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

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Mark Steyn at NRO has found somewhat of a silver lining:

As the author of a suitably apocalyptic book to be released on Monday, I’m grateful to Standard & Poor’s for providing the ultimate publicity tie-in. (Junk rating by the time of the paperback edition?) The frivolousness of the political theater in Washington this last month and its mostly fraudulent media coverage did huge damage to the United States. It confirmed to the world, as S&P’s analysis suggests, that Washington is institutionally incapable of genuine reform. This was one of those it’s-the-music-not-the-lyrics moments: As damaging as the specifics of the ”deal” were, the broader sub-text of a political class pretending that it was meaningful was even more so.

We don’t have till 2021. As I say in my column tomorrow, we have till mid-decade to turn this thing around, or it’s over. That’s where the politico-media Beltway myopia failed the nation. It never occurred to any of the parties or the play-by-play commentators that their dramatically negotiated plans for – what was it now? – $7-12 billion of cuts in FY2012 would not be taken seriously by the world. That’s the heart of the S&P critique - its remarks about ”the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions”. In other words, the “deal” only confirmed the nature of the problem.

Now that it’s happened, it’s hard to argue that there was anything very obviously triple-A about America in 2011. So ask yourself this: If in 2013 we’re still talking in the terms of this week’s deal, you want to bet we’ll still be AA+*?

(*Oddly enough, $&P have downgraded the US to the initials of my book. Thanks, guys!)

__________________
Ayers wrote his book,
Harvard wrote his Review,
Apollo Alliance wrote his TARP,
Congress has written his Health Care,
Nobel Committee awarded him extra credit,
$&P has given his economy a favorable rating...,

... and the Democrat Media is Wrighting his Legacy!

I'm Hungary for some French-fried €PIIGS!
A_J, the Incredulous

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Why S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating?

One of S&P's explicit criticisms of the compromise was that it didn't address the biggest drivers of the nation's debt -- Social Security and Medicare -- and didn't allow for additional tax revenue.
- CNN Money

In reality the reason for credit rating downgrade doesn't mean shit, all that matters is the grade you have. Which means we'll be paying more in interest for the money we borrow.

It's funny that they would list Social Security and Medicare as drivers of the National Debt since a good chunk of the debt (nearly 18%) is owed to the Social Security Fund and both are mandatory spending while non-defense discretionary and Defense discretionary spending was ignored.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Cherry-picking...




The reason we are being downgraded is because when Republicans try to do adult things, Democrats begin running commercials showing grandma being shoved off a cliff while they scream TEA PARTY and RADICALS...


__________________
“I always use the word extreme. That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”
Senator Chuck Schumer

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Cherry-picking...




The reason we are being downgraded is because when Republicans try to do adult things, Democrats begin running commercials showing grandma being shoved off a cliff while they scream TEA PARTY and RADICALS...

Adult things?
You mean like trying to slash Medicare and Social Security spending (Which is shoving Grandma off a cliff, along with the poor and infirm), because honestly, you can't reduce either of those much due to the nature of the recipients, instead of cutting discretionary spending in defense and non-defense areas or eliminating subsidies for companies making record profits and tax reductions that were meant to be temporary anyway?

 

[BoyNextDoor]

Cherry-picking...




The reason we are being downgraded is because when Republicans try to do adult things, Democrats begin running commercials showing grandma being shoved off a cliff while they scream TEA PARTY and RADICALS...

Yeah - and then the make death panels to order grandma killed before she gets pushed off the cliff

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

How about a little Moody's Blues in AA#?

A growing chorus of economists and educators think that the higher education industry will be America's next bubble. Easy credit, high tuition, and poor job prospects have resulted in growing delinquency and default rates on nearly $1 trillion worth of private and federally subsidized loans. Now the ratings agency Moody's has weighed in with a chilling diagnosis: "Unless students limit their debt burdens, choose fields of study that are in demand, and successfully complete their degrees on time, they will find themselves in worse financial positions and unable to earn the projected income that justified taking out their loans in the first place."

In August 2010 financial aid guru Mark Kantrowitz announced that student loan debt had, for the first time, surpassed credit card debt. A month later, the Department of Education announced that default rates for student loans had jumped from 4.6 percent in 2005 to 7 percent in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. While the two announcements went largely unnoticed, some took the data points as evidence that America's next big bubble—higher education—was becoming dangerously inflated.

I ran that thesis—shaped by data that show the default rate for student loans (two-thirds of which are guaranteed by the government) have steadily increased over the last decade—by Kantrowitz last year. “You can’t flip an education,” he told me. In other words, higher education can’t be a bubble because there’s no speculation. Howard Horton of the New England College of Business and Finance was on the fence in 2009 about the higher ed bubble, but when demand for college degrees increased during the recession, Horton suggested that the college industry had more in common with Detroit than the housing crisis.

“These subsidies are kind of like propping up the auto industry with cash for clunkers, or the housing industry with cash for first-time buyers,” he told me last year. “We have this financial aid system that is keeping the system alive.”

Moody's new report has a much grimmer take: While "delinquency and loss rates on outstanding student loan balances remained steady throughout the recessions," the report reads, "the performance of other consumer loan segments has significantly improved as the economy has recovered." But that's likely to change soon, and not for the better. Moody’s projects that delinquency and default rates will actually get worse, even if the economy recovers in the next few years (itself an increasingly unlikely prospect).

To start, it helps to understand why student loans are doing poorly. Unlike home and auto loans, the conditions for which have been tightened drastically since 2008, student loans are for everybody. Borrowing isn’t based on income or even a salary expectation, but the promise that a college degree will pay for itself. But with unemployment hovering around 9 percent, college graduates from the best programs and schools are finding that’s not not the case. Eventually, the snake eats its own tail: Easy credit and the college myth have caused tuition to double since 2000, while tightened credit requirements have caused home prices to plummet.

Mike Riggs
Reason.com

Remember, it was nationalized under "Obamacare..."

Just a few of our 2,000 lines we had to pass to see...

And how many of those degrees are even in fields that have half-a-chance of generating the income to service the loan?
__________________
Some people feel the wealth of a nation is measured in BAs, MAs, and PhDs and that it as nothing to do with fives, tens and twenties...
A_J, the Stupid

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Yeah - and then the make death panels to order grandma killed before she gets pushed off the cliff

"You cap your health care budget, and you make the political and economic choices you need to make to keep affordability within reach."
"And it's important also to make health a human right because the main health determinants are not health care but sanitation, nutrition, housing, social justice, employment, and the like."
"One over-demanded service is prevention: annual physicals, screening tests, and other measures that supposedly help catch diseases early."
Donald Berwick
Death Panel Czar

“Some years down the pike, we’re going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes.”
Paul Krugman
__________________
“And guess what this liberal will be all about? This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh… would be about basically about taking over the government running all of your companies.”
Maxine Waters

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Adult things?
You mean like trying to slash Medicare and Social Security spending (Which is shoving Grandma off a cliff, along with the poor and infirm), because honestly, you can't reduce either of those much due to the nature of the recipients, instead of cutting discretionary spending in defense and non-defense areas or eliminating subsidies for companies making record profits and tax reductions that were meant to be temporary anyway?

The only thing proposed was a decrease in growth.

Let's try some reality and go back to zero-base budgeting.

But hey, for going on two years, you've been cheerleading the economy, and for a year you've had merc with you, while periodically screaming SHOW ME THE DOUBLE DIP! SHOW ME THE LOST DECADE! SHOW ME THE DEPRESSION!!!


Well...



*ta da*

__________________
"We own the economy. We own the beginning of the turnaround and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place."
Debbie Wasserman Schultz

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

In a sick existential sort of way ObamaCare is all about killing people a la Hitler. Seventy-nine million retired Boomers will force it upon us. They'll gas and cremate the friendless first cuz no one will ask about them when they vanish.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

How about a little Moody's Blues in AA#?


Mike Riggs
Reason.com

Remember, it was nationalized under "Obamacare..."

Just a few of our 2,000 lines we had to pass to see...

And how many of those degrees are even in fields that have half-a-chance of generating the income to service the loan?
__________________
Some people feel the wealth of a nation is measured in BAs, MAs, and PhDs and that it as nothing to do with fives, tens and twenties...
A_J, the Stupid

Yeah, it's Obama's fault that student debt is hitting record levels, it couldn't be the fault of colleges increasing tuition at a record pace.

Over the last two decades, the cost of attending two- and four-year public and private colleges (including tuition and other education-related expenses) has grown more rapidly than inflation, and faster than stagnant family income. As a result, the share of family income that is needed to pay for tuition and other college expenses has increased.

Just for the record, refering to health care reform as "Obamacare" almost always invalidates pretty much everything that follows since it's without doubt nothing but Obama bashing nonsense.

Same thing for Obamunism. Just sayin'.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

In America, they first came for the very rich and I didn't speak up because I wasn't rich," said the Rev. Imadem Doinggood. "Then they came for the Bourgeoisie and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Bourgeois. Then they came for the Upper Middle Class blue-collar workers. I didn't speak up because I was a Government clerk. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up.
__________________
Obama, you see, is our nemesis. He is a totem, the logical manifestation of a warped media, the reification of some crazy — and arrogant — ideas about redistributive politics, the statist economy, and cultural and social life that permeated American life the last forty years. He is the president with a 1,000 faces that we have all seen at work, on TV, throughout American life, and at some point the odds determined that we had to have a rendezvous with him— perhaps a catharsis to teach us the wages of Keynesian debt, of a social policy contrary to human nature with its equality of result doctrines, of an all-powerful, all-growing unaccountable government, of the now hip ambiguity about past American protocols and history. Obama is the exaggeration of all the dubious ideas that arose since the 1960s — brought to fruition on his watch, delivered by mellifluous cadences by an untouchable persona.

In fact, a Barack Obama was long overdue. Had he not appeared out of nowhere in 2008, we would have surely had to invent him.
Victor Davis Hanson

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Time for Democrats to put on their Big Boy Pants and present a PLAN!!!

U_D, who said Obama?




Just where does the buck stop? On a desk in Texas?

I think your frantic desire for a bet on 2012 is starting to look delusional...

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

The only thing proposed was a decrease in growth.

Let's try some reality and go back to zero-base budgeting.

But hey, for going on two years, you've been cheerleading the economy, and for a year you've had merc with you, while periodically screaming SHOW ME THE DOUBLE DIP! SHOW ME THE LOST DECADE! SHOW ME THE DEPRESSION!!!
Well...

*ta da*

How do you propose decreasing "growth" in Medicare and Social Security without impacting those who need them to survive? Make less old or sick people? Force health care providers to accept even less money for providing services to medicare patients?

For more than two years you and yours have been issuing dire warnings, always just around the corner.. No wait, the next corner.. No, the next...
Now, over two years later you're finally seeing a glimmer of what you predicted (brought on by "conservative" intransigence) and you're trying to declare victory? Really?

"See! I KNEW if I held my breath long enough I would turn blue!"

Congratulations, you've now become a complete and utter joke.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

U_D, who said Obama?

Just where does the buck stop? On a desk in Texas?

I think your frantic desire for a bet on 2012 is starting to look delusional...

You did, by saying that it was a product of "Obamacare".

Still don't want to take me up on that bet huh? What's the excuse this week? You just spent your monthly allowance on gold?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

You did, by saying that it was a product of "Obamacare".

Still don't want to take me up on that bet huh? What's the excuse this week? You just spent your monthly allowance on gold?

Just simply point out that Obama had nothing to do with it...

Pretty much like the closing of Gitmo...

Just teleprompted words...

As for your betting:

Delusional...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

It's all fun and games as we glide from gala to gala, ball to ball, hole to hole...

Former Obama economic adviser Christina Romer got a chuckle out of the news yesterday that the US credit rating was downgraded for the first time in over a century. She told Bill Maher, “We’re f*cked.” Then they laughed.

If you ask me, I think what we're experiencing isn't in fact closer to a "growthless" recovery than to a jobless one. Because GDP started to grow more than a year and a half ago, but with the exception of just a couple of quarters, growth has not been noticeably above its trend rate of about 2-1/2 percent a year. I don't rejoice at the news that we added 216,000 jobs in March. About a hundred thousand of that 216,000 is needed every month just to keep up with the growth in the labor force. At this rate of job growth, it would take most of the decade to replace the eight 8-1/2 million jobs that were lost in the recession.
Christina Romer
Chairwoman of Obama's White House Council of Economic Advisors

“I’m just going to be honest with you. There’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now... If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know [laughingly], you might want to think about a trade-in.”
Barack Hussein Obama, the Green Pres__ent (with no id, uh…)
April 2011
__________________
Barry 2012 Says: ”’Shovel-ready’ was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” (Laughter)
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

1. The interest rates the government pays to finance the growing national debt will almost certainly rise as a result of the downgrade. That increases the amount of money Uncle Sam has to spend each year on "debt service." General market discussions have turned on an increase in rates that would up the annual tally by about $10 in the short-term and go up to $75 billion in additional costs in the coming years.

2. The interest rates YOU and YOUR EMPLOYER pay will go up. Basic credit facilities -- like mortgages, student loans and credit cards -- are all at least loosely tied to the rates the government pays. A half a percent increase in mortgage rates could increase the total cost of the average traditional mortgage by $19K (on a $172K home). Businesses would have to spend more money to finance expansions. Costs for borrowed money goes up, effectively raising the price of anything you're not paying for with cash.

3. Needless to say, increasing costs for consumers and businesses tends to slow their economic activity. Some estimates put a downgrade like this as likely to shave 1 percent off GDP. This slowing certainly increases the risks that the U.S. will have a second dip into recession. It also means less tax revenue, so the potential for additional debt increases.

4. As the economy slows, expect the stock market to react. After all, investors buy shares to get a piece of growing profits. A slowing economy means profits grow less rapidly or go down. The relative value of a share of anything will go down. Some experts predict a downgrade could force stocks to sell-off by 6 percent to 10 percent in short order. That's another 1,100 points on the Dow.

5. A slowdown in economic activity also means less demand for workers. The non-partisan group Third Way has published estimates that a simple 0.5 percent increase in interest rates could erase more than 640,000 jobs.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/sp-drops-us-credit-rating-aa-easy-understand/story?id=14244259

 

[rosco rathbone]

Warren Buffett can't actually believe this, right?

I don’t get it,” Buffett told FBN late Friday night. In fact, Buffett reaffirmed his belief in the quality of the United States’ credit telling FBN, “In Omaha, the U.S. is still triple A. In fact, if there were a quadruple-A rating, I’d give the U.S. that.”
…”We just filed our 10Q and we have $47 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Well over $40 billion of it is in short end T-bills. (Tonight’s S&P downgrade) doesn’t tempt me to sell. We’ll stay right there.”

…”Think about it. The U.S., to my knowledge owes no money in currency other than the U.S. dollar, which it can print at will. Now if you’re talking about inflation, that’s a different question

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Warren Buffett can't actually believe this, right?

It's scary, but even at Mises.org one economist was talking about how much of the debt could we safely write off without creating a panic...



Didn't Buffet think Obama was a good idea at some point in time?

I do know that those closest to an inflation stand to gain the most, so the QE line of products has probably helped his bottom line; probably no mystery as to why he feels AAA...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

We take money from the right pocket and put it in the left and then we go on a spending binge...

The US Postal Service warned on Friday that it could default on payments it owes the federal government, just days after the US government itself narrowly averted a default.

The government's mail service said it lost $3.1 billion in the period from April to June, blaming "the anemic state of the economy" and the growing popularity of electronic communications over old-fashioned letters.

As a result of its mounting losses, the US Postal Service said it would not be able to make a legally required $5.5 billion payment in September to a health-benefits trust fund.

"Absent substantial legislative change, the Postal Service will be forced to default on payments to the federal government," it said in a statement.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-postal-warns-could-default-222059604.html

Freddie and Fannie need a bail out too, yeah merc, all we see is good news from sea to shining sea...

:nods:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/08/05/fannie-mae-to-taxpayers-need-another-51-billion/

 

[koalabear]

We take money from the right pocket and put it in the left and then we go on a spending binge...



http://news.yahoo.com/us-postal-warns-could-default-222059604.html

Freddie and Fannie need a bail out too, yeah merc, all we see is good news from sea to shining sea...

:nods:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/08/05/fannie-mae-to-taxpayers-need-another-51-billion/

Maybe we can just increase the debt limit again next month.

 

[richard_daily]

Warren Buffett can't actually believe this, right?

Maybe he doesn't have any of his assets in Euros or the pound... which have been kicking the dollar's ass since well before Obama was elected.

 

[eyer]

It's scary, but even at Mises.org one economist was talking about how much of the debt could we safely write off without creating a panic...

The main economic negative to "write off" for Americans would be the empty retirement funds already drained to cover increased borrowing/spending never being replenished...

...except with drastically higher taxes on all.

That's not to say they're going to be replenished staying on the financial slave path we're now well down.

It'd be so humorous if it weren't so true that the same guys who made the most money in the bailouts - and are compounding that with the interest paid on the debt - are able to "rate" the financial health of their benefactors while they, and most of the world, consider them to be authoritative and reputable...

...what a friggin' gig they got everyone believing.

 

[mercury14]

S&P said they'd downgrade us if:

1) The deal was small.

2) The deal didn't include increased revenues.

3) The deal was a short term fix.


So what did Republicans do? They promptly went out and advocated for a small deal that didn't increase revenues, and tried to kick the can just short enough to make it an election issue. Republicans value their ideology over the success of America. Never doubt that.

Boehner spent weeks hashing out a deal with just under a trillion in increased revenue, then walked out when he realized he couldn't pass $5 of tax increases through his own caucus.

"We got 98% of what we wanted"
- John Boehner

 

[richard_daily]

"We got 98% of what we wanted"
- John Boehner

They just don't want to take responsibility for it... as always.