What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

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State Tax and Sales Tax collections are at the lowest point since the 60's. Way to rebound economy.
 
Umm, you did notice that we're not actually speaking Romanian, right? So asserting the behavior of conservatives in Romania as applicable everywhere is a fallacious argument, right?

The most objectionable thing about you monsters, about whom nothing good can be said and for whom no excuse can be made, is not so much that you are monstrous. That is, after all, your nature. It's that you are so greedy that you even covet a reputation for being "good".
 
Umm, you did notice that we're not actually speaking Romanian, right? So asserting the behavior of conservatives in Romania as applicable everywhere is a fallacious argument, right?

That depends on the nature of the "conservatives" in question. Some forms of "conservatism" purport to be based on trans-cultural, universal principles.
 
Obama and Biden




Things are better! Who you gonna believe, us? or your run-out unemployment benefits?



Don't you remember how bad things were under Bush?
 
Nation sheds more jobs than expected
Unemployment rate rises to 9.8 percent as 263,000 jobs are cut


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33135910/ns/business-stocks_and_economy

That can be look at in one of two ways.

1. It could have been worse so this is not really bad news.

2. They were predicting 168,000 job lost so they were only off by about 95,000 (close enough for government work) so things are where they thought they would be.

Should be fun to watch them spin this.
 
Oh, for Those Days of the Jobless Recovery

Victor Davis Hanson

I remember once between 2004–6, when unemployment ranged from 5.5 to 4.6, the charge of a "jobless recovery," both in the 2004 campaign and afterwards, was common. I think the message then was that a strong stock market, low inflation, low interest, and impressive quarterly GDP growth rates were not impressive, given the stagnation in job creation that left us with a stubborn unemployment rate that averaged around 5%. Given today's news, most would like a return to a 2004–5-style jobless recovery.

NRO
 
Victor Davis Hanson

I remember once between 2004–6, when unemployment ranged from 5.5 to 4.6, the charge of a "jobless recovery," both in the 2004 campaign and afterwards, was common. I think the message then was that a strong stock market, low inflation, low interest, and impressive quarterly GDP growth rates were not impressive, given the stagnation in job creation that left us with a stubborn unemployment rate that averaged around 5%. Given today's news, most would like a return to a 2004–5-style jobless recovery.

NRO

It will be a long time before we see that kind of unemployment rate again.
 
Obama and Biden "promised" us a decade of it by following the policies of FDR and Japan...




They're gonna "level" the playing field.



Egalitarianism rules!
 
It's only a movie fantasy, I know. But still, watching the last half hour of Enough (2002/I) is pure joy. Billy Campbell plays the typical Conservative husband so well, the essence of the brutish, bullying coward that is the totality of every one of them. Watching him get what each of them deserves, and at the capable hands of Jennifer Lopez, is a deeply satisfying fantasy indeed.
 
IF YOU'VE PULLED AN ALL-NIGHTER in the past decade, you know about Red Bull, a powerful elixir laced with caffeine and energy that promises to keep you going. Even though it's half the size of a can of Coke but costs twice as much and -- according to Barron's keen researchers -- tastes rather vile, Red Bull remains the best known of the whole range of energy drinks it spawned.

But being bereft of any real nutritional value, Red Bull's simulative effects eventually wear off, leaving imbibers with a big let-down. In other words, they crash. And it's twice as bad if they've spiked Red Bull with vodka, as some club-goers are wont to do.

That seems to describe the action across all the markets Thursday. "Risk" markets, from equities and corporate credit to commodities, seemed to be coming off a caffeine-sugar high that made the third quarter the best three-month stretch since 1998 for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The new quarter started with a banging hangover, with the Dow shedding 203 points, or 2.1%, the smallest percentage loss of the major averages, while the Standard & Poor's 500 fell 2.6%. European, Canadian and emerging markets followed suit while Asian markets were trading sharply lower early Friday.

Most striking was the action in bond markets, where Treasuries continued on their tear but corporates -- investment-grade and junk alike -- followed equities lower. The Treasury 30-year long bond yield cracked the 4% level while the benchmark 10-year note dipped below 3.25% -- the lowest level since late April when the economic green shoots of spring were being heralded.

For weeks now, the price action of risk assets and government securities have been at odds. The stock market's rally -- nearly 60% off the March lows by some measures -- was heralding a robust recovery. By contrast, the steady decline of Treasury yields flew in the face of these bullish portents.

Thursday, with the turning of the calendar to the year's final quarter, seemed to resolve the apparent contradiction. And while various economic reports provided neat ex post explanations of the markets' moves, they had already been brewing in the charts for weeks.

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB125432381244252791.html?mod=BOL_hpp_highlight
 
Stocks Are Down? It's About Time!

ARE STOCKS FINALLY beginning to correct the monster rally off the March bottom? I think so, and all that surprises me about it is that it has taken this long.

There are a number of reasons why it was inevitable, and why we should welcome it, assuming it has indeed arrived.

As I wrote here earlier this month, the rally, delightful as it has been, is a case of too far too fast. Sure, what goes down must bounce up.

From the October 2007 top to the March 2009 bottom, we endured a loss in stocks of 57% over 15 months. Since the bottom, we've had a rally that reached as high as a 58% gain in about six months.

The last time anything this spectacular happened was 75 years ago coming off the very bottom of the bear market in the Great Depression. At that point in 1932, stocks had lost 86% from their 1929 highs, spending almost 1,000 days getting there. We didn't fall that far, thank God, so we just don't have as far to bounce back.

When a rally gets as overextended as this one has, it becomes vulnerable to even the slightest bad news. Just about anything can trigger a correction to more sustainable levels.

In fact, an overextended rally is even vulnerable to good news. Remember, it was the sudden change in investor psychology from expecting bad news to expecting good news that caused the rally in the first place. You know the old saying: buy on the rumor, sell on the news. In investing, all news is old news.

What can keep a rally going is when the news is so good that it exceeds expectations. That's easy when expectations are set low. Upside surprises are easy, then. And every one of them drives stocks higher. But the stock market is a learning machine. As each new upside surprise arrives, investors raise their expectations higher and higher. Finally, the news just can't be good enough to surprise anymore. In fact, it ultimately disappoints.

Just look at the not-so-hot economic news that's come out over the last week or two. Friday morning's disappointing payroll jobs report, Thursday's worse-than expected initial jobless claims, a falling ISM Index, disappointing new and existing home sales, falling durable goods, lower-than-expected consumer confidence. Some of these have been objectively good numbers, and those that weren't so good are still a heck of a lot better than they were six months ago. But every one of them fell short of consensus expectations. So now expectations get realigned a little lower, and stock prices do too.

And then that feeds back into the biggest expectation of all -- the expectation that it seems so many investors have had that a rally this powerful simply has to keep going. Pretty silly, huh? Seems to me that the higher stocks go, the less room there is for them to rise in the future. But just about everyone I talk to has felt, over the last month or two, that rising stock prices necessarily beget more rising stock prices.

So when stock prices fall, even a little bit, a lot of people who had unrealistic hopes suddenly get scared. After what we've all been through the last year or so, some pretty serious fear still lives just below the surface. And when that kind of fear gets activated, the people who really had no good reason to buy suddenly feel they have a compelling need to sell -- and they do just that.

http://www.smartmoney.com/investing/stocks/stocks-are-down-it-s-about-time/
 
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial by Robert J. Barro and Charles J. Redlick, which is a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, addresses something I have written about extensively -- namely, whether programs such as cash for clunkers, housing tax credits and other stimulus efforts provide any multiplier effect above one.

I have argued (and the authors do as well) that the stimulus spending proposals above, particularly in their current form, don't have a meaningful multiplier effect but, more importantly, borrow from future sales of automobiles, housing and, generally speaking, retail sales. It seems to me that the recent slowdown in car sales and housing sales activity provides some temporary support to my conclusion.

It also seems to me that, following decades of credit expansion and financial inventiveness that (among other things) have lifted consumer debt and debt service to record levels, the consensus for a consistent, smooth and certain recovery in the economy and in corporate profits (which have elevated P/E multiples by over 40% from the lows) might be approached with a more conservative stance. The baton handoff from private sector contribution to growth to an overwhelming dependency on the public sector to stabilize and fuel economic activity may not be as easy as investors appear to be accepting in their forecasts. And its aftermath, with its due bills, could hold unknown ramifications for our currency, interest rates, inflation and the funding of U.S. debt (among other issues). Finally, the effects of other nontraditional headwinds loom over the horizon -- for instance, the disrepair of state and local governments and the prospects for higher marginal tax rates.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10606469/1/kass-the-hangover.html
 
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicts that the unemployment rate will push past 10 percent and stay at that level for a while.
"Pretty awful" is how Greenspan describes Friday's report that the unemployment rate has risen to 9.8 percent.

He says the growing number of Americans who have been out of work six months or longer is of particular concern because jobless workers lose skills over such a long period.

Greenspan says he would advise President Barack Obama to focus on getting the economy going, but not to go too far. He says a second economic stimulus is not called for because less than half of the current stimulus is in effect and because the nature of the recovery is not yet clear.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9B4A1CO0&show_article=1&catnum=0

U_D?

You and your fellows no longer got any time for us? Job scared yet?
 
But Biden recently said the " stimulus has worked beyond my wildest dreams..."
 
Catch 22

Greenspan is calling for extension of unemployment benefits. Doesn't that create a class of dependents?

"...extend unemployment benefits and give tax credits to make sure the unemployed are able to keep their health insurance coverage.

"This is an extraordinary period," Greenspan said. "And temporary actions must be taken."

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmem...ct-jobless-rate-to-top-10-percent.php?ref=fpb

If Obama does do it, the right will claim just that.

If he does not do it, then you can count on “Obamavills” splashed all over Fox News.

On this he can't win for lose.
 
But Biden recently said the " stimulus has worked beyond my wildest dreams..."

Greenspan is calling for extension of unemployment benefits. Doesn't that create a class of dependents?

...

What the hell do you think Biden was talking about?

__________________
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
Frederic Bastiat
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/gc04/idUSTRE5985F520091009


http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/10/05/daily91.html

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091009/NEWS01/910090376/Hawaii+tax+revenue+down+9.7++so+far

Real-time tax data indicates the U.S. economy is struggling. Income tax withholdings fell an adjusted 4.1% y-o-y in the past four weeks, not much of an improvement from the 4.8% y-o-y decline in the past three months even though year-over-year comparisons became much easier.

Also, corporate America is selling far more shares than it is buying. Since the start of September, corporate selling (new offerings + net insider selling) of $45.4 billion has been 2.3 times higher than announced corporate buying (new cash takeovers + new stock buybacks) of $19.5 billion.

Pay close attention to the insider sell offs. When the corporate executives are selling at that kind of level you should pay attention.
 
Here that!? Another housing bubble approaches.

It will be a race.

On one hand a lot of people are going to start running out of unemployment benefits (thus making unemployment look better than it really is) so forclosures will excelerate.

On the other hand business are unable to get credit and sales are down so that sector is due for a bad time. According to the Fed, total loans at commercial banks have fallen at a 19% annual rate over the past three months, while loans to businesses have dropped at a 28% annualized pace.

No winners either way.
 
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