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

[4est_4est_Gump]

Where'd everybody go with all the economists and the positive indicators...



I see them starting threads attacking Romney.


But not here.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

California will expect us to bail out its teachers...

Calpers Pension Plan Reports 1% Return; Stunning "What If" Charts at Various Compound Annualized Rates-of-Return Going Forward


The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.6 million California public employees, retirees, and their families. Its pension plan assumes 7.5% annual growth.

For fiscal year ending 2012 CalPERS Reports Preliminary Performance of 1 Percent.

How Underfunded is CalPERS?

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

More Democrat (Europhile) Economics played out to the bitter end...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Fed to rearrange deck chairs...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120717/DA02H49G0.html

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Not All Growth Is Good
By Myron Scholes, NRO
July 17, 2012

The United States has just experienced one of the largest asset bubbles in history. After peaking in 2006 and 2007 at prices that had more than doubled in some markets, in just a few years, home values crashed. The result was a financial panic that sank storied Wall Street firms and erased the home equity of tens of millions of Americans. Those hit the hardest included Americans who suddenly owed more on their homes than those homes were worth.

It would seem that not all economic “growth” actually adds value to the national economy.

In truth, there are two kinds of growth. One kind is artificial and often driven by misguided policies that aim to increase GDP without regard to adding fundamental value to the economy. For example, monetary policy — through cheap credit — likely contributed to the housing bubble. For a time, this appeared to buoy the economy, even as it was setting the stage for millions of Americans to lose their life savings. Tax and fiscal policies can also create artificial growth. Building a road might create temporary jobs, but does it really create wealth if it doesn’t also shorten commute times or otherwise make society better off? Tax incentives might spur hiring in the short run, but how lasting are those gains if the jobs expire with the tax credits and they come at the expense of investing in the new technologies of the future?

The other kind of growth actually increases our net wealth and is usually driven by progress in human or physical capital or advances in technology. This second kind of growth leads to long-term economic expansion by improving education, drawing in new high-skilled immigrants, freeing capital, or developing new technologies that make us more productive. Building that road could produce wealth, if it connects businesses in ways they were not connected before. Similarly, raising student achievement can make workers more productive, and changing tax and fiscal policies to allow entrepreneurs to invest in promising ventures can lead to innovation and to new jobs.

So how do we spur this second kind of growth?

In my view, the economy is facing a unique set of headwinds. The United States has sustained a housing crash of tremendous proportions. The policy response in Washington to this crash has not addressed fundamental underlying problems, even while it has created new problems of its own. And the United States has to survive in an increasingly competitive global marketplace where capital (both human and financial) can shift from one place to another. Any of these three issues would pose significant challenges by themselves. But add them together and you will see that over the past few years the United States has suffered a shock to its economic system that warrants a considered response.

First, let’s review a few missteps. Many of Washington’s policies over the past few years have created uncertainty among individuals and businesses. And uncertainty has an underappreciated negative effect on the economy. Why? Because people and businesses react to it in an understandable way — they hold on to their money rather than investing in ventures that might lead to innovations. The net result is that there is less money available for investing in technologies or other items that will lead to higher productivity down the road.

BULL-SPIT! Let's attack the rich and BAIN to make them give us their money and WE'LL SPEND IT from DC!!!

Policymakers have fed uncertainty by trying to steer the economy from Washington. The reason that this creates uncertainty is that Washington tends to support the first kind of economic growth — the kind that artificially inflates GDP but can actually reduce value to society. Inflating a housing bubble is one example of this. But there are others that range from wasting funds on unnecessary infrastructure projects to directing capital into endeavors that do little to make the economy more efficient.

One way Washington directed capital to fruitless ends came in the form of a financial-reform bill called Dodd-Frank, which became law in 2010. This new law was advertised as necessary to prevent the kind of financial collapse that had happened in 2008. Instead it has provided little additional protection against a future crash, made financial markets less flexible, and imposed new costs on the system (something many consumers saw in 2011 with new debit-card fees). Combined with new health-care requirements, employment regulations, immigration rules, and constraints on innovation, it has led many of the country’s largest companies to sit on substantial financial reserves even while the economy sputters. Uncertain about the future, they are saving their capital for the rainy days that seem to await them.

The way I’ve often described the problem we face is this: Rather than having the “war generals” (private entrepreneurs) lead our economy, we’re being led by the “ordnance generals” in Washington. We need to replace the ordnance generals with war generals — those individuals who can actually create innovations that add value to society.

No WAY! They're GREEDY oppressors of the people!

One way to do that would be to pull back the policies briefly mentioned above that are adding to uncertainty. But that’s not enough. In a competitive global economy, we’ll need to make advances in computing, information, and telecommunications technologies as well as other areas that will lead us to new ways of doing business. The goal is to increase our national output without increasing the resources we put into the economy. And to do that, we’ll have to also build flexibility into our thinking.

What we know is that we must innovate before we build infrastructure. And here I am using a definition of the term “infrastructure” that includes much more than bridges and roads. I’m using a definition that includes government regulatory structures as well as private systems that range from rules to habits of business that surround our industries and often determine how our markets function.

Innovation must lead infrastructure for a simple but compelling reason: Innovation produces new types of products and markets, and it is virtually impossible to know how to run those markets efficiently before they are created. We can all be thankful that there wasn’t a set of regulations in place that were so rigid that they would have made the iPhone impossible to create before Steve Jobs had rolled it out. If we seek to regulate future products and markets in advance, we’ll impose rules that will almost certainly end up crushing innovation. R&D, creating new products, or developing new types of capital investments requires building infrastructure only after making gains in innovation.

Aren't you listening to President Obama and Cherokee Warren???

You build roads first! You can't have people trying to do it by themselves!

We can’t let infrastructure get too far behind innovation and creativity, of course. We need rules to run markets efficiently. But we can’t let old infrastructure stifle innovation, either. So we have to think about how to repeal old rules that stifle new ideas. We have to think about the rigidities that are already in place. Most of these rigidities exist in places where we don’t allow individuals to use markets to compete or where we involve the government, which often won’t allow old infrastructure to be upended in favor of innovation and new types of rules.

...

So uncertainty really has a large effect on growth and innovation. The United States has been in the forefront of R&D and accumulative knowledge and can remain there and even grow dramatically if it concentrates on increasing the efficiency of its human and financial capital.

There are several ways to do that, and they start with developing new technologies and finding new ways to use existing technologies. The oil-and-gas industry is giving us one example of how we can profit by using existing technologies in new ways. Over the past several years it has started to adapt techniques first developed to extract gas from shale deposits to now extract oil. Similarly, we need to find new ways to apply technology in health care, retail, and education. And we need to rethink infrastructure and delivery systems to make them more efficient. Regulations can be streamlined, necessary roads can be built, advances in logistics can continue to allow retailers to free up capital previously committed to inventory, and better schools can help our students become more productive.

And we need to rethink our approach to success. We have to encourage success (and allow for failure), because that is how we grow. We also need to better understand what success actually requires. We tend to think that success is based on luck and not skill, and we tend to penalize success through excessive regulation and taxation. This approach has to end. We need to encourage long-term investing that leads to more R&D and a greater accumulation of valuable knowledge.

At the same time, we need to think about our human capital. The United States has been experiencing unusually high unemployment, so it has surplus labor. We need to get unemployed workers back to work in ways that actually increase value to society. Make-work infrastructure projects won’t lead to long-term prosperity. But innovations that provide workers with jobs in new industries will.

To do all of these things, we need to remain flexible. I think in our global economy, uncertainty is ever increasing. So to accommodate to that, we need to build a dynamic economy and dynamic rules that can adapt to changing circumstances. In the coming decades, we’re likely to see several surprising shifts as financial capital chases new opportunities and as human capital moves from one country to another or one region to another.

NO! We need more benefits to ease the pain of the children and the minorities, government needs to be a RESPONSIBLE business partner, not some uncaring creature concerned only with defense and courts; it's needs to be the nanny of the people...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Not All Growth Is Good
By Myron Scholes, NRO
July 17, 2012

Not when there's a black president in the White House, anyway.....

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Still winning!

http://www.downinthevalley.com/images/product/medium/164228.jpg

Throb thread:
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=745068

__________________
You gonna shoot us another one of your hollow-point bullet proof facts?
Or are you just hateful, angry rhetoric?
One of Dem inspirational and motivational speakers?

 

[RobDownSouth]

http://www.downinthevalley.com/images/product/medium/164228.jpg

Throb thread:
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=745068

__________________
You gonna shoot us another one of your hollow-point bullet proof facts?
Or are you just hateful, angry rhetoric?
One of Dem inspirational and motivational speakers?

Tell us again how one dollar, one quarter and one nickel equals 91 cents on your planet.

Tell us about "context" here...

I call him a nigger all the time. It's funny to watch him turn purple and start spitting...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Why India Can't Catch Up With the West
India's legions of petty bureaucrats are killing the country's economy.
Shikha Dalmia, Reason.com (Libertarian)
July 17, 2012

London—A deep gloom has settled in here: Europe’s glory days, it’s feared, are over. Private bank excesses and public-sector legacy costs are poised to drag the continent—and America—down for generations. Only India and China are seen as the rising stars in the global firmament. Their young economies have stalled this year. But they are expected to recover, learn from the West’s mistakes and become economic powerhouses, displacing the West’s global hegemony.

Setting China and its opaque autocracy aside, India, I am quite confident, ain’t going to perch its tricolored flag atop the globe anytime soon. Not until it does something about its soul-sapping bureaucracy. The world’s largest democracy doesn’t have rule of law—it has the rule of babus, the local term for petty bureaucrats. And so long as they keep challenging India’s entrepreneurs, there isn’t much chance that India will challenge the West.

For all their problems and flaws, Western powers—America, Canada, England, Germany, and others—have functional institutions such as well-defined property rights, effective courts that enforce contracts and state-of-the-art infrastructure that enhance the productivity of their citizens. By contrast, India’s horrendous bureaucracy systematically thwarts its citizens, killing productivity, often for no apparent reason but to exercise its powers over them.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/17/the

"Who can seriously doubt . . . that the power which a multi-millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest [bureaucrat] possess who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work?"
FA Hayek

"We know that the number of government jobs has been increasing steadily, and that the number of applicants is increasing still more rapidly than the number of jobs. … Is this scourge about to come to an end? How can we believe it, when we see that public opinion itself wants to have everything done by that fictitious being, the state, which signifies a collection of salaried bureaucrats? … Very soon there will be two or three of these bureaucrats around every Frenchman, one to prevent him from working too much, another to give him an education, a third to furnish him credit, a fourth to interfere with his business transactions, etc., etc. Where will we be led by the illusion that impels us to believe that the state is a person who has an inexhaustible fortune independent of ours?
Frédéric Bastiat

 

[RobDownSouth]

Why India Can't Catch Up With the West
India's legions of petty bureaucrats are killing the country's economy.
Shikha Dalmia, Reason.com (Libertarian)
July 17, 2012

America has been shedding public sector jobs at an unprecedented rate during the Obama administration, leaving AJ no choice but to sputter and fume about other countries instead.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Stock futures rise as insiders salivate at the opportunity to benefit from another Fed inflation...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Conn Carroll writes at the Washington Examiner:

“I believe that if we’re successful in this election,” President Obama told campaign donors in Minnesota last month, “that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that.”

Apparently Obama believes that if he wins this November, Republicans on Capitol Hill will all begin to act like Chief Justice John Roberts by betraying their conservative beliefs and signing on to Obama’s unprecedented expansion of the federal welfare state. But what would America look like if the Republican “fever” did break?

We already know. It would look a lot like the state of California, where no non-cyborg Republican has been governor since 1996. Democrats have also enjoyed complete control of the state legislature since 1997. And they have governed exactly the way you’d expect Democrats to govern.

Spending has more than doubled, from $45.4 billion in 1996 to more than $92.5 billion today. Income, sales and car taxes have all been hiked. As a result, California has the most progressive income tax system in the nation, with seven income tax brackets, and the second-highest top marginal rate.

Even with all those tax hikes, California’s 2012 budget is still $15.7 billion in the red. So what does Gov. Jerry Brown want to do? Raise taxes again, of course. He has proposed a ballot initiative that would: 1) raise sales taxes on everyone and 2) raise incomes taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year (like Obama has proposed to do nationally). But even this $8.5 billion tax hike would still leave the state $7.5 billion short. Where will California get that money? Who knows?

Not even Obama’s paralegals can save this state. And that’s the question America’s voters have to ask themselves in November. Do they wish to transform the rest of the nation into bankrupt, reactionary California?

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/07/16/obamas-californication/

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Financials will no doubt be up on the news that it's open season again on America's future.

Its one of those positive indicators pointing up (☟) that ALL economists point to...





:nods:

 

[unregistered]

 

[mercury14]

Where'd everybody go with all the economists and the positive indicators...



I see them starting threads attacking Romney.


But not here.

I'll attack Romney here.

His jobs plan is a black hole of vacuous crap. Basically it amounts to tax cuts. But after-tax corporate profits are already high. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that if they were a bit higher that hiring would magically start accelerating.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[bra_man69]

http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/seto...es-gm-no-money-costs-taxpayers-hundreds-thous The Jurassic Press is missing much in their reporting on the $50 billion bailout of General Motors (GM). The Press is open channeling for President Barack Obama - allowing him to frame the bailout exactly as he wishes in the 2012 Presidential election.

The President is running in large part on the bailout’s $30+ billion loss, uber-failed “success.” And the Press is acting as his stenographers. An epitome of this bailout nightmare mess is the electric absurdity that is the Chevrolet Volt. The Press is at every turn covering up - rather than covering - the serial failures of President Obama’s signature vehicle.

The Press has failed to mention at least five Volt fires, myopically focusing on the one the Obama Administration hand-selected for attention.

The Press has failed to mention that the Volt fire problem remains unsolved. Is it the battery? Is it the charging station? Is it the charging cable? All of the above?

GM and the Administration don’t know. And the Press ain’t breaking their necks trying to find out.

In more recent news, the Press has almost as one hailed the June Volt sales increase.

GM's Volt Sales Up in June

Surprising June Sales for Volt

Chevy Volt Leads US Plug-In Car Sales

Chevy Volt Sales Increases

Volt Records Second-Best Sales Month

The Press has for the most part failed to mention how pathetic this “second-best sales month” actually is. And even when one Dinosaur does, the unwarranted enthusiasm is palpable.

GM sells 1760 Volts in June, double from 2011

Wow. Huge number.

The Press also fails to put this pathetic tally in perspective.

The Chevy Cruze is basically a Volt without the dead-weight, flammable 400-lb. electric battery. Which makes it $17,000, rather than the Volt’s $41,000.

Chevy in June sold 18,983 Cruzes -more than ten times the number of Volts. And that’s down 1/3 from last June’s 24,648.

But that feeble Volt tally has the Press all revved up.

And speaking of the Volt’s ridiculous $41,000 sticker price:

According to multiple GM executives there is little or no profit being made on each Volt built at a present cost of around $40,000. Furthermore, the $700 million of development that went into the car has to be recouped.

Get that? GM makes “little or no profit” on the Volt.

So it makes perfect sense that GM would spend millions of dollars advertising it, does it not? No ideological or campaign intent there, eh President Obama?

Look, I get it, it’s fun. I just spent $1 million - of your money -advertising free air. On which my profit margin is just as good as GM’s is on the Volt.

Only my ads didn’t have a song, or a dance. We just aren’t as cool as the Volt.

I mean, it’s so cool - it can travel back in time to inspire the production of cars before it even existed.

I mean, it’s so cool - it can travel back in time to offer the exact same technology as a car from 1991. And the exact same electric battery range as a car from 1897.

We’re talking retro-grade cool.

But wait - there’s so much more.

(A)dd $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

Speaking of those “tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives” - as of November of last year that tally all by itself was $250,000 per Volt sold.

And that excruciating pain is ongoing. Again, a Volt sold makes GM no money - but costs We the Taxpayers a $7,500 bribe - I mean “incentive.” Oh - and President Obama wants to jack that bribe to $10,000 per.

I guess it’s good news after all that Volt sales remain so anemic.

And with GM’s new 60-day return policy, it looks like you can buy a Volt and cash the $7,500 bribe check. Then return the Volt - and keep the $7,500 bribe cash. How’s that for Taxpayer coin stewardship?

Keep all of this outrageousness in mind when next the Jurassic Press joins with the Obama Administration in celebrating the Chevy Volt.

But it (allegedly) helps President Obama get reelected. And nothing would make the Press happier -and for that there’s (almost?) nothing they won’t do.

 

[phrodeau]

You need to actually research your posts, instead of copying from not-so-bright-Bart. The Volt is less of a fire hazard than a gasoline-only car, and the fires involving Volts have all been explained to the satisfaction of the NHTSA. Your source is also wrong about keeping the $7,500 incentive (which isn't refundable and can only reduce your tax) if one returns an electric car. That is tax fraud, and prosecutable.

 

[bra_man69]

You need to actually research your posts, instead of copying from not-so-bright-Bart. The Volt is less of a fire hazard than a gasoline-only car, and the fires involving Volts have all been explained to the satisfaction of the NHTSA. Your source is also wrong about keeping the $7,500 incentive (which isn't refundable and can only reduce your tax) if one returns an electric car. That is tax fraud, and prosecutable.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_clW92NzmFvI/SqZXcuebOtI/AAAAAAAACh0/tnqGPIryYwM/s400/liberal_crap.jpg

 

[phrodeau]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_clW92NzmFvI/SqZXcuebOtI/AAAAAAAACh0/tnqGPIryYwM/s400/liberal_crap.jpg

It must be true; it has a liberal bias.

 

[bra_man69]

It must be true; it has a liberal bias.

 

[bra_man69]

You need to actually research your posts, instead of copying from not-so-bright-Bart. The Volt is less of a fire hazard than a gasoline-only car, and the fires involving Volts have all been explained to the satisfaction of the NHTSA. Your source is also wrong about keeping the $7,500 incentive (which isn't refundable and can only reduce your tax) if one returns an electric car. That is tax fraud, and prosecutable.

It's a $7,500 rebate to get all you have to is
A) buy it new
B) this year
That's it doesn't say how long you must own it.
It's not fraud if you fellow the rules.
I like to think of it as 59 day paid test drive

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I'll attack Romney here.

His jobs plan is a black hole of vacuous crap. Basically it amounts to tax cuts. But after-tax corporate profits are already high. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that if they were a bit higher that hiring would magically start accelerating.

Sounds like you're trying to say voodoo economics...

Absolutely not, nothing in the world suggest they would start hiring.

Fuck them!