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

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4est_4est_Gump said:
Yes it was and that was addressed in the post just above where I discussed why real wages were dropping, but then you still don't read for comprehension, just the cheap attack on viewpoints you don't much agree with.
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You know, had that been one of those *gasp* union meat packing locations they probably could have kept your job, and saved us all your off an on ranting about "Messicans". Of course you could argue that the plant *may* have shut down had they not fired you all and brought in immigrant labor at lower wages, but that's unlikely. See a labor union would have had a contract with the employer, keeping him from mass layoffs so that cheaper labor could be brought in. Hell I'd wager they could hire 1.5 people for the cost of each one that they let go. They "created jobs", low paying labor intensive jobs..

The way I see it, your beloved free market capitalism cost you your job. Your employer saw a way to squeeze more profit out of the business by hiring someone who was willing to work for the wages he believed the job was worth. Oddly enough, wages that were less that what you believed the job was worth or you would have stayed there.

This is almost exactly the argument made when you are screeching "Jen-style" against labor unions.

The real wages went down in that case because someone who needed a job was willing to work for less that you were.

Yay free market! Right?:cool:
 
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No, chances are I would never have gotten hired into a Union shop because I was new in town...



Every union job I ever got was based on knowing someone on the inside.
 
4est_4est_Gump said:
No, chances are I would never have gotten hired into a Union shop because I was new in town...



Every union job I ever got was based on knowing someone on the inside.
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We all know that anecdote=fact.. at least when it's your anecdote.

I worked a union gig for awhile, I didn't have a single person on the inside help me get the job. See, I was *Gasp* qualified. I know, right!

My anecdote > your anecdote.
 
I went from that job to a Union job at the nuke thanks to my martial arts connections.




It pays to be a black belt.
 
Labor unions...

Ulaven_Demorte said:
You know, had that been one of those *gasp* union meat packing locations they probably could have kept your job, and saved us all your off an on ranting about "Messicans". Of course you could argue that the plant *may* have shut down had they not fired you all and brought in immigrant labor at lower wages, but that's unlikely. See a labor union would have had a contract with the employer, keeping him from mass layoffs so that cheaper labor could be brought in. Hell I'd wager they could hire 1.5 people for the cost of each one that they let go. They "created jobs", low paying labor intensive jobs..

The way I see it, your beloved free market capitalism cost you your job. Your employer saw a way to squeeze more profit out of the business by hiring someone who was willing to work for the wages he believed the job was worth. Oddly enough, wages that were less that what you believed the job was worth or you would have stayed there.

This is almost exactly the argument made when you are screeching "Jen-style" against labor unions.

The real wages went down in that case because someone who needed a job was willing to work for less that you were.

Yay free market! Right?:cool:
Click to expand...

Yo!
labor unions are socialist mafia type outfits from the git-go.

There's nothing capitalist about them. They are anti-capitalist. DUH!
 

It was an unusual year for the stock market (as defined by the S&P 500). If you are not otherwise aware of the fact, the S&P 500 is a capitalization-weighted index ( in contrast to the Dow Jones Industrial Average which is a price-weighted index). Loosely translated, that means that for the S&P the most highly valued companies (by market capitalization, e.g, Exxon at ~$406 billion, AAPL at ~$376 billion) are most weighted in the index calculation; the DJIA weights the companies with the highest stock prices (e.g., IBM @ $183.88 per share ). For the first time, the entire return for the S&P (2.11%) was comprised of the income portion ( i.e., dividends ) as there was NO price appreciation ( the S&P was 1257.64 at the end of 2010).


Almost needless to say, the 10-year compound average annual return for the S&P 500 of 2.92% is considerably below historic levels.



Code: 
			S & P 500 Index = 1257.60							
										
	        1 Yr.	2 Yr.	3 Yr.	4 Yr.	5 Yr.	6 Yr.	7 Yr.	8 Yr.	9 Yr.	10 Yr.
S&P 500:	2.11 	8.39 	14.11 	-1.64 	-0.25 	2.26 	2.64 	3.63 	6.16 	2.92
 
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As I said in September of 2009, we're going to move horizontally under the Obama economic understanding...



:) Have a Nice Day!
 
A Historical American First

For the first time in its history, America's top export is fuel (gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel)...

...it's also the first year since Harry Truman was president in 1949 that America has exported more fuel than it's imported.

In the first 10 months of 2011, America exported 848 million barrels of fuel and imported 750 million barrels; those 848 million barrels sold to the highest bidder for approximately $73.4 billion.

In 1949, the last year America was a net fuel exporter, it exported 86 million barrels and imported 82 million.

America experienced its 5th year of declining fuel use within its borders; domestic consumption dropped another 2.5% in 2011.

America is now exporting 117 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel per day...

...up from 40 million gallons per day just a decade ago.

The last 5 years America's top export was aircraft.
 
RagsNRiches said:
Yo!
labor unions are socialist mafia type outfits from the git-go.

There's nothing capitalist about them. They are anti-capitalist. DUH!
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and pretty much detroyed our auto and airline industries.....yeah
 
Are you paying attention?

JAMESBJOHNSON said:
Wealth and the distribution of wealth is what government is all about. Politics is the struggle for control of the wealth.
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That's how it's always been.... until our Founders wrote the US Constitution... to change the status quo.
We don't HAVE TO continue in the rut of the past. If we get back to the basics of the American constitutional system, government in this country can break the mold of the struggle for control of the wealth.

If we want to be rid of that struggle, the USC is the only way to be free of it.

Rags
 
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Ring out the new, ring in the old.

No, hang on, that should be the other way around, shouldn’t it? Not as far as 2011 was concerned. The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $16.4 trillion — a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months’ time.

At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke — broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur — and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece’s. That’s true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.

Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the last three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, “$16.4 trillion” has no real meaning, any more than “$17.9 trillion” or “$28.3 trillion” or “$147.8 bazillion.” It doesn’t even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they’re borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That’s to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion, and eventually 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done.

Our most enlightened citizens think it’s rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather “save the planet,” a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks. So, for example, a pipeline delivering Canadian energy from Alberta to Texas is blocked by the president on no grounds whatsoever except that the very thought of it is an aesthetic affront to the moneyed Sierra Club types who infest his fundraisers. The offending energy, of course, does not simply get mothballed in the Canadian attic: The Dominion’s prime minister has already pointed out that they’ll sell it to the Chinese, whose Politburo lacks our exquisitely refined revulsion at economic dynamism, and indeed seems increasingly amused by it. Pace the ecopalyptics, the planet will be just fine: Would it kill you to try saving your country, or state, or municipality?

Last January, the BBC’s Brian Milligan inaugurated the new year by driving an electric Mini from London to Edinburgh taking advantage of the many government-subsidized charge posts en route. It took him four days, which works out to an average speed of six miles per hour — or longer than it would have taken on a stagecoach in the mid–19th century. This was hailed as a great triumph by the environmentalists. I mean, c’mon, what’s the hurry?

...

Tens of millions of Americans have yet to understand that the can can no longer be kicked down the road, because we’re all out of road. The pavement ends, and there’s just a long drop into the abyss. And, even in a state-compliant car seat, you’ll land with a bump. At this stage in a critical election cycle, we ought to be arguing about how many government departments to close, how many government programs to end, how many millions of government regulations to do away with. Instead, one party remains committed to encrusting even more barnacles to America’s rusting hulk, while the other is far too wary of harshing the electorate’s mellow.
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Mark Steyn, NRO
 
RagsNRiches said:
That's how it's always been.... until our Founders wrote the US Constitution... to change the status quo.
We don't HAVE TO continue in the rut of the past. If we get back to the basics of the American constitutional system, government in this country can break the mold of the struggle for control of the wealth.

If we want to be rid of that struggle, the USC is the only way to be free of it.

Rags
Click to expand...

What the Founders had in mind was roads and bridges and wharves and canals. That is, commonwealth. And before the ink was dry on the parchment they were building jails and hiring tax collectors.
 
The Long, Long Depression
By Matthew Lynn, NRO
January 2, 2012

The markets were on a roll. New companies were being listed every few days. Germany had a new currency, and its mighty exporters were doing business around the world. Greece had merged its currency with that of France and Italy in a bold experiment in monetary union. A massive new continental economy was flooding the world with cheap goods, disrupting old industries. And new technologies were creating global markets, where money and information zipped from bourse to bank virtually instantaneously. Until the crash came, it seemed as if everyone would keep on getting richer and richer forever.

You could be forgiven for thinking that was a description of New York in 2008. Or London in 2000. Or Shanghai right now. But actually it is Vienna in 1873.

In that year, the Austrian capital was the epicenter of one of the great bubbles of the Victorian era. Money was flooding out of the new, unified German economy, and much of it landed in the lightly regulated Vienna bourse. Over the course of three years, more than a thousand companies joined the market. Preparations for the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna led to a massive building boom. The Austrian rail network doubled in just five years. Over six months, the Vienna market tripled in value. Then, in May 1873, it all crashed spectacularly. The market plummeted and had to be temporarily closed. The panic quickly spread to Germany, leading to what became known as the Gründerkrach, or “Founders’ Crash,” because it came so soon after the Gründerzeit, or “Founders’ Boom,” that had followed unification.

By November, it had spread to Wall Street, sparking a collapse that started when Jay Cooke & Company, a bank that had been one of the main financiers of the American Civil War and was among the most prominent finance houses on Wall Street, suspended payments on its bonds. “The brokers stood perfectly thunderstruck for a moment, and then there was a general run to notify the different houses of Wall Street of the failure,” reported the New York Times the next day. “The brokers surged out of the Exchange, stumbling pell-mell over one another in general confusion.”

The crash marked the start of what economic historians refer to as the long depression. During Edwardian times, it was actually known as the Great Depression, but rather like the Great War of 1914–18, it had to be renamed once a worse catastrophe came along. Either name would do, however; the slump was both long and great. It lasted from 1873 to 1896, and over that period output crashed, unemployment increased, prices fell, and migration soared. Most of today’s German population in the U.S. is descended from Germans who migrated here during the years after the crash, trying their luck in Cleveland and Milwaukee after they were laid off in the Ruhr.

The long depression was, for many years, of interest only to a small band of economic historians. Right now, however, it seems full of lessons for our own times. The parallels are almost spooky. In the 1870s, Germany had recently reunified, just as it has now. A currency union had been formed in Europe but was struggling to stay together. There was a new form of instant communication, the telegraph, that was more revolutionary than e-mail in the time saved over the technology it replaced. There was a new continental economy, and the U.S. was flooding the world with cheap grain just as China now floods the world with cheap computer chips. There was even a wave of financial innovation. In the years leading up to 1873 crash, new industrial banks such as Deutsche Bank had been formed, and the global bond market was fueling the railway boom. And, of course, there was an epic financial bubble that suddenly blew up. The question is whether we are going to witness another two-decade slump like the one that followed the 1873 crash.

Unfortunately, it is starting to look as if we might. The U.K. is already experiencing its longest depression since records began: The current downturn has lasted longer than the slump of the 1930s. Europe is heading for a deep depression next year as the austerity regime that will be needed for the euro to survive starts to bite. The U.S. will struggle to grow significantly. We are used to short, sharp recessions, because those were what we experienced for most of the 20th century. But it is now more than three years since the crash of 2008, and things are getting worse, not better.

When the markets blew up in 2008, policymakers rushed to make comparisons with the 1930s. True, that was a terrible depression, but one that was over quite quickly. The Great Depression was caused by a sudden collapse of demand and shrinking money supply. Now, as then, policymakers assumed that if the government expanded its deficits and central banks printed lots of money, that would fix the problem. It hasn’t, and it should be clear by now that it isn’t going to.

Why not? Because what we are really dealing with is a structural depression. In reality, the global economy is facing not one crisis, but three.

There is a debt crisis. The developed world has been building up debts on a spectacular scale for three decades. According to McKinsey data, global debt now stands at $158 trillion; that is up from $77 trillion in 2000. Put another way, global debt amounts to 266 percent of global GDP now, compared with 216 percent a decade ago. While economists used to think that debt was largely neutral — on the grounds that once person’s borrowing is another person’s loan — we are now discovering that borrowing on that scale is unsustainable.

Then there is a currency crisis. For most of the post-WWII period, the dollar was the anchor of the global economic system. That worked when the U.S. was the overwhelmingly dominant economy. It doesn’t work anymore. The dollar is now down to 60 percent of reserves, as central banks diversify away from a currency falling in value. At some point we will come up with a new core currency — perhaps the Chinese renminbi, perhaps gold. But until we do, there will be more chaos ahead.

And finally, there is the euro, perhaps the most dysfunctional monetary system ever created. Welding together the currencies of 17 very different economies, without any kind of fiscal union to compensate for the differences between them, was always a high-risk experiment. By now we can surely agree that it has failed. The euro was meant to promote faster growth and greater stability. It has become instead a cause of depression and volatility. Until it is dismembered, there is little chance of the global economy’s returning to stability.

This is a structural depression — just as the long depression of the 19th century was. And it won’t be over until we have fixed the way the economy works.

The trouble is, none of those tasks can be accomplished easily. The euro will take several years to restructure, and if it falls apart chaotically, it will plunge the world into a deep depression. Any replacement for the dollar will take a decade to establish itself. We don’t even have much idea what it might be yet: Historically, the reserve currency has always been either gold or the currency of the world’s dominant economy, but China is not ready to assume that role yet, and the shiny yellow metal has a long way to go to reclaim its place as the ultimate store of value, even if it is taking a far larger share of anxious investors’ portfolios. Only once those things are achieved will we be able to start reducing our debt to manageable levels.

The great 19th-century depression lasted for more than two decades. On the same reckoning, this slump will last until 2031. That may be too long a time scale: The old joke that economists make forecasts only to give the weather guys someone to laugh at should stop anyone from making predictions for decades ahead. But the lesson of the long depression is that a downturn can last a very, very long time — and it’s already clear that this one isn’t going to be over soon.
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__________________
“Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years. A year from now I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress. But there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
Barack Obama, The Today Show February 1, 2009.

"It's time for us to refocus and make sure that we understand that 'change we can believe in' was never going to be change overnight. Rather it's gonna be a slow, steady progression during which this aircraft carrier that we call United States of America slowly shifts in a direction that promises more opportunity. I’m going to need another term to finish the job.”
Barack Obama, Gotham Bar and Grill in the East Village (where donors forked over $25,800 each) December 1, 2011
 
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Now, who here said that we were looking at a debacle comparable to the Great Depression or Japan's Lost Decade in September 2009...





... would that be the moron A_J, eyer, or busybody...?

;) ;) :)
 
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