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They have been predicting a recession since 2003. Heck, in 2004 they were comparing the economy to the great depression. Yet the economy kept chugging along. This is nothing more than election politics. They are harping on the one and only bad sign in the economy. In the mean time, jobs and unemployment both beat expectations. Bet you didn't hear much about that on the news. read the tags  Yesterday I got a letter from my health insurance company. My cobra costs are being increased $50. a month, with less benefits. Co-pays are doubling and drug co-pays on non-generics will increase to $40. 6 of my medicines do not come in generic form. How much is SSD increasing? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Those on fixed incomes & the working poor are the first to "go under". The huge "middle class" is next. Jobs and unemployment beating expectations has little or nothing to do with the actual needs of the people. How many people roll off the unemployment numbers simply because they have been out of work for too long with no hope remaining in their hearts of finding work, or because they took jobs of the barest of minimal survival without substance which respects their human need, need not for dignity of the nobility of human potential but for reality beyond the next 5 minutes, rather than perish; when what they are trained for and need to live "The AMERICAN Dream" are simply unavailable? Statistics lie and liars use statistics. I'd pop this again for Bears comment. After one year, my Part D premiums went up 85%, and I'm not covered for anything that's not generic. One thing you hear is about the number of jobs being created every month or quarter, but there's still been a net loss, and the jobs being created aren't as good as the ones that are disappearing. There has not been a net loss of jobs. And if the jobs now are so bad, why are we at an all time high for percentage of Americans with discretionary income? Productivity is up, unemployment is down, we just came off a quarter with 5% growth which is very high, yet the doom and gloomers keep harping one one bad indicator just hoping that they can talk the economy down. To top that off, the housing 'crisis' isn't even a national trend, it is regional. That said, we may soon have another recession. Especially with the media doing their best to talk it down (though they have failed to bring one about the last two election cycles). After all, we haven't had a recession since the Clinton/Gore/911... It all sounds good until you see the numbers. Consumer Research Center acknowledged that the definition of discretionary income is somewhat arbitrary. The new publication from The Conference Board makes it crystal clear why luxury car dealerships will do well when most Americans are waiting for sales at Wal-Mart. Researchers crunched household income data to show that households with earnings of $100,000 or more constitute 18 percent of U.S. households but 78 percent of the nation’s aggregate discretionary income. It’s not hard to see why the outlook for the holiday shopping season looks good for high-end merchants and nail-biting for the rest. According to data pulled from the U... Something is messed up with the jobs measurements. It used to be that the number of jobs created was mostly measured by surveying companies, with a small correction from the "Birth/Death Model" which guessed at the number of jobs created by new, small companies. Recently the "Birth/Death Model" jobs have become 80% of the jobs reported. Quite a few have been from imaginary companies hiring in the housing industry! That's just wacko. I think we are entering a recession, but a depression is not likely. Sure, amount of bad debt on the books looks like it will be far greater than just the sub-prime mortgages, and some parts of the credit markets have frozen up completely. This will be a big shock to the economy, but the American economic system has shown itself to be remarkably flexible and able to recover and move on from shocks. n2 contends that discretionary income is up. I'd contend that much of that so called discretionary income is unsecured debt exercised, sometimes foolishly, sometimes as the only way to keep one's nose near the waterline. Take a look at my America's Debt In 11 Graphs clip. It's depressing, and it isn't ALL because of the national debt, but that surely is a burden beyond any economic experience in our lifetimes. It's going to get a whole lot worst before it ever gets better. I can't help but wonder if we will ever again see the relatively good-times of the 50s and 60s job-wise. One other point. Worker productivity is often held out as... It would be a good time to try to understand that the US is not in a separate universe from the rest of the world. Last week Patrick Minford added his voice to the doom and gloom. Minford was Thatcher's and Reagan's advisor on the development of monetarism, that peculiar system of creating a virtual reality with figures and statistics and manipulating the money system like a game. Divorced from the reality of productive economy it saw the gross profiteering of the elite, an historically temporary feel-good factor for the drones, and the seeds of its own downfall. It has now emerged as an autonomous global entity that has its own life and is beyond control or prediction. In real life, guess who is beginning and will continue to suffer most. AS wages stay the same and the price of fuel ,utilities, and groceries rise, so goes the economy. The wealthy will survive, their money is in overseas banks and investments. They can move to Belize, we can be left to pick up the pieces, and we will. |
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