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

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Government cant innovate, and neither can big corporations. Main Street innovates cuz its costs to change are miniscule and its not burdened with layers of bureaucrats.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

They cannot overcome the regulation on Main Street which has now become at once a competition protection racket for big business and the protection money racket for the politician.

If Democrats wanted to have an honest discussion about race, they would talk about how this onerous regulatory environment falls disproportionately upon the minority start-up that has neither the compliance resources or experience with bureaucracy to apply to their innovations, ideas, and sweat equity...

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Only one fact matters...

This thread began with gloat and ended up with only goat...

You have a curious sense of what constitutes fact. After more than two years we still haven't experienced any of the dire warnings mentioned in that first post. Yet here you are, still banging that drum and hoping for failure.

Where you see financial armageddon I see the opportunity to grow my investments. Playing on irrational fear stoked by doom and gloom sayers such as yourself, I end up buying stock at discounted rates, just like I did the last time the market dipped. I was buying like a mad person when the market hit 7K. Hell, even with the recent dip I'm still up by 18% over 12 months ago. I expect that as the market recovers from this instability I'll be looking at a nice little ROI for the year. Come January my company stock will jump since they're selling off one division and all of the debt that goes with it to investors.

I've been trying to calm the Henny-Penny people I work with that are shifting their investments around in a panic after listening to the likes of you. Alas, many of them are much too frightened to listen. That money you "lost" is only gone if you sell now. You aren't retiring for another 15-20 years, calm the fuck down. People acting like you are now are only contributing to the problem you're seeing (and making me a nice amount of money because I'm BUYING your stocks for fifty cents on the dollar).

I'm in better financial shape than ever, and all it took was to ignore people like you and invest like any sane person would. Invest only what I can afford to lose without a thought. Buy low, sell high.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Me, me, me, me...,





Two years later, we're still treading water. That's not GLOOMY enough for you?

We're well into a Lost Decade with no Moses to lead us out of the desert.

That's not doom???
__________________

"Why are you here?"

"To get some money."

"What kind of money?"

"Obama money."

"Where's it coming from?

"Obama."

"And where did Obama get it?"

"I don't know... his stash, I don't know. I don't know where he got it from, but he's givin' it t'us to help us. We love him. That's why we voted for him... Obama! Obama!"

 

[busybody..]

Only one fact matters...




This thread began with gloat and ended up with only goat...
__________________
Barry Says: I'm puttin' some lipstick on that pig!
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

BUSYBODYESQUE!

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

U_D says, BAD ECONOMY? BAD ECONOMY?

I still have a job!

Interest rate historian and contrarian guru James Grant put the double-whammy actions of Ben Bernanke and President Obama into perfect perspective Thursday when he noted that the Fed had moved past "central banking into central planning." Bingo! Grant went on to say that the Fed was "trying to impose prosperity through manipulation." Bingo again!

Think about that phrase -- "to impose prosperity through manipulation." It is brilliantly succinct and accurate in describing what is going on in our nation's economy.

And indeed, it is exactly what has been going on for months and it explains why Wall Street has done infinitely better than Main Street since the meltdown of 2008 bottomed out. Reality tells us that all of this central planning and manipulation is unsustainable. It is not based in Main Street reality. This is why we are seeing the incredible ups and downs in the market currently. Call it the "there's no there there" volatility. Because there is no there there. There is no real recovery. There is simply "money on the sidelines" and the Fed chairman's confusion on what causes the fear that firmly planted it there.

To put it simply, Bernanke and the Fed are trying to save the country from Obama's statist agenda by infusing phony dollars into the economy. To the academically inclined yet reality-challenged Bernanke, the blackboard equation says that if you pump enough money into the economy, the stock market will roar and companies will be motivated into investing in jobs, capital equipment, and other accompaniments of expansion because their balance sheets are so fat and happy.

What banker Ben and the rest of the Ivy League elites in our government media complex miss is that outside the bubble that is the Beltway and Manhattan, business owners and entrepreneurs are on strike. They are striking because behind every surface opportunity are dozens of smarmy government bureaucrats and IRS agents ready to snatch away any gains you might make on Main Street. Folks are hunkering down and hoping this "transforming America" stuff will soon pass. That means they are not hiring and they are not buying capital equipment.

This is why the administration pouted last week that corporate America is not doing their fair share. Translation: business owners have the audacity to not to want to risk and invest everything only to have some minions from the EPA or the NLRB or OSHA come and steal it.

Meanwhile, consumers don't have the money to spend because many are out of work, and others fortunate enough to be gainfully employed are out of confidence that they will stay that way. And of course, the value of their homes and any other real estate they may own has been shredded as a result of government meddling into the mortgage and housing markets. So we have scared workers hanging on by a thread and depressed non-workers who have given up hope by the millions. That's our consumer base. So how's that consumer spending working out for you?

It's not, unless you happen to have a sushi bar or coffee shop near some government office building, so that a bloated bureaucracy can come and fill your cash register with salary dollars confiscated from living taxpayers and borrowed dollars from unborn taxpayers. Life is good if you are a government bureaucrat, or if you can sell goods or services to them. Or if you are an anointed crony CEO and you produce the "right kind" of goods and services. And if you are in any of these camps, you probably will vote for more of the same and donate to those who support that agenda.

Simply, this government dynamic threatens to swallow us all whole.

...

And that gorilla grows at 8 percent a year, by the way.

C. Edmund Wright
The American Thinker

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Me, me, me, me...,


Two years later, we're still treading water. That's not GLOOMY enough for you?

We're well into a Lost Decade with no Moses to lead us out of the desert.

That's not doom???
__________________

Not just me. There are record profits being made all over the place. We're not shedding 600K jobs a month. We're not looking at the insane inflation levels you predicted were just around the corner over two years ago, Gas prices still aren't higher than they were then.

You keep banging that drum Cap'n. Keep singing "The road to failure". I'm going to increase my contribution and buy still more stock while it's down a bit.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Ever pay attention to the fact that those closest to the inflation are the ones you're invested in and running those huge profits, yet you like to rail against BIG business and its corruption, unless, of course, as we can all see, it's padding your 401K with inflated dollars...


It's just like we keep telling you, and since Main Street is the farthest away from Bernanke's magic million-man money, it's the segment of the economy hurt the most.

The again, Main Street doesn't exactly fill the campaign coffers like Big Business and Wall Street does, that's why they, like the Public Sector Unions, are too big to fail.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

We aren't creating any jobs and we aren't adding the magic million-man economic math 500,000 jobs a month that the "stimulus" was going to produce, now are we...




But don't listen to me, listen to its architect:

If you ask me, I think what we're experiencing isn't in fact closer to a "growthless" recovery than to a jobless one. Because GDP started to grow more than a year and a half ago, but with the exception of just a couple of quarters, growth has not been noticeably above its trend rate of about 2-1/2 percent a year. I don't rejoice at the news that we added 216,000 jobs in March. About a hundred thousand of that 216,000 is needed every month just to keep up with the growth in the labor force. At this rate of job growth, it would take most of the decade to replace the eight 8-1/2 million jobs that were lost in the recession.
Christina Romer
Chairwoman of Obama's White House Council of Economic Advisors

Go back to the first post and listen to yourself celebrating the return of the Clinton Economy...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Some of the facts regarding unemployment are clear. Net increases in jobs were small, but more importantly labor-force participation declined. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data the number of "discouraged workers," people who have given up looking for work, increased sharply over the last month. A broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers (U-5) was unchanged at 10.9 percent.

...

Further problems with Keynesian excuses arise when we examine the timeline of the recent fiscal stimulus. The subprime recession was ending at the time that Obama signed the Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law (February 17, 2009). Stimulus spending followed months later in 2009. Given a lag in the Keynesian fiscal multipliers of 6 to 18 months, there should have been an increase in the pace of recovery in 2010. In reality, the pace of recovery slowed in 2010.

...

When those who do look at the facts simply go into denial, reasonable discussion is impossible. Worse still, Krugman (and Senator John Kerry) have now said that the media should be less balanced, because those who strongly disagree with their opinions are a cult that should be censored. That is, the American public in general should not be trusted to judge the veracity or logic of views expressed by critics of Obama; Krugman and Kerry have suggested preliminary guidelines for policing thought.

D.W. MacKenzie
Mises.org

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Ever pay attention to the fact that those closest to the inflation are the ones you're invested in and running those huge profits, yet you like to rail against BIG business and its corruption, unless, of course, as we can all see, it's padding your 401K with inflated dollars...


It's just like we keep telling you, and since Main Street is the farthest away from Bernanke's magic million-man money, it's the segment of the economy hurt the most.

The again, Main Street doesn't exactly fill the campaign coffers like Big Business and Wall Street does, that's why they, like the Public Sector Unions, are too big to fail.

You're making assumptions again, as usual. You have zero idea what you're talking about with regards to my investments. But then, why change your usual m.o.? Build straw man... Bash straw man to pieces.. Rinse and repeat.

Remind me, who was it that championed the Citizens United decision that gave big business, unions, and wall street the ability to make virtually unlimited campaign contributions? Conservatives in SCOTUS.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Right...




Wall Street gets the money, Main Street gets the shaft and what does U_D care about?

U_D and Barry...
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Most political rallies begin with some local functionary making a warm introduction, but Bachmann needs no assistance. To the thumping beat of Elvis Presley's "Promised Land," she mounts an empty platform, grabs a microphone, and begins flailing Barack Obama.

"This is the first president in the history of the country who under his watch, we've seen a downgrade of United States credit," she exclaims to an audience of several dozen, in a voice that would do service in a stadium. This historic setback, which two World Wars, a Great Depression, and the 9/11 attacks couldn't achieve, Barack Obama's policies managed to bring about.

The problem, in her view, is out-of-control spending and a soaring federal debt, which during her five years in Congress has risen by 75 percent. "If you're in a hole, you stop digging," cries Bachmann. "President Obama has done just the opposite. He decided to go out and hire a steam shovel, to make that hole bigger!"

Instead of reversing this pattern of fiscal irresponsibility, she says, the recent budget deal perpetuates it. "My position has been: You don't raise the debt ceiling, period," she declares, at a volume that could scatter birds from telephone wires.

Never before has the debt ceiling been raised by so much in one step, and her view is that instead of calming worries about the government's credit-worthiness, it fed them. Besides the S&P downgrade, she says, "we saw a historic, unprecedented fall in the stock market."

Steve Chapman
Reason.com
__________________
Barry 2012 Says: ”’Shovel-ready’ was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” (Laughter)
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

 

[busybody..]

The plan

is to destroy

America

from

within

White House, EPA ignore Small Business Admin’s report that new coal regulations will kill jobs, economy
Published: 3:13 PM 08/11/2011 |Congressmen object to new gun


President Barack Obama is ignoring heated concerns from within his own administration that new Environmental Protection Agency coal industry regulations will be economically devastating.

The EPA is plowing forward with new Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) mandates. The regulations would force coal energy plants to install giant scrubber-like materials inside smokestacks to capture and cleanse carbon particles before their atmospheric release.

The upgrade cost would fall on company employees and coal miners in the form of layoffs, as well as on businesses, which could expect to pay more for energy.

In a lengthy letter to EPA Director Lisa Jackson, Obama’s Small Business Administration advocacy office wrote the EPA “may have significantly understated” the economic “burden this rulemaking would impose on small entities.”

One Southern Indiana Chamber of Commerce vice president, Tonya Fischer, told The Daily Caller the entire state of Indiana would be “devastated” by these regulations. “We are definitely in opposition to [the MACT regulations] because it would be devastating for the state of Indiana.” She adds that local businesses, which are struggling with the tough economy already, would be forced to pick up the extra energy production costs Obama’s EPA is pushing. “We get 95 percent of our electricity from coal.”

“The cost to convert those facilities would be passed on to the small business owners, or basically shut them [the coal energy producing facilities] down altogether,” Fischer said. “It would become cost-prohibitive for them [local businesses] to continue paying their electricity bills.”

If the EPA regulations aren’t halted, Fischer expects unemployment numbers in Indiana to skyrocket. “This has got to affect tens of thousands of jobs in the area because, not only would you lose the employees from the coal facilities, the plants themselves would become more streamlined so you’d lose jobs there and, of course, the small and local businesses.”



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/11/w...lations-will-kill-jobs-economy/#ixzz1Uojs2ef8

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

“I’m just going to be honest with you. There’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now... If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know [laughingly], you might want to think about a trade-in.”
Barack Hussein Obama, the Green Pres__ent (with no id, uh)
April 2011

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

When I was asked earlier about, uh, the issue of coal. Uhhh, y'know, under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket....
We would put a cap-and-trade system in place, eh, that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're gonna be charged a huge sum for all that, uh, greenhouse gas that's being emitted.
Barack Hussein Obama
Editorial board meeting, San Francisco Chronicle
January 2008

"How about just tracking down every single person who said drill baby drill and putting them all in prison. Why don’t we do that?"
Alan Grayson



Arab Spring! Arab Spring! Arab Spr...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Europe's Shorts-Sightedness
By John Berlau on 8.12.11 @ 6:09AM
The American Spectator

This week, troubles in Europe may have played as much of a role in the U.S. stock market carnage and volatility as the downgrade of U.S debt. A just-announced decision by European authorities will likely damage markets there and in the U.S. even further by trying to "fix" them.

The European Securities and Markets Authority, which coordinates financial market policies for the European Union, declared a ban Thursday evening on short-selling certain stocks in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain. For an amount of time not specified in the release, no negative bet will be allowed on the prospects of these stocks.

As with proposals to jail executives at Standard & Poor's, the EU's action in this case is properly called "killing the messenger." And if a temporary American ban on short-selling in the panic of 2008 is any guide, it will like make market volatility worse by suppressing vitally needed market signals. Most economists -- both liberal and conservative -- see shorts as a valuable counterweight to the market euphoria that creates bubbles and to the market panic that results in busts.

...

But in fact, during panic selling, short-sellers are about the only ones carrying an extinguisher. Because they have to buy stock to take their profits, they are the ones who call a bottom in the market as well as a top. As Tamny observed, "while short-sellers bristle as their sales take stock prices down, they're the ultimate savior of those same firms later on in the game." In a panic, without bears, there are only neutered bulls stampeding for the exits.

A consensus is emerging that the U.S. short-selling ban of 2008 actually made the stock market fall further than it otherwise would have. As the New York Times noted Thursday in reporting on the European ban, "the ban on short-selling in 2008 has been widely criticized and blamed for driving investors out of the market altogether, further hurting stock prices."

Going back further, short-selling bans worsened the Great Depression in the early 1930s. As free-market economist Benjamin Anderson wrote in his classic Economics and the Public Welfare, the series of bans in 1931 and 1932 resulted in share price declines that "were more extreme," followed by "rallies [that] were far feebler than would otherwise have been the case." Since today markets are more interconnected than ever and many American investors have European stock -- indeed many European firms trade on our stock exchanges -- the fact that a shorting ban may make prices eventually fall further would hurt American portfolios as well.

Keynesians like to shoot the messenger...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Keynesians like to shoot the messenger...

A trick they learned from "NotRepublicans", no doubt.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs.

Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit systems.

Congressional approval would be needed for either step, and both could be expected to face severe opposition from postal unions which have contracts that ban layoffs.

The post office has cut 110,000 jobs over the last four years and is currently engaged in eliminating 7,500 administrative staff. In its 2010 annual report, the agency said it had 583,908 career employees.

Will they be allowed to? Obama and his minions in Congress might not want those numbers entered into the jobs ledger...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44111973/ns/business-us_business/#.TkSQloJ6KuJ

 

[busybody..]

O'Fendy and MRS LOST IN LOON LAND impressed!

Obama Visits Green Plant Where Stimulus Created 150 Jobs at $2million per Job — Congratulates Himself for the Remarkable Accomplishment


(CNSNews.com) — President Barack Obama on Thursday toured a vehicle battery plant in Michigan, a possible battleground state in the 2012 presidential race, touting his administration’s focus on green technology and jobs.

Obama told the employees of Johnson Controls Inc., in Holland, Mich., gathered at the factory that they represented how America can come out of a recession by making products that can be sold around the world.

“Look what’s happening in Holland, Mich.,” said the president. “Every day, hundreds of people are going to work on the technologies that are helping us fight our way out of this recession. Every day you’re building high-tech batteries so that we lead the world in manufacturing the best cars and the best trucks — that just doesn’t mean jobs in Michigan. You’re buying equipment and parts from suppliers in Florida and New Mexico and Ohio and Wisconsin, all across America.”

The economic stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, provided $2.4 billion in grants to advanced vehicle batteries technology. From that amount, $300 million in grants went to Johnson Controls to manufacture batteries.

According to the White House, thus far the firm has added 150 jobs because of the grant. That means the government spent about $2 million per job, but only if no more jobs are added.

Some in the crowd at the factory held up signs, one saying, “Thank you for the jobs,” and another saying, “Hang tough, you’re right.” Michigan has a 10.5 percent unemployment rate, among the highest in the nation, and could be a contested state in the 2012 presidential race.

Obama reminded the workers that the government made the jobs possible.

“What made this possible? The most important part is you,” said Obama. “Your drive, your work ethic, your ingenuity, your management, the grit and optimism that says we’ve got an idea for a new battery technology or a new manufacturing process and we’re going to take that leap. But what also made this possible are the actions that we took together as a nation through our government.”

 

[koalabear]

It smells in here again.

There it is again... It smells like something died in a cat's asshole.

It's like the smell of two skunks fucking in in a pile of pig shit...

I'm outa' here!

Proof that the ole saying is correct, every dog smells its own hole. Good job lil Chihuahua.

 

[richard_daily]

You have a curious sense of what constitutes fact. After more than two years we still haven't experienced any of the dire warnings mentioned in that first post. Yet here you are, still banging that drum and hoping for failure.

Where you see financial armageddon I see the opportunity to grow my investments. Playing on irrational fear stoked by doom and gloom sayers such as yourself, I end up buying stock at discounted rates, just like I did the last time the market dipped. I was buying like a mad person when the market hit 7K. Hell, even with the recent dip I'm still up by 18% over 12 months ago. I expect that as the market recovers from this instability I'll be looking at a nice little ROI for the year. Come January my company stock will jump since they're selling off one division and all of the debt that goes with it to investors.

I've been trying to calm the Henny-Penny people I work with that are shifting their investments around in a panic after listening to the likes of you. Alas, many of them are much too frightened to listen. That money you "lost" is only gone if you sell now. You aren't retiring for another 15-20 years, calm the fuck down. People acting like you are now are only contributing to the problem you're seeing (and making me a nice amount of money because I'm BUYING your stocks for fifty cents on the dollar).

I'm in better financial shape than ever, and all it took was to ignore people like you and invest like any sane person would. Invest only what I can afford to lose without a thought. Buy low, sell high.

Don't bother giving that dumb-ass financial advice, he's out looking for gold to buy right now.

Furthermore, his response of "me me me" was hilarious, coming from a libertarian who only thinks of himself.

 

[richard_daily]

You're making assumptions again, as usual. You have zero idea what you're talking about with regards to my investments. But then, why change your usual m.o.? Build straw man... Bash straw man to pieces.. Rinse and repeat.

Remind me, who was it that championed the Citizens United decision that gave big business, unions, and wall street the ability to make virtually unlimited campaign contributions? Conservatives in SCOTUS.

Worst supreme court decision EVER.

 

[koalabear]

Postal Service proposing cutting 120,000 jobs
Also wants union contracts, employee health and pension benefits changed

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44111973/ns/business-us_business/?gt1=43001#.TkUnRr9Effk

Postal officials have said they will be unable to make a $5.5 billion payment to cover future employee health care costs due Sept. 30. It is the only federal agency required to make such a payment but, because of the complex way government finances are counted, eliminating it would make the federal budget deficit appear $5.5 billion larger.

 

[koalabear]

Strong retail sales lift stocks

Updated: 08/12/2011 10:10 ET
DOW 11,174.91 +31.60

 

[koalabear]

Stocks waver on dire consumer sentiment reading Consumer sentiment plunged to a 30-ye

Updated: 08/12/2011 10:20 ET
DOW 11,218.43 +75.12