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

[RightField]

This doesn't have to do with the debt per se, though it is an interesting opinion piece that summarizes where we are quite nicely. It's from "Human Events" and was published today.

A Tale of Two Signs: "Hiring Now!" or "Going Out of Business"?
by Wynton C. Hall (more by this author)
Posted 07/29/2011 ET

The 2012 equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s famous “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” will be: “In your hometown, which do you see more of: ‘Hiring Now!’ signs or ‘Going Out of Business’ signs?”

Those trapped in the grip of the disastrous Obama economy already know the answer, and it terrifies David Axelord, David Plouffe, and President Barack Obama. The presidential candidate who frames the debate this way will win.

Why?

Because the sad and tragic economic facts are now undeniable, and they have absolutely nothing to do with ideology or party affiliation:

• Every fifth man you pass on the sidewalk does not work.
  
• Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk is now on food stamps.
  
• The average time an unemployed America remains out of work is now a jaw-dropping nine months (36 weeks). The pre-Obama average: just three months (13 weeks).
  
• The price for a gallon of gas has risen 104% from the time of Mr. Obama’s inauguration to today.
  
• Unemployment has risen from 7.8% to 9.2% since Mr. Obama’s inauguration.
  
• Incredibly, black Americans—who voted some 98% for Mr. Obama’s election—are now suffering their lowest levels of economic prosperity since the civil rights era of the 1960s; the black middle class is vanishing and setting back black economic gains at least a generation if not more.
  
• Recent college graduates are now experiencing record unemployment—all but ensuring that their freshly minted skills will rust and grow stale as they struggle to find work. In 2006 and 2007, 90% of all college graduates found a job. In 2010, just 56% of college graduates were able to find a job.
  
• Mr. Obama has added more to the national debt than all U.S. presidents from George Washington to Ronald Reagan—combined.

These facts will not change before Election Day. Sadly, they are set in cement for the time being, as small business owners—the engines of job hiring—wisely refuse to expand hiring with so much fear and uncertainty in the air.

And all this doesn’t even take into account the economic outlook once the 2,000+ pages of Obamacare take full effect. Moreover, each week, businesses of all sizes learn of new and more onerous regulations being concocted by Mr. Obama’s administration.

Mr. Obama’s common rejoinder that the economic catastrophe before us is the result of his predecessor will not work. Mr. Obama’s party, of which he is the head, had control of 100% of the U.S. government for his first two years in office. Presently, Mr. Obama controls 66% of the government. As Bill Clinton used to say, “That dog simply won’t hunt.”

The presidential contender who will prevail must present the economic fork in the road before the American people thusly: In the last three decades, our great nation has undergone two economic experiments to solve similar economic difficulties.

The first of these experiments was performed by President Ronald Reagan. He let Americans keep more of the money they earned and helped small, medium, and large businesses hire more people by cutting red tape. The result: the greatest peacetime economic expansion in American history and a gain of 18 million new jobs.

The second economic experiment is the one we’re presently trapped in, performed by President Barack Obama. He has spent more of your money than all U.S. presidents—combined, seized 17% of the U.S. economy with the introduction of Obamacare, and is in the process of raising taxes even higher. The result: 16.2% of your neighbors can’t find enough work to make ends meet, food and gas prices are skyrocketing, and the country is broke and on the verge of total economic collapse.

In short, Mr. Reagan’s economic experiment created “Hiring Now!” signs. Mr. Obama’s economic experiment has created “Going Out of Business” signs.

The candidate who can clearly and plainly communicate this tale of two signs will be America’s next president.

I feel really bad for so many people for whom Obama's policies have caused real hardship. I feel bad for all the college kids who ironically were a big voting block for Obama and the Democrats and who naively bought the whole "hope and change" concept, volunteered a tremendous number of hours to help Obama get elected, and Obama's policies have destroyed the job market for them and significantly slowed their trip from adolescence into the adult world. Only 56% of college graduates are getting jobs...that's horrible. These people are energetic, smart, full of promise and ready to start their adult lives as independent contributing members of society....and these Obama/Democrat policies are making it so that many of them have to continue to live at home under their parents authority. What a waste for them and for our society as a whole.

The economic policies that Obama et al were peddling during the election were clearly inimical to growth and a dynamic economy and many of us on these pages (and some in the press) wrote about them and let people know about the disaster that was brewing, but too many young people and independents looked beyond that and fell for the "hope and change" mantra. Personally, I thought the foam columns at the Colorado rally was the high point in faux imagery during the election..."The gods have spoken"...lol...I think our young people will know better next time.

I've always been a big advocate for equal opportunity. I think it's a very important element of our Constitution and it's an approach that we need in order to have a healthy and strong society. Obama has destroyed the dynamicism in our economy and made jobs far rarer and the minority population is suffering the most. The unemployment rate amongst young minority men and women is astronomical and seems to be getting worse which is a tradegy that will effect us for decades after Obama is long gone (people not getting the entry level jobs they need to start building wealth and nuclear families) which has a negative impact on long term economic earning power for many of them.

These last 3 years have been a disaster for almost everyone except the UAW and a few of Obama's close friends who have profited handsomely. (Did you get your Obamawaiver yet?) 2012 can't get here fast enough.

Another irony is that the whole economic approach of the current administration to add to the deficit to pay for UAW bailouts, Obamacare, and gimmicy tax games (cash for clunkers) and a myriad of other silly programs and policies have been horrible for the economy and they're arguing in the debt discussions that we can't reduce spending because all these really stupid ideas and programs need to continue and and in fact, we need to add more. (I know cash for clunkers is over...but it refers to the many silly programs like it). We should call the Democrats program: "Double down on disaster".

 

[eyer]

Cleaned that post right up.
WorldNetDaily? Really? Next you'll be C&P crap from infowars.. Oh, wait..

As usual, you lie...

...the piece isn't edited a bit.

You're nothing but a two-bit troll.

 

[koalabear]

As usual, you lie...

...the piece isn't edited a bit.

You're nothing but a two-bit troll.

He gets his posts from Soros or one of his blogs.

 

[koalabear]

Some good news, the market is stable today.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Some good news, the market is stable today.

I'm thinking the markets will be stable tomorrow

 

[unregistered]

 

[richard_daily]

Never fear Twitter is alive and kicking.

Too bad that same can't be said about your sex life.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Too bad that same can't be said about your sex life.

I'm sure you keep yourself very sexually satisfied, right? no one does it better than you and your hands

 

[koalabear]

Too bad that same can't be said about your sex life.

Says the single Chihuahua trolling the boards.

 

[mercury14]

And that it was only a temporary effect

Of course it was only a temporary effect. Why are you attacking points I never made?

There is no doubt about that now, in a second, I will supply some backup evidence that all we did was delay and exacerbate, as we were stating it would.

What do you mean "backup evidence"? Because the only objective evidence you've supplied thus far was a report saying that the stimulus saved 3-4 million jobs. So yeah, feel free to show some evidence that the stimulus just made the economy worse. I predict you'll be empty handed once again, left only with opinion pieces, anecdotes, and quasi-related pieces.

All you see is what you want to see and what you want to se is how the Democrats swept into office and "saved" the day. jobs, their reputation AND YOURS!

Damn I get a good laugh our of your false logic. If someone points to the private sector's own analysis of something, they're blind liberals. I'm looking at the private sector's own macro analysis of this policy. It's objective, non-partisan, and it has no vested interest in seeing Obama succeed or fail.

Please explain how this means I'm only looking to sources that tell me what I want to hear. I'll wait.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I've told you already what is wrong with your report and contention.

One: no control no one knows what would have happened.

Two: The algebra and modeling of which make false assumptions (and Freidman saying that is okay).

Three: A big bubble bursting cannot be cured by little bubbles of accelerated economic activity, it puts off the day of reckoning and makes it ever worse as they in turn begin to burst leaving you with only the new debt.

Here you want to claim the three million jobs were saved an a Depression was avoided while I, and my supporting material said all those benefits were only temporary making the Depression deeper and longer lasting, in short the stimulus will go down in the annals of economic history as the equivalent of the Smoot-Hawley...

And now a little Viennese Waltz...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

While Austrians and Keynesians don't agree on a lot of things, there is one thing on which they both seem to agree: the US economy is sinking into the morass of depression. At that point, however, the agreement ends, as the two schools have very different explanations as to why this is happening.

The Keynesians, through Paul Krugman and his New York Times megaphone, have been claiming that the original Barack Obama "stimulus" was too little, and the current emphasis on budget cutting at all levels of government is exactly the wrong strategy. Austrians, not surprisingly, believe that this explanation is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense.

In a recent column, Krugman lays out his thesis, and it is useful, for it truly exposes the Keynesian mind at work, and a Keynesian mind that allows for no other explanations as to what is happening. The problem is — and always will be — a lack of "aggregate demand," and the only solution is for governments to spend as though they have hit the jackpot.

...

So we are stuck in what Krugman and Keynesians call a "liquidity trap," which Krugman seems to believe ends all other discussion. The notion is that the law of opportunity cost is suspended during a liquidity trap because interest rates are low, resources are "idle," and government can borrow at nearly 0 percent and spend without consuming any resources. As Krugman said in his book The Return of Depression Economics, government spending in this situation can create a "free lunch." (Yes, he actually used that term.)

While most mainstream economists are not willing to engage the Keynesians on the idea of the "liquidity trap," Murray Rothbard did not back away. In his book, America's Great Depression, he takes on the whole notion of the "liquidity trap" head on, writing,

The ultimate weapon in the Keynesian arsenal of explanations of depressions is the "liquidity trap." This is not precisely a critique of the Mises theory, but it is the last line of Keynesian defense of their own inflationary "cures" for depression. Keynesians claim that "liquidity preference" (demand for money) may be so persistently high that the rate of interest could not fall low enough to stimulate investment sufficiently to raise the economy out of the depression.

Rothbard points out a serious problem with that analysis, noting that Keynes never got the theory of interest correct, claiming interest is based on "'liquidity preference' instead of time preference," which then leads to more incorrect conclusions about the state of the economy. Other Austrians have criticized the theory, as well, including William Hutt and Henry Hazlitt.

Both Hutt and Hazlitt took on the whole idea of "idle resources," which is behind the notion that opportunity cost can be suspended during a depression. The idea of idle resources is based on a notion that factors of production are unemployed because of a lack of spending, and that a burst of government borrowing (at nearly zero, which means almost no opportunity cost) will spread to these unemployed assets and put them back to work.

...

Thus, even though we have seen an explosion of government spending the past few years, according to Krugman, we really are on an "austerity" plan. Why? Because if the government actually had increased spending on a massive scale, then we would be out of this depression. In other words, because there is only one way out of this morass, and because we are not out of that morass, there hasn't been enough government spending.

What about the Robert Higgs thesis of "regime uncertainty"? Krugman dismisses that one, too, derisively calling it the "confidence fairy." Businesses, he argues, are hoarding cash because they see a lack of consumer demand. If governments spend and spend and spend, then businesses will invest — period.

...

In reading Krugman and the Keynesians, I am always struck by their analysis that assets, economically speaking, really are homogeneous. It doesn't matter where new spending is directed, just as long as there is spending. Spend, and everything else falls into place.

Second, the Krugman/Keynesian viewpoint is based on an extremely mechanistic interpretation of human action. People within a market setting do not purchase goods they believe will meet their individual needs; no, they spend, as though the spending itself is the ultimate end of an economy.

This is a view that separates production and consumption, making them independent of one another, with no true, purposeful human action to be found anywhere. There is no meaningful connection between desires of consumers and the valuation of factors of production or the direction that factors go in the various lines of production. It is all something that can simply be described as Y = C + I + G with no need to think further than that tautology.

As I said at the beginning, both Austrians and Keynesians believe we are headed for a steeper economic downturn, perhaps into the abyss of a major depression. However, Krugman and the Keynesians believe that the only salvation is massive spending and intervention by government. Austrians believe that it is the massive spending and intervention by government that make things worse. And while Krugman & Co. never will admit otherwise, it is ultimately the Austrian paradigm that explains these matters, and explains them with accuracy.

http://mises.org/daily/5489/The-Deepening-Depression

 

[busybody..]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M-5t3LsRYAA/TjW1uyPF4pI/AAAAAAAAmhw/ucP9IH5L-sI/s1600/110731-1981-2012-debt.gif

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

As usual, you lie...

...the piece isn't edited a bit.

You're nothing but a two-bit troll.

I'll clarify so that your room temperature IQ can understand..

I edited your post to remove the fear-mongering horse shit from what appears to be a Walden University online diploma-mill PhD. Which was pretty much the entire Opinion piece.

I didn't claim that you edited anything. It's curious that you would jump to such a conclusion though, guilty conscience?

 

[koalabear]

I'll clarify so that your room temperature IQ can understand..

I edited your post to remove the fear-mongering horse shit from what appears to be a Walden University online diploma-mill PhD. Which was pretty much the entire Opinion piece.

I didn't claim that you edited anything. It's curious that you would jump to such a conclusion though, guilty conscience?

Seek counseling, you get more obsessed and angry each day with the ugliness you see in the mirror.

 

[koalabear]

Stocks fade despite debt deal

Updated: 08/01/2011 10:30 ET
DOW 12,104.30 -38.94

 

[busybody..]

Ever since NIGGER CARE

Was THRUST upon us

The ECONOMY has IMPLODED


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Manufacturing activity barely grew in July, falling to the weakest level since just after the recession ended.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said Monday that its index of manufacturing activity fell to 50.9 percent in July from 55.3 percent in June.

It was the 23rd straight month of growth. But the reading was the lowest reading since July 2009 -- one month after the recession officially ended. Any level above 50 indicates growth.

New orders shrank for the first time since the recession ended. Companies slashed their inventories after building them up in June. Output, employment, and prices paid my manufacturers all grew more slowly in July.

The disappointing report on manufacturing is the first major report on how economy performed in July. It suggests the dismal economic growth in the first half of the year could extend into the July-September quarter.

"The ISM manufacturing report for July is a shocker and strongly suggests that the disappointing performance of the economy in the first half of the year was not just temporary," said Paul Dales, a senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics.

 

[koalabear]

Updated: 08/01/2011 11:37 ET
DOW 12,034.86 -108.38

 

[NeverEndingMe]

I'll clarify so that your room temperature IQ can understand..

I edited your post to remove the fear-mongering horse shit from what appears to be a Walden University online diploma-mill PhD. Which was pretty much the entire Opinion piece.

I didn't claim that you edited anything. It's curious that you would jump to such a conclusion though, guilty conscience?

clearly you can measure your IQ with one finger. the question is, how did you get to be so stupid?

 

[busybody..]

clearly you can measure your IQ with one finger. the question is, how did you get to be so stupid?

TeeHee

 

[koalabear]

Rally fails on weak manufacturing

Updated: 08/01/2011 12:13 ET
DOW 12,017.53 -125.71

http://money.msn.com/market-news/post.aspx?post=035cb79f-fc00-4b80-b859-2f68520a73a6

 

[koalabear]

U.S. Factory Activity Falls to Lowest Level in 2 Years

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/...lls-to-lowest-level-in-2-years/#ixzz1TnMUowkb

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

What, they don't like the idea that Boner signed onto a deal that creates a congressional commission that nullifies the Republican majority?

Progressive ain't they.