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

[mercury14]

Maybe because it hasn't surged lately. Maybe you can find another old Moody link that says it is.

Who cares about lately? Not you. When the Dow had surged 4400 points "lately" if didn't mean shit to you, did it?

 

[mercury14]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304231204576405743591081246.html

What does a single ex-analyst being accused of insider trading have to do with the stimulus? Look how desperate you are.

 

[mercury14]

It wasn't peer reviewed, it doesn't have a PhD and it's not a .pdf.

Fucking bogus!

xoxoxoxo
Bastiat

__________________
"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Frederic Bastiat

Again, you're making an off-topic comment that has NOTHING to do with the Moody's assessment of the stimulus. You're horribly desperate and flailing in the dark here. There's this parade of logic flaws in your posts that makes virtually everything you say utterly dismissible.

(on a side note, this article counters the tired right-wing point that inflation is an issue. "Inflation not a concern.")

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

What does a single ex-analyst being accused of insider trading have to do with the stimulus? Look how desperate you are.

Just delving into the nature of your "Independent" Keynesian Analyst...

Seems he biased to stimulus, unlike an Austrian...



Therefore, in order for him to justify a natural opinion, he HAD to find the stimulus worked.

But, it didn't.

Meanwhile, the sources we quote, the ones you impeach and impugn on a daily basis have projected this malaise all along. Every new month, the Keynesians see the beginning of a recovery. Eventually, they might accidently be right, in the mean time, someone is being consistently correct and a naturally curious man might want to find out, which is how I came to reject New-AGe Liberalism instead of doubling down on dogma...

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The idea that the federal government needed to knock oil prices down further or faster for economic purposes while oil was already in what would be considered a dramatic sell-off is simply not credible.

More likely is that the Obama Administration is sinking into desperation as its economic policies lengthen and deepen the economic downturn -- just as similar (and one would have therefore thought discredited) policies in the 1930s were substantially responsible for turning a serious recession into the Great Depression.

When Obama's pet Fed Chairman Ben "The" Bernanke, the great printer of money, says he's surprised by the persistent weakness of our barely-recovery, you know those in charge of President Obama's re-election can see their paychecks ending much sooner than they had anticipated when buying their Dupont Circle condos.

The public is realizing that government is, as Reagan said, the problem… government spending specifically so. Republicans now control the House of Representatives, and they realized it even before the public did. Due to both of those political realities, more damaging Keynesian "stimulus" spending is, mercifully, off the table as a policy choice for Obama.

This leaves Obama with very few arrows in his quiver, none of them sharp, and no accurate archer to fire them. His move to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is like shooting a dull arrow at a target and hitting the rock next to the target. Not only did you miss, but you've forever ruined the arrow… which wasn't much of a weapon to begin with.

The release is not enough to create any permanent impact on oil prices. It is enough to cost taxpayers barrels of money in the operational costs of releasing (and then replacing) the oil. And it sticks taxpayers with the unnecessary risk of millions more in loss if oil prices go up before the oil is replaced.

But it's even worse than all this.

The Saudis had taken some political risk with their erstwhile friends (not that there really are any friends in that part of the world) by agreeing to raise production more than a million barrels per day to offset any shortfalls due to the Libyan turmoil. By releasing oil from emergency supplies, the U.S. risks having the Saudis cut back to their prior production levels… and stay there, even after the two-month duration of Obama's gambit, burdening us with higher oil prices in mid-summer than we otherwise would have. Obama also leaves the world's largest oil producer thinking that we stabbed them in the back just as they did something helpful to us (even if it was also helpful to them).

July unleaded gasoline futures (golf clap if you know why they're called RBOB futures) fell a similar percentage to oil, dropping more than 13 cents to their lowest closing price in three months. This will be President Obama's first line of rhetorical defense for his premature exudation: "See, I lowered your gas prices." Unfortunately, he may well get away with that among some sections of the population, especially with those who incorrectly give the president credit for the 40-cent drop in gasoline since early May. In that sense, perhaps the timing of Obama's move is clever in a most cynical way -- the only way in which this Administration is ever clever: cause a small drop in gas prices but take credit for a big drop.

As far as convincing the rest of us, here's a prediction for you: Obama will go the populist pandering route by describing his feckless desperation as an effort to bash evil speculators. There are several problems with this, however. First, many of what are called "speculators" are simply investment funds that hold retirement account and pension money and are simply looking for investment diversification. Second, professional speculators who were long will take their one-day beating and get right back into the market, perhaps considering the same calculus mentioned above about Saudi Arabia and thinking that an upward path for oil prices, at least in two months, is an even better bet now than it was before. Third, oil was already down about 20% in less than two months, implying that there are also speculators on the short side; speculators are on both sides of every active market. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, it's not the government's job to decide which market participants to punish (or aid) -- and to use or risk taxpayer money to mete out such punishment or windfall profits.

In the meantime, it's not just traders and investors but also entrepreneurs who smell Obama's fear. And when this level of sheer economic panic is shown by the government, it further depresses the willingness of America's job creators to take risk to start or expand businesses. After all, the most rational reaction to today's rash policy move is that the administration thinks that the economic situation must be even worse than we had thought… and that the government may do something else as stupid as this in response. Really, is there any way in which a business owner or manager could interpret yesterday's action as positive for more than a few hours or days of lower fuel prices?

The minuscule potential economic benefit from a temporary addition of supply to the oil market will be more than offset by the further retrenching of American business into a defensive cocoon as it aims to wait out the reign of the most economically incompetent president since FDR.

Of all the misguided policies implemented during the Obama Administration, this release of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserves is the most puzzling and the most representative of its utter cluelessness about markets, business, and economics. It sends multiple wrong messages. The little that it might accomplish will be temporary. And the longer-term response by markets and businessmen will be more than an equal and opposite reaction.

Ross Kaminsky
The American Spectator

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

³

That's what they do when the corner tightens. Lash out and ridicule instead of countering.

He used ad hominem to discredit our sources and then acted like his were unbiased so therefore he had no need to actually enjoin in conversation and defend his points because he had the only unassailable source.

He has not once addressed the logic of what I say, for that would go beyond the scope of his source and his thought seems to be pretty unformed economically other than his braggadocio about his ability to handicap stocks as if her were picking the daily trifecta...

Well, my 401K is doing fine too, yet he's the economic guru in his mind...

 

[unregistered]

 

[busybody..]

Im sad

POON CURRY

didnt even respond to me

Im gonna cry

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

[voice=little Ralphie Wiggam] Today I'm betting on red stocks!

Spin the wheel! WEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee [/voice]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Did the IEA Just Deliver a QE3 Quick Fix?

The decision to release two million barrels per day of emergency oil reserves -- with the U.S. covering half from its strategic petroleum reserve -- is surely aimed at the sputtering economies of the U.S. and Europe following an onslaught of bad economic statistics and forecasts. This includes a gloomy Fed forecast that Ben Bernanke unveiled less than 24 hours before the energy news hit the tape.

I wonder if all this was coordinated.

The Bernanke Fed significantly downgraded its economic projections, blaming this forecast on rising energy (and food) prices as well as Japanese-disaster-related supply shocks. Of course, the Fed head takes no blame for his cheap-dollar QE2 pump-priming, which was an important source of the prior jump in energy and commodity prices. That commodity-price shock inflicted a tax on the whole economy, and it looks to be responsible for the 2 percent first-half growth rate and the near 4.5 percent inflation rate.

Bernanke acknowledged the inflation problem, but he didn’t take ownership of that either. Reading between the lines, however, the Fed’s inflation worries undoubtedly kept it from applying more faux stimulus to the sagging economy with a third round of quantitative easing.

Somehow the new Fed forecast suggests that the second-half economy will grow at 3.5 percent while it miraculously presses inflation down to 1.4 percent. But the plausibility of this forecast is low. It’s almost Alice in Wonderland-like.

So, low and behold, the IEA and the U.S. Department of Energy come to the rescue.

Acting on the surprising news of a 60 million barrel-per-day crude-oil release from strategic reserves scheduled for July, traders slammed down prices by $5 to $6 for both West Texas crude and European Brent crude. That’s about a 20 percent drop from the April highs, which followed the breakout of civil war in Libya in March. In fact, both the IEA and the U.S. DOE cited Libyan oil disruption as a reason for injecting reserves.

Of course, most folks thought Saudi Arabia would be adding a million barrels a day to cover the Libyan shortfall. The evidence strongly suggests they have. So the curious timing of the oil-reserve release -- coming in late June rather than last March or April -- strongly suggests that governments are manipulating the oil price with a temporary supply add to boost the economy.

In theory, these reserves are supposed to be held for true national emergencies. But the real U.S. national emergency seems to be a political one -- that is, President Obama’s increasingly perilous reelection bid amidst high unemployment and the second-worst post-recession economic recovery since 1950.

Larry Kudlow
Townhall.com

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

In the true spirit of Doom and Gloom

John Ransom
Global Bankruptcy Months Away?

A former Reagan administration official who worked on trade policy is warning that unless Congress can agree to a significant reduction in spending that the world may run out of money in 6-18 months. When that happens the economy could enter “a death spiral.”

“Based upon world liquidity, the amount of money available to fund sovereign debt in 2011 is between $6-9 trillion,” Marc Nuttle told Townhall Finance. Nuttle runs the site DebtWall.org. “The world’s government projections for deficit financing in 2011 is $8-10 trillion. We are bumping into the ceiling of the world’s ability to fund ongoing sovereign deficits and debt on an annual basis.”

The $2-6 trillion shortfall will have to come from other parts of the economy like small business loans, the stock market, commercial bonds and consumer spending.

Unless something is done to reign in spending, Nuttle, an attorney from Oklahoma who served on Reagan’s Industrial Policy Advisory Committee, predicts that the financing of government debt will eat into the world’s ability to invest in public and private projects.

Money that would normally be available to capital markets would have to be switched just to finance interest rate increases.

“Interest rates may well hit double digits,” he said, “forcing businesses to operate without adequate float for inventory, materials, facilities and production. Businesses will fail, jobs will be lost, salaries and wages will be reduced.”

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2011/06/24/global_bankruptcy_months_away

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

"I don't think people can stay stupid forever," says Richard Plaster, president of Las Vegas homebuilding company Signature Homes, and a leading advocate for people to walk away from their homes. He thinks more people will walk away as home prices continue to fall. "People who keep paying on their mortgage are going to lose."

And plenty will lose if A. Gary Shilling is right. He points out that normally the housing inventory is 2.5 million units. Currently it's 4 million, but that's not all, writes Shilling,

As foreclosures keep mounting, a "shadow" inventory of as many as 500,000 additional homes will become visible as many more Americans choose to sell rather than endure further price declines.
Because of this overhang, Shilling sees prices dropping another 20 percent from here, leaving prices nationally 45 percent below their April 2006 peak.

The latest data aren't promising. US home sales declined in May to their lowest level in six months, with the median pricing falling to 4.6 percent below its level a year ago.

But why do some people still keep paying into this losing proposition? Economically and emotionally it just doesn't make sense. Are these people saying, "a contract is a contract; I'll pay no matter what. I'm resigned to committing financial hara-kiri on my mortgage sword?"

After all, a mortgage is like the marriage contract: "To honor, love, and cherish till death do us part. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."

Plenty of spouses stay in marriages gone bad. There is no honoring or love, just sickness and hate. But some couples stay together for the kids or because their religious beliefs forbid divorce or because of family pressure.

And in the extreme of one spouse battering the other, why on earth does the battered spouse stay — wearing sunglasses to hide black eyes and making up phony excuses for broken limbs and bruises? Why does anyone stay in that sort of relationship? It's just plain irrational.

"Because you took those wedding vows to honor, love …."

Lenore Walker is the pioneer in the field of battered-spouse syndrome, with her book The Battered Woman. She believes that experiencing the repeated cycles of violence can result in a spouse developing "learned helplessness," a psychological state identified by psychologist Martin Seligman. The abused believe they lack control over their situation and are convinced escape is impossible. Their motivation to escape diminishes as they become increasingly passive.

http://mises.org/daily/5409/BatteredHomeowner-Syndrome

Fascinating read!

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Pay to Play: The Ehtics of Crony Capitalism

W.H. releases names at donor meeting

Former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, former technology executive Bernard Schwartz and banking executive James Staley were among 30 well-connected figures in the business and finance world who met with President Barack Obama at the White House in March for an unusual economic discussion organized by the Democratic National Committee.

The White House released the names on Friday under a policy Obama instituted in 2009 to disclose nearly all White House guests approximately three months after they visit.

The March 7 meeting in the Blue Room of the residence has drawn attention and criticism because most of the attendees were donors or fundraisers and the session was arranged by the DNC. Good-government advocates said hosting the event at the White House was ill-advised.

“There’s a pretty clear line — or there should be a clear line,” Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center, which presses for tighter controls on campaign finance, recently told POLITICO. “I don’t have a problem with the president inviting Wall Street people to the White House to discuss policy, but why does it need to be DNC-sponsored? I think that’s what raises the eyebrows. Even if it’s not a fundraiser, it’s a cultivation.”

In addition to the Wall Street financiers and business executives, the session was attended by Andy Tobias, the DNC treasurer; Patrick Gaspard, the former White House political director and current DNC executive director; and Brad Thompson, a DNC fundraiser who works with high-dollar donors and bundlers in New York.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57745.html#ixzz1QFEMnPEl
__________________
When Government gets so powerful that its purchase price is cost effective, even imperative, to business, then business will purchase government indulgences.
A_J, the Stupid

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Merc is that little bug, with a high pitch squeal and will never shuts up

I feel sorry for its wife

Just delving into the nature of your "Independent" Keynesian Analyst...

Seems he biased to stimulus, unlike an Austrian...



Therefore, in order for him to justify a natural opinion, he HAD to find the stimulus worked.

But, it didn't.

Meanwhile, the sources we quote, the ones you impeach and impugn on a daily basis have projected this malaise all along. Every new month, the Keynesians see the beginning of a recovery. Eventually, they might accidently be right, in the mean time, someone is being consistently correct and a naturally curious man might want to find out, which is how I came to reject New-AGe Liberalism instead of doubling down on dogma...

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Who cares about lately? Not you. When the Dow had surged 4400 points "lately" if didn't mean shit to you, did it?

maybe someone needs to sit you down, the economy is slowing down to a crawl. and seeing how obama screws everything up, I'm sure obama will fix the economy so that the economy comes to a hault

here is a little clue - too many government workers - too many "entitlements" and uncle obama is broke

 

[Ham Murabi]

Who cares about lately? Not you. When the Dow had surged 4400 points "lately" if didn't mean shit to you, did it?

So businesses traded on the Dow have figured out how to survive an Obama presidency. I agree that's pretty impressive, but it doesn't do shit for Main Street.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

So businesses traded on the Dow have figured out how to survive an Obama presidency. I agree that's pretty impressive, but it doesn't do shit for Main Street.

A good indicator is the xmass consumer season. Course, way too early to tell. 2010 people were tired of recession and spent money on gifts, will they this year?

 

[koalabear]

Who cares about lately? Not you. When the Dow had surged 4400 points "lately" if didn't mean shit to you, did it?

It hasn't surged 4400 points lately. Look for newer Moody facts.

 

[unregistered]

 

[eyer]

But why do some people still keep paying into this losing proposition? Economically and emotionally it just doesn't make sense. Are these people saying, "a contract is a contract; I'll pay no matter what. I'm resigned to committing financial hara-kiri on my mortgage sword?"

After all, a mortgage is like the marriage contract: "To honor, love, and cherish till death do us part. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."

Plenty of spouses stay in marriages gone bad. There is no honoring or love, just sickness and hate. But some couples stay together for the kids or because their religious beliefs forbid divorce or because of family pressure.

And in the extreme of one spouse battering the other, why on earth does the battered spouse stay — wearing sunglasses to hide black eyes and making up phony excuses for broken limbs and bruises? Why does anyone stay in that sort of relationship? It's just plain irrational.

"Because you took those wedding vows to honor, love …."

Lenore Walker is the pioneer in the field of battered-spouse syndrome, with her book The Battered Woman. She believes that experiencing the repeated cycles of violence can result in a spouse developing "learned helplessness," a psychological state identified by psychologist Martin Seligman. The abused believe they lack control over their situation and are convinced escape is impossible. Their motivation to escape diminishes as they become increasingly passive.

Why do some citizens still keep paying into this losing proposition of socialist government?

Never mind...

...that last paragraph pretty much explains it.

 

[mercury14]

Just delving into the nature of your "Independent" Keynesian Analyst...

Seems he biased to stimulus, unlike an Austrian...



Therefore, in order for him to justify a natural opinion, he HAD to find the stimulus worked.

But, it didn't.

Meanwhile, the sources we quote, the ones you impeach and impugn on a daily basis have projected this malaise all along. Every new month, the Keynesians see the beginning of a recovery. Eventually, they might accidently be right, in the mean time, someone is being consistently correct and a naturally curious man might want to find out, which is how I came to reject New-AGe Liberalism instead of doubling down on dogma...

The sources you quote are those of rabid ideologues and are wholly dismiss-able (if not laughable).

Your attempts to discredit Moody's have failed. You can find no flaws in their methods and you have no evidence that their firm is biased. Just because you say something doesn't mean it's true.

And you refuse to even address virtually identical conclusions by Macroeconomic Advisors and IHS/Global Insight.

 

[mercury14]

So businesses traded on the Dow have figured out how to survive an Obama presidency. I agree that's pretty impressive, but it doesn't do shit for Main Street.

Did anyone on Main Street have a 401(k) plan when the Dow surged 4,400 points?


(psst! start a 401k!)

 

[mercury14]

That's what they do when the corner tightens. Lash out and ridicule instead of countering.

He used ad hominem to discredit our sources and then acted like his were unbiased so therefore he had no need to actually enjoin in conversation and defend his points because he had the only unassailable source.

He has not once addressed the logic of what I say, for that would go beyond the scope of his source and his thought seems to be pretty unformed economically other than his braggadocio about his ability to handicap stocks as if her were picking the daily trifecta...

Well, my 401K is doing fine too, yet he's the economic guru in his mind...

When are you going to find just one single significant independent economic source to back something you say? Just.... one thing? Are you really so lost that you honestly believe that the NRO is a good source of objective analysis?

It appears that you are. You get your news from extremist, partisan sources and you're unwilling to budge. It's here that we have nothing more to discuss I'm afraid. If you ever want to join in with rational points we'd be glad to sit down and talk. Until then enjoy your quest for objectivity in the American Thinker's descending colon.