Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
You haven't learned not to listen to Meme and it's selective interpretations yet?
Here's the CBO report.
Which tells us that when President Obama took over the White House the economy was in deep trouble and it cost a shit-ton of money to keep it from decaying even more.
Tell us something we don't already know.
Oops, every independent analytical firm said it worked.
Prove that statement.
Define "worked."
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/11/16/did-the-stimulus-work/Did the stimulus create jobs?
Daniel Wilson of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank has just released what might be the first real evidence-based effort to resolve this question. One apparent problem with drawing inferences from the experience of the past couple years is that we have only one experiment to look at. But Wilson points out that in some sense, we have 50 separate experiments because stimulus spending differed substantially across states. You can potentially learn a lot from 50 experiments.
Unfortunately, they’re not controlled experiments, because stimulus funds were not allocated randomly. States with particularly weak economies probably got more Medicaid funds. States with bloated and inefficient bureaucracies might have been slow to complete necessary paperwork and hence slow to receive funds. If those weak economies or shamblng bureaucrats also had an effect on job growth, then the experiments are not clean.
But fortunately there are substantial components of the funds that were distributed according to objective formulas (demographics, number of highway miles, and so forth). Wilson makes competent use of these components, together with standard econometric techniques, to zero in on the subset of stimulus spending that can be considered effectively random. Now that he’s got his fifty more-or-less controlled experiments, he also controls for other confounding variables that could plausibly affect state-by-state economic growth. All of which is the right way to do this.
As Wilson points out, his appears to be the first attempt along these lines. Previous studies fall into two broad categories. First, there are the model-based approaches that forecast employment both with and without the stimulus (so that they’re testing not the observed effects of the stimulus, but its forecasted effects). Second, there are the survey-based approaches that require recipients of stimulus money to report the number of jobs they created or saved. Aside from all the obvious ways in such reports are likely to be inaccurate, they account only for the first-round effects of the stimulus, ignoring any second-round jobs created, ignoring effects on consumer spending, and ignoring God knows what else.
Wilson’s bottom lines:
The number of jobs created or saved by the spending is about 2.0 million as of March, but drops to near zero as of August.
The effects varied enormously among sectors. The biggest impact was in construction, where we saw a 23% increase in employment (as of August 2010) relative to what it would have been without the stimulus.
It mattered a lot how the money was spent. Spending on infrastructure and other general purposes had a large positive impact
Aid to state government to support Medicaid may have actually reduced state and local government employment. This seems a little surprising. It might be driven by the fact that these funds come with strings attached, requiring state and local governments to meet so many burdens that they’re led to cut spending and employment in non-Medicaid areas.
None of this will give unmitigated aid and comfort to ideologues of any stripe. And none of it is definitive, because no single study is ever definitive. But it’s a welcome start toward figuring out what really happened over the past couple of years.
I will add only that “Did the stimulus create jobs?” is not at all the same question as “Was the stimulus a good idea?”. But it’s an important question in its own right, and I’m glad someone’s finally trying to answer it in a sensible way.
http://www.scsuscholars.com/2010/02/what-we-dont-know.htmlMost of what we write about the effects of stimulus are just that, "an attempt to gain knowledge." A bureaucrat writes down some numbers. Reporters and bloggers find flaws. Econometric models estimate the effects, but those models were used to propose the policy put in place. It's not likely those models would go back and say the proposed plan didn't work: Econometric models aren't built to do that: If the model has as a premise that future government spending will create jobs, it isn't going to tell you that past government spending did not. Meanwhile, those in political opposition will look to find contradictions when none really exist. (GDP growth can lead employment growth.) And people get angrier and cynical.
There is nothing wrong with saying we don't know. It might have worked; it might not have. What we know is there are between three and four million fewer jobs than a year ago, and the deficit is larger. We want to know more. We are trying to know more. And if the volume of studies since 2000 of the Great Depression are any indication, we'll still want to know more a century from now.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuck...why-the-jobs-situation-is-worse-than-it-looksThe Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.
The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on the economy.]
The most recent statistics are unsettling and dismaying, despite the increase of 54,000 jobs in the May numbers. Nonagricultural full-time employment actually fell by 142,000, on top of the 291,000 decline the preceding month. Half of the new jobs created are in temporary help agencies, as firms resist hiring full-time workers.
Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from 59,648 in April. Hiring is now 17 percent lower than the lowest level in the 2001-02 downturn. One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work. Equally disturbing is that the number of people unemployed for six months or longer grew 361,000 to 6.2 million, increasing their share of the unemployed to 45.1 percent. We face the specter that long-term unemployment is becoming structural and not just cyclical, raising the risk that the jobless will lose their skills and become permanently unemployable. [See a slide show of the 10 best cities to find a job.]
Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.
Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent. The 16 percent includes 8.5 million part-timers who want to work full time (which is double the historical norm) and those who have applied for a job within the last six months, including many of the long-term unemployed. And this 16 percent does not take into account the discouraged workers who have left the labor force. The fact is that the longer duration of six months is the more relevant testing period since the mean duration of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, an increase from 37.1 weeks in February. [See a slide show of the 10 cities with highest real income.]
The inescapable bottom line is an unprecedented slack in the U.S. labor market. Labor's share of national income has fallen to the lowest level in modern history, down to 57.5 percent in the first quarter as compared to 59.8 percent when the so-called recovery began. This reflects not only the 7 million fewer workers but the fact that wages for part-time workers now average $19,000—less than half the median income.
CBO:
Federal Spending Will Soon Exceed Spending During Parts of WWII
... [/SIZE]
Howard Richman & Raymond RichmanOn June 15, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the inflation data for May. If you didn't hear about the new data, you are not alone -- the mainstream media buried the story. Why? Inflation hit 3.6% in May, even though gasoline prices actually fell that month. Inflation has been rising since November, as shown in the graph below:
[see chart here] http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/inflation_climbs_to_36_in_may_palin_was_right.html
These rising prices were largely caused by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's rapid expansion of the U.S. money supply, known as QE2 (Quantitative Easing 2). But inflation wasn't supposed to get this high. Back in November, Bernanke told his fellow central bankers that the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee (FOMC) was aiming for an inflation rate no higher than 2%. Specifically, he said:
Bernanke is like a driver who steps on the brakes, then floors the gas pedal, then steps on the brakes again, then floors the gas pedal again. His tenure at the Federal Reserve has been marked by the erratic swings in the U.S. money supply, shown in the graph below:This policy tool will be used in a manner that is measured and responsive to economic conditions. In particular, the Committee stated that it would review its asset-purchase program regularly in light of incoming information and would adjust the program as needed to meet its objectives. Importantly, the Committee remains unwaveringly committed to price stability and does not seek inflation above the level of 2 percent or a bit less that most FOMC participants see as consistent with the Federal Reserve's mandate.
[link above]
From May 2010 to May 2011, Bernanke had his pedal to the metal. He grew M1 (the amount of money in cash and in checking accounts) at a 13.4% rate. Due to lag time, this didn't get inflation climbing rapidly until February. Now that inflation has gotten started, it may be hard to stop because it can get a momentum of its own.
Back in November, Governor Palin took on QE2 and President Obama's defense of it. Her predictions have turned out to be correct. When making her case against QE2, she argued that it could cause inflation, but would not much help U.S. net exports and business investment, the two factors needed to grow the U.S. economy.
Indeed, worsening net exports (exports minus imports) have been keeping the United States stuck in its current economic stagnation. When imports go up relative to exports, Americans get more debt and lose jobs, whereas when exports go up, relative to imports, Americans get more income and gain jobs. The decline in net exports may be slowing or preventing the U.S. economic recovery.
Bernanke hoped that QE2 would weaken the dollar which would turn U.S. net exports around. But Palin predicted that any positive effects would be temporary. In November she wrote:
Indeed, so far Palin has been correct. QE2's effect upon net exports appears to have been temporary. Although U.S. net exports worsened more slowly in November and December, they resumed their economy-sapping slide in February, as shown in the graph below.Will driving the dollar down in this way do anything to boost U.S. exports? The short answer is not really. A weaker dollar will temporarily boost exports by making our goods cheaper to sell; but inevitably other countries will respond in kind, triggering the kind of currency wars economists are warning us about.
[link above]
Business investment is another key to economic growth, it combines the money spent by businesses on new tools and structures, such as when businesses develop new energy resources or build new factories. When businesses spend money on tools and structures, they put Americans to work making the tools and building the structures. Later, the improved tools and structures give American workers more productive work, resulting in higher wages. Bernanke had hoped that QE2 would stimulate business investment. But, in November, Palin predicted that QE2 would have little effect upon business investment. She wrote:
Indeed, as the graph below shows, the rate of growth in real fixed investment slowed in the fourth quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, despite QE2:Will QE2 then at least boost domestic investment? No, again. As I explained in my speech in Phoenix, the reason banks aren't lending and businesses aren't investing isn't because of insufficient access to credit. There's plenty of money around, it's just that no one's willing to spend it. Big businesses especially have been hoarding cash. They're not expanding or adding to their workforce because there's just too much uncertainty created by a lot of big government experiments that aren't working. It's the President's own policies that are creating this uncertainty.
[link above]
Palin argued that QE2 was a dangerous experiment that risked inflation. She urged Obama to instead balance budgets, cut taxes and reduce burdensome business regulation. In November, she concluded:
In May, she added balanced trade to her recipe for economic recovery. After meeting with Donald Trump, she said:If the President was serious about getting the economy moving again, he'd stop supporting the Fed's dangerous experiments with our currency and focus instead on what actually works: reducing government spending and boosting business investment through good old fashioned supply side reforms (cutting taxes and reducing overly burdensome regulations). Simply running the printing presses in order to avoid paying off your debts is no way for a great nation to behave.
The bulk of the U.S. trade deficit (i.e., of our negative net exports) is with China. When Trump was testing the waters for a possible presidential run, he made President Obama's incompetent negotiations with China a cornerstone of his campaign. With Chinese aggregate demand growing rapidly and U.S. aggregate demand stagnant, economists would normally expect the Chinese trade surplus with the United States to be shrinking. But President Obama has let the Chinese government reduce U.S. net exports to China month after month, as shown by the new 12-month lows reached in recent months in the graph below:"What do we have in common? Our love for this country, a desire to see our economy put back on the right track," Palin told reporters. "To have a balanced trade arrangement with other countries across this world so Americans can have our jobs, our industries, our manufacturing again. And exploiting responsibly our natural resources. We can do that again if we make good decisions."
[link above]
Obama negotiates with China from a position of weakness. He goes into each meeting ruling out the possibility of the U.S. putting tariffs upon Chinese products, even though the Chinese government has already placed high tariff and other barriers upon U.S. products. The U.S. need not negotiate from a position of weakness. Under world trade rules, it is entitled to impose trade balancing tariffs whenever it is running chronic trade deficits. Our proposal for scaled tariffs would let the United States (and any other country harmed by large chronic trade deficits) achieve higher net exports with or without the cooperation of its trading partners.
The mainstream media pretend that Palin is stupid. But she is actually blessed with a very rare commodity these days - economic common sense. She is the only potential presidential candidate currently advocating the three basic principles that would restore economic stability and long-term growth to the American economy: (1) balanced monetary growth, (2) balanced budgets, and (3) balanced trade.
China's getting weaker, the dollar's getting stronger, gas prices are down and the Dow is at 12k. Maybe this refutation thing isn't your strength.DOW 11,918.01 -191.66
Stocks tumble on global growth concerns
Jobless claims rose more than expected last week. China and Europe report weakness in manufacturing activity. Global markets decline. Gold and oil prices drop as the dollar strengthens.
http://money.msn.com/market-news/post.aspx?post=6918f1c9-309d-4aec-97b0-06bb538d0def&_nwpt=1
China's getting weaker, the dollar's getting stronger, gas prices are down and the Dow is at 12k. Maybe this refutation thing isn't your strength.
"rise above" you?
An earthworm could rise above you, you piece of racist shit.
US, other nations releasing oil from reserves
"The move is significant as it represents a reach by member countries for the remedy of last resort to high prices," said U.S. energy analyst John Kilduff at Again Capital.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43508263/ns/business-going_green
I had a thread on that weeks ago
saying he will do exactly that
question is
DIDNT HE ALSO SAY THAT DRILLING/EXPLORATION/MORE OIL WONT IMPACT OIL PRICES?
He is desperate
Cause his re-election looks shitty