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Obama is creating jobs all over the place. The guy is a winner and is taking this country to the next level. Markets kicking ### after 8 years of failure during the bush years.As an independant, I feel that it is a good time to get that dig in on the republican lemmings.
No worse that it would suck to be consistently wrong about what needs to be done to fix the economy.It's also not a function of rooting, it's the fact that these are predicted outcomes of recently enacted policies. It's not surprising that injecting significant regulatory uncertainty across the economy with 6,000 pages of new laws--particularly in health care, energy and financial services would hurt the economy more than help it. Layer on that an anti-business agenda, temporary stimuli and cumulative deficits of $4.5T through the 3 years ending 9/2011 that imply to business that significant tax hikes could be on the horizon and here we sit months and years after many of us suggested this would happen.
No, this is the thread where liberals claim to be independents
I'm no longer sure you're right about this. I once was. And I still believe that if we had a mostly free market society, we would be much more productive than we are now, and if we applied all of the things you've just described to a mostly free market society, it would hurt that society terribly in the exact way you've mentioned. But we didn't start out Obama's term with a mostly free market society. We started out with a mixed economy with controls over all sorts of industries, major government involvement on all levels, a basic monopoly on our supply of energy, and increasing and spiraling debt no matter what we do. Given all this, who's to say what works and what doesn't? It may be that in this convoluted situation, the new laws and stimuli do work to temporarily improve stuff or even permanently improve stuff. It's all too complicated to know, and the basic rules no longer apply, IMO.
For the sake of accuracy, though, Gallup just released new figures reflecting a slight increase in unemployment (up to 9.8%). I'm not sure what Tim is using for his source in the subtitle.
I'm no economics expert, but this makes no sense to me.
Just to be clear, we are talking about the number of first-time claims filed, nit the actual unemployment rate. Nice second derivative argument - the rate of the increase in unemployed people is decreasing.Nixon used a similar tact when he said that the rate of the increase in inflation is decreasing.
All but one month during 2010 was revised higher. Quit making #### up.
The major indicators are popping, you just aren't looking. We have had 6 consecutive quarters of GDP growth, and it is accelerating. ISM is at the highest level since 2004. The Leading Economic Index continues to increase sharply. The yield curve continues to steepen. Consumer confidence is rising and consumer spending is above pre-recession levels. The 4 week MA of initial claims continues to trend lower. The S&P is over 1300. Average manufacturing hours continue to increase. The Beige Book continues to show growth accelerating across the economy. Every single month in 2010 had positive job growth(excluding Census) and we have had 12 straight months of private sector job growth.
We are almost three and a half years from the stock market peak and have yet to come close to those prices, how has the market came back too fast? It hasn't even come back!
I don't know why you are always so argumentative. What you have described is a mild post-recession recovery. I'm not arguing that we haven't recovered from the recession. I'm pointing out that the liquidity in the market is still sloshing around between safe investment options. Until that money moves back into job creation areas we will continue to see a lukewarm economy.Perhaps we just have a different definition of "popping". My definitions is rather easy to see. When the indicators start "popping" you will see the Fed move to turn off the liquidity spigot.
You can't say whether or not the new laws 'work' because no one knows how all of the regulations are going to be finally written. And I wasn't making a "free markets" argument. Businesses need certainty and they won't invest and hire until they have it. If you toss 6,000 pages of new laws out there, businesses are going to wait and see what the regulations look like when those are finally finalized an then they're going to analyze them. Until all of that happens, they're paralyzed. And those regulations are in areas that are very key to businesses--financing, health care and energy. Look what Goldman Sachs had to do with the Facebook capital raising--they had to limit it to non-US investors because of the regulatory uncertainty. That's been compounded by Obama's harsh anti-business tone where he serially vilifies legitimate companies and industries. That hardly gives you confidence that all of this uncertainty is going to be resolved in the favor of businesses, so why invest and hire now? As far as stimulus spending--businesses know that's temporary, so they're going to wait it out until that's out of the system so that they can see what the real level of economic activity is.
like your hero GWB?I'm rooting for us to be as prosperous as we were in 2007. That's why I hope your next president has a business background, or at least some intelligence when it comes to monetary decisions.
Not my hero. My hero is Chris Christielike your hero GWB?
TARP, QE (and QE2), the stimilus, tax policies, etc are all pieces of the puzzle. The collecitve impact is very real.
Chris Christie has a business background?Not my hero. My hero is Chris Christielike your hero GWB?
I think you are right, I get your point better after your clarification.
You referred to our current situation as low-growth when our Q4 GDP growth was slightly higher than trend and a lot of leading indicators that I have seen come across over the last month show growth accelerating rapidly beyond that. That is what I took exception to. In my view, the economy is "popping" right now more than it has at anytime in the last few years. If you were instead meaning that the growth isn't sufficient to return to the previous trend line in the next couple of years, then we don't disagree.Good post. In a natually occurring cycle, I believe some systemic banks fail, Fannie, Freedie, along with a huge % of small business. Unemployment would've hit 25%-50%. Intervention made it 'less worse'. Yes, due to less tax revenue and stimulus, you've got debt. But you have to protect your country and its citizens.As economic progress and job creation takes hold, the gov't should scale back spending. AFTER.(Oh, and stop sending jobs overseas and bring back manufacturing).
The stock market went down largely due to problems related to financial institutions, with the leading cause being foreclosures on houses people couldn't afford.We still have ridiculous amounts of homes being foreclosed, and it's only slowed down because the system is getting clogged up with filings and no more robo-signing for foreclosures without having documents on hand to show ownership. The problem is still HUGE, the cancer is still in the system, but we're all going on like nothing's wrong because it's not an imminent threat anymore.How can the economy continue to improve when foreclosures have yet to spike and tons of bad mortgages still sit on the books of financial institutions that are just too big and slow to have deftly handled them?Can consumer spending truly rebound until we've seen the worst of the housing crisis and start moving out of it? I just don't see that we're on the road to recovery...more like a few good months after suffering a near fatal heart attack, but all the health warning signs are still there.
The article you linked doesn't even make that claim.
He does have intellegence when it comes to monetary decisionsChris Christie has a business background?Not my hero. My hero is Chris Christielike your hero GWB?I'm rooting for us to be as prosperous as we were in 2007. That's why I hope your next president has a business background, or at least some intelligence when it comes to monetary decisions.
Obama is creating jobs all over the place. The guy is a winner and is taking this country to the next level. Markets kicking ### after 8 years of failure during the bush years.As an independant, I feel that it is a good time to get that dig in on the republican lemmings.
You understood what he was doing there, right?Obama is creating jobs all over the place. The guy is a winner and is taking this country to the next level. Markets kicking ### after 8 years of failure during the bush years.As an independant, I feel that it is a good time to get that dig in on the republican lemmings.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-unempl...jobs-2011-02-04
FWIW, I agree with you that the housing mess isn't even close to being "over". While that debacle will continue to hinder economic growth, we're in no danger at this point of the entire economy grinding to a halt, which is what we were seeing in late '08. Overall growth is possible (and happening) even while the housing sector remains ill.
Who is "they"? This isn't a conspiracy by the O Administration to goose the numbers - this is how it always works.
True, but I think the rebound of the stock market is out of proportion to the growth we're seeing and can expect over the next few years as our economy will largely be held down by the lingering foreclosure issues.
I have no problem admitting I'm wrong if you can show that the obama administration has changed the way the unemployment rate is calculated.
Once they've been unemployed for long enough, gov't just writes 'em off as no longer looking. Usually once the UI bennies run out.
That's not how it works. Why people keep believing this popular misconception I just don't understand. The numbers come from a survey, and people are written off once they actually indicated on the survey they are no longer looking for work because they don't believe there's work. They get grouped as either not in the labor force, or marginally attached, depending on their answers.
They're both correct to some extent. There was an adjustment due to population, and also several changes in how things are calculated. Rather than take either source at face value, how about you look at the data provided by the BLS itself?
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your or Eric's criticisms of the way the data collected/analyzed - I'm just saying that the employment numbers currently reported aren't the result of Obama and Co. cooking the books and the falling unemployment rate per traditional means is legit.
I definitely agree it has nothing to do with Obama cooking the books. You got the same criticisms of Bush the during the early 00's recession as well though - his critics suggested they were artificially making the numbers look better. That was when I first started seeing the popular misconception that people just disappear from the ranks of the unemployed once their unemployment benefits run out, when in actuality it happens after they report they haven't been looking for work for 4 weeks or more for whatever reason - discouragement, school, family responsibilities, etc. If you say you're looking for a job, you are counted as in the labor force. No matter how long you haven't been working, or what government benefits you are receiving.I can definitely agree that the numbers are "legit" in the context of this being the way it was always reported. But this does actually lend itself to the questioning of how "legit" the numbers are to begin with. Something that people's opinion tends to change on depending on whether the numbers help their chosen political party or not.
Yayy! Maybe things aren't as good as people think! I hate Obama, so I hope the misery lasts!
You hope for misery to advance a political agenda?
