seeing the percentage of those seeking employment decline. This has nothing to do with job availability, and everything to do with a highly predictable aging demographic."
It's good to remember that vehemence doesn't equal accuracy when watching our politicians speak.
The other thing is that increasingly, being president/being the "party in control" is kind of like attempting to steer a caterpillar along with 20 or 30 other people sitting on top of the caterpillar. Economic trends such as jobs, wages, inflation, etc. are a function of various factors, and only some are subject to political control.
You bet. And while they're shuttering their California campuses (where Meg wanted to be governor, remember?), I'll bet they're hanging on to all of their TX campuses and constituency. Even under Carly's reign, too much control was being handed over to the former Compaq folks.
Speaking of Compaq, how is it that a single company can make so many poorly-thought out acquisitions? Sheesh.
EDIT: Oh, and if Meg continues to whittle away at the Roseville campus, that means I'll NEVER find another gig in the Greater Sacramento region on account of all of the folks who'll be scrounging for whatever morsels they can get. So I guess I can stop my three-year search and resign myself to retiring from this place. At least I'm employed, right?
(Oh, and Bain Capital had nothing to do with any of this.)
Crap. That's a buttload of jobs to shed in this economy. So this would be their alternative way of making the numbers work instead of selling off their PC division to China. Ouch.
You bet. And while they're shuttering their California campuses (where Meg wanted to be governor, remember?), I'll bet they're hanging on to all of their TX campuses and constituency. Even under Carly's reign, too much control was being handed over to the former Compaq folks.
Speaking of Compaq, how is it that a single company can make so many poorly-thought out acquisitions? Sheesh.
EDIT: Oh, and if Meg continues to whittle away at the Roseville campus, that means I'll NEVER find another gig in the Greater Sacramento region on account of all of the folks who'll be scrounging for whatever morsels they can get. So I guess I can stop my three-year search and resign myself to retiring from this place. At least I'm employed, right?
(Oh, and Bain Capital had nothing to do with any of this.)
Wife keeps saying, "You never should have left there—you'd still have all of the benefits of ."
Even while I was there under Carly Fiorina's reign, it was obvious to everyone in my group that there were numerous bodies whose sole role was to help keep the building warm during the winter, and to help prop up the Sodexo-run cafeteria.
I worked here for 29 years and had I not stroked out and ended up on disability I likely would have gotten laid off along with the other 5000 or so employees there. Just an empty 75 acre lot now.
Wife keeps saying, "You never should have left there—you'd still have all of the benefits of <mutual acquaintance>."
Even while I was there under Carly Fiorina's reign, it was obvious to everyone in my group that there were numerous bodies whose sole role was to help keep the building warm during the winter, and to help prop up the Sodexo-run cafeteria.
Obama is fair game in this regard. He just finally admitted that he doesn't really understand government and economics with his remarks about shovel ready projects. Hell, we have a 3 mile stretch of road widening that is part of the Stimulus Bill. In fact this road had been prepped before the 2008 election. Spring 2009 the signs went up at both ends. It is still unfinished aproaching the Summer of 2011, and the signs disappeared this Spring. What work has been done so far has been downright shoddy with many parts redone. I don't see how it will be finished this Summer making it 3, count em, 3 summers and nada. I wanna know who took the signs down and why.
Yeah, but at this pace they will have a fully employed road crew out there NEXT summer too. Jobs for construction workers *and* visible progress on our nations infrastructure. All just in time for the election. I think Obama has it figured just right, the nations attention span/memory is far to short to do anything right now. Look to April - August of next year for real progress/improvement.
Love that song! My point is that our debt crisis is caused by our materialistic lifestyles, credit culture of getting now and paying later and of course overpopulation. Until American, actually all developed cultures address these core issues, the debt crisis will continue. No Democratic or Republican policy decisions will make a signfiicant enough impact either way. It is not even a political issue, I liken it to the difference between a diet and a lifestyle change. A diet is a fad organized eating regimen set to decrease weight to meet a certain fixed goal, a lifestyle change is changing your eating habits to gradually decrease and maintain your desired weight for the rest of your life. Political policies are diets proposed by elected officials, elected by us. Our officials are only doing and saying what we desire them to do to maintain our unmaintainable lifestyles. The military industrial complex exists to coerce other countries to give us their natural resources at a desired rate to keep all of us in our SUVs and air conditioners. Harping on Democratic or Republican elected officials as the cause or savior for our debt crises is only diverting attention away from the true enemies of a balanced budget, the man in the mirror. Your continuing sniping at Obama like the debt crises or any other ills of our nation only exist in a vacuum of February 2008 to present is incredibly myopic and short sighted in my opinion and really amounts to nothing in way of actually solving any problems. I am SO over politics!!
I can't disagree with you on the above.
My point was about how a sitting POTUS usually has at least some ability to influence the economy and skew the numbers, although usually only briefly to help their reelection bids. These actions I refer to are finding ways to drive down the cost of gas at the pump and spur lower mortage rates as something tangeable to ease the negative attention on policy actions. Its almost predictable. Its grandstanding as in being tough on crime 6 months before an election, but in off years, crime, what crime ?
I was using this as a yardstick for looking at the economy and Obama's ability to do what his predecesors have done in the past. My position is to measure Obama's ability in this traditional preelection economy priming to see what he's got left.
Obama is fair game in this regard. He just finally admitted that he doesn't really understand government and economics with his remarks about shovel ready projects. Hell, we have a 3 mile stretch of road widening that is part of the Stimulus Bill. In fact this road had been prepped before the 2008 election. Spring 2009 the signs went up at both ends. It is still unfinished aproaching the Summer of 2011, and the signs disappeared this Spring. What work has been done so far has been downright shoddy with many parts redone. I don't see how it will be finished this Summer making it 3, count em, 3 summers and nada. I wanna know who took the signs down and why.
Who does one hold accountable ? Biden was supposed to oversee all the Stimulus money. Who picked Biden ? We had a Democratic governor, former Congressman Ted Strickland in charge of our state until the end of 2010, so there are no excuses there either.
I share your frustrations. You're dead on target about your diet vs lifestyle change. Short of revolution, alls we gots is the ballot box. It is about the economy and Obama is in over his head. Food for fuel, yada, yada ... He's using a corncob the wrong way ... The Sears Catalogue replaced that function 100 years ago. Now with the catalogue ancient history, and corn being made into fuel, we will not have the luxury of returning to corncobs either, a real Green solution.
Love that song! My point is that our debt crisis is caused by our materialistic lifestyles, credit culture of getting now and paying later and of course overpopulation. Until American, actually all developed cultures address these core issues, the debt crisis will continue. No Democratic or Republican policy decisions will make a signfiicant enough impact either way. It is not even a political issue, I liken it to the difference between a diet and a lifestyle change. A diet is a fad organized eating regimen set to decrease weight to meet a certain fixed goal, a lifestyle change is changing your eating habits to gradually decrease and maintain your desired weight for the rest of your life. Political policies are diets proposed by elected officials, elected by us. Our officials are only doing and saying what we desire them to do to maintain our unmaintainable lifestyles. The military industrial complex exists to coerce other countries to give us their natural resources at a desired rate to keep all of us in our SUVs and air conditioners. Harping on Democratic or Republican elected officials as the cause or savior for our debt crises is only diverting attention away from the true enemies of a balanced budget, the man in the mirror. Your continuing sniping at Obama like the debt crises or any other ills of our nation only exist in a vacuum of February 2008 to present is incredibly myopic and short sighted in my opinion and really amounts to nothing in way of actually solving any problems. I am SO over politics!!
