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

[richard_daily]

You never take personal responsibility for anything in your life, do you?

him and veteman must have gone to the same charter school of deflection.

 

[koalabear]

You never take personal responsibility for anything in your life, do you?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Webster’s 1983 Definition of Inflation
According to Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary published in 1983 the second definition of “inflation” after “the act of inflating or the condition of being inflated” is:

“An increase in the amount of currency in circulation, resulting in a relatively sharp and sudden fall in its value and rise in prices: it may be caused by an increase in the volume of paper money issued or of gold mined, or a relative increase in expenditures as when the supply of goods fails to meet the demand.
This definition includes some of the basic economics of inflation and would seem to indicate that inflation is not defined as the increase in prices but as the increase in the supply of money that causes the increase in prices i.e. inflation is a cause rather than an effect. But…

Webster’s 2000 Definition of Inflation
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 Published by Houghton Mifflin Company says:

Inflation:
2) A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.
In this definition, inflation would appear to be the consequence or result (rising prices) rather than the cause.

Shifty Words
So between 1983 and 2000 the definition appears to have shifted from the cause to the result. Also note that the cause could be either an increase in money supply or a decrease in available goods and services.

So basically high prices. Granted it comes with more money but still, high prices. Thanks for proving my point though. I always appreciate that.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sean Renaud]

High prices are the result of inflation not the cause. You failed economics didn't you? Politicians and liberals like to turn it around so they can blame the evil businessman for gouging while they rip you off with the hidden tax of inflation.

Except that's not true. Inflation=/=high prices. It's effectively moving the decimal point or changing the scales.

Businessmen are not (in general) evil. Ignore that myth.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sean Renaud]

It's ok Vette. I know the world is too complicated for you. I promise if you sit back and watch I'll have this all solved soon though.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Weapons Grade Derp Derp Derp

High prices are the result of inflation not the cause.

Do us all a favor, high school dropout.

Do a little research on "scarcity" and "commodity pricing" and get back to us.

 

[eyer]

Deposit Flight From Europe Banks Eroding Common Currency

An accelerating flight of deposits from banks in four European countries is jeopardizing the renewal of economic growth and undermining a main tenet of the common currency: an integrated financial system.

A total of 326 billion euros ($425 billion) was pulled from banks in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece in the 12 months ended July 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The plight of Irish and Greek lenders, which were bleeding cash in 2010, spread to Spain and Portugal last year.

The flight of deposits from the four countries coincides with an increase of about 300 billion euros at lenders in seven nations considered the core of the euro zone, including Germany and France, almost matching the outflow. That’s leading to a fragmentation of credit and a two-tiered banking system blocking economic recovery and blunting European Central Bank policy in the third year of a sovereign-debt crisis.

More here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...rom-europe-banks-eroding-common-currency.html

 

[bra_man69]

Do us all a favor, high school dropout.

Do a little research on "scarcity" and "commodity pricing" and get back to us.

And you tell us about monetary policy you fat fuck.

 

[bra_man69]

http://thelookingspoon.com/tlsimages/blog/2012/romney_vs_obama_money.jpg

 

[koalabear]

http://thelookingspoon.com/tlsimages/blog/2012/romney_vs_obama_money.jpg

Stop bring up facts!!!!!!!!!!

 

[bra_man69]

Stop bring up facts!!!!!!!!!!

I know I shouldn't but talking about grab ass and dicks gets old.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Beijing is preparing to kick in the world's rotting economic gates like tipping over the first domino...

A senior advisor to the Chinese government has called for an attack on the Japanese bond market to precipitate a funding crisis and bring the country to its knees, unless Tokyo reverses its decision to nationalise the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/9551727/Beijing-hints-at-bond-attack-on-Japan.html

Now, if everyone thinks that WWII got us out of the Depression, then WWIII is just what is called for:

China’s most powerful military leader, in an unusual public statement, last week ordered military forces to prepare for combat, as Chinese warships deployed to waters near disputed islands and anti-Japan protests throughout the country turned violent.

Protests against the Japanese government’s purchase of three privately held islands in the Senkakus chain led to mass street protests, the burning of Japanese flags, and attacks on Japanese businesses and cars in several cities. Some carried signs that read “Kill all Japanese,” and “Fight to the Death” over disputed islands. One sign urged China to threaten a nuclear strike against Japan.

http://freebeacon.com/chinese-general-prepare-for-combat/

These two really love each other and have bought into tolerance diversity, hope and change...

Has anyone asked the American Administration where they stand?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIN89L_tXxY

It is about the same stand as on Jerusalem and Egypt; applying a 'kick me' sign to your own back.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

MOSCOW — Soviet leaders used to prefer Republicans to Democrats, in the belief that Republicans were tough but more sincere and, once they made a promise, were more likely to deliver on it.

There has been a whiff of that old way of thinking in recent remarks by President Vladimir Putin, even though plenty has changed in Russia’s relations with the United States. Speaking to reporters last week, Putin said he appreciates GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s bluntness in his denunciations of Russia — because that stance lets Russia know where it stands, and reinforces Putin’s opposition to a missile defense shield in Europe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...52a0b8-ff5b-11e1-8adc-499661afe377_story.html

Under Democratic Leadership, the world knows us as a weak enemy and an untrustworthy and undependable ally.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

In one of the most bullish gold calls since the Federal Reserve announced a new round of easing last week, one strategist sees a 36 percent jump in the metal's price [GCCV1 1773.50 4.80 (+0.27%) ], to $2,400 an ounce, by the end of 2014.

“The new target reflects our view that the Fed will maintain mortgage purchases until the end of 2014 and will move to buy Treasuries following the end of Operation Twist this coming December,” wrote Francisco Blanch, a global investment strategist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in a note to clients Tuesday.

“Given the new open-ended nature of QE3, the upward pressure on gold prices should continue until employment is strong enough to require a change in policy," Blanch added. "In our view, this is unlikely to happen until the end of 2014.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49072875

I think I stand to gain more than 30%...



This one goes out to the one I love,
This one goes out to the one I

Left


Behind

.
.
.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Banks have become much more cautious about making loans since the housing bust. The median credit score for approved loans has increased by about 40 points since 2006. Median credit scores "now exceed by a considerable margin" those for any time in the past 12 years, the report said. The bottom tenth of all home-purchase borrowers had seen an even larger increase of around 50 points.

Tighter credit standards could impede the latest push by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy. The Fed last week announced it would begin buying $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities partly in a bid to reduce yields, which could be passed onto borrowers in the form of lower mortgage rates.

Due to more conservative credit standards, "the impact of lower mortgage rates on housing is probably less powerful than normal," said William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a speech on Tuesday in Florham Park, N.J. While rising home prices could ease that constraint over time, he said, "the difficulties of households with lower credit scores in obtaining mortgage credit warrants ongoing attention."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...67010.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

Wonder who will lead the charge to loosen standards?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Food Stamp Recovery

Three years after the end of the 2007–09 recession, which officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, 47 million people each month are using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). At the beginning of the recession, fewer than one in 10 Americans received SNAP benefits. Nearly 15 percent of Americans now use SNAP benefits, formerly called food stamps, a program administered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This translates to more than one in 7 Americans currently using SNAP benefits, a record non-emergency high.[2]

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ir_23.htm#.UFmcLRzUqdx


For shits and grins, go back and read the original post...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — A new report put out by the Pew Research Center finds that the median income is worse now than it was during the Great Recession.

According to Pew, the Census Bureau showed that the median income for American households in 2009 – the official end of the Great Recession – was $52,195 (in 2011 dollars), while the median income dipped to $50,054 last year, falling 4.1 percent over two years.

“The decrease in household income from 2009 to 2011 almost exactly equaled the decrease in income in the two years of the recession,” the Pew report stated. “During the Great Recession, the median U.S. household income (in 2011 dollars) dropped from $54,489 in 2007 to $52,195 in 2009, a loss of 4.2 percent. By this yardstick, the recovery from the Great Recession is bypassing the nation’s households.”


The Pew report added that the recovery is the “most negative for household income during any post-recession period in the past four decades,” which means that the median household income has not risen above a previous peak over the past 12 years.

The poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2007 to 15 percent last year as the median household wealth fell by 39 percent over a three-year span, from $131,016 in 2007 to $79,431 in 2010.

“[T]he economic health of American families deteriorated further in the first two years of the recovery from the Great Recession,” the Pew report explains. “Much like an unwelcome dinner guest who does not know when it is time to leave, the Great Recession seems blissfully unaware that it was declared over in June 2009.”

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012...worse-now-than-it-was-during-great-recession/

I know, we didn't blame Bush HARD ENOUGH!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

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

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- Coal producer Alpha Natural Resources said Tuesday it was cutting production by 16 million tons and eliminating 1,200 jobs companywide, laying off 400 workers immediately by closing mines in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The mine shutdowns start Tuesday, while the rest of the layoffs will be completed by the end of the first quarter after Alpha fulfills current sales obligations, Chief Executive Officer Kevin Crutchfield said. In all, the layoffs amount to nearly a tenth of Alpha's 13,000-person workforce.

Alpha said it was closing four mines in West Virginia, three in Virginia and one in Pennsylvania. They are a mix of deep and surface mines, and all are non-union operations.

Company spokesman Ted Pile said most of the displaced workers may eventually be rehired, either assigned to new jobs in other locations or replacing outside contractors. Only 150 workers in West Virginia and three in Pennsylvania will not have any other employment opportunities with the company, he said.

Though some miners will stay on to seal the operations, most will either be reassigned or laid off immediately.

Support positions will also be cut proportionally as Alpha reduces its operating regions from four to two, Crutchfield said, and two executives will retire Nov. 1.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...AOL-?SITE=VADAR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

We tried our plan...

AND IT WORKED!

Government officials blame unfair competition from China for the collapse of solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, but such concerns didn’t stop the federal government from breaking stimulus program rules to use Chinese solar panels atop a federal building housing the offices of a senator, congressman and several agencies.

Even the contractor questioned whether Chinese-made panels could be used under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus program that mandated use of U.S.-made products. His query in early 2010 was dismissed and the General Services Administration moved forward with using the Chinese panels on the Sen. Paul Simon Federal Building in Carbondale, Ill., records show.

Questions about the panels, which were assembled overseas, were raised in a four-page advisory memo sent by the inspector general to the GSA in the summer of 2011, but the findings take on added significance as government officials increasingly place blame on Chinese subsidies for troubles in the U.S. solar market.

Since last summer, Solyndra LLC and another solar company, Abound Solar, have filed for bankruptcy despite receiving generous federal loan guarantees. After both bankruptcies, government officials were quick to place blame on subsidies from China that allowed foreign solar panel manufactures to sell their products below cost, squeezing U.S. solar companies.

Meanwhile, the contractor on the Illinois building project, J.R. Conkey & Associates, initially questioned GSA officials on whether solar panels assembled in China could be used under the stimulus program, but a procurement officer told the company to proceed, according to records.

“We did what we were told to do by the federal government,” Jim Conkey, the company’s president, said Monday.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/17/lambasted-chinese-solar-panels-placed-on-governmen/

 

[mercury14]

Oh noes, the free market is shifting to natural gas that's far cheaper, far cleaner to burn, far safer to extract, and does far less environmental damage to extract! And the US has more of the stuff than any other nation on earth!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Oh noes, the free market is shifting to natural gas that's far cheaper, far cleaner to burn, far safer to extract, and does far less environmental damage to extract! And the US has more of the stuff than any other nation on earth!

Not to worry, it is still a fossil fuel and still in the crosshairs...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/business/energy-environment/12gas.html?pagewanted=all

Can I say crosshairs without being accused of inciting violence?

Natural gas, with its reputation as a linchpin in the effort to wean the nation off dirtier fossil fuels and reduce global warming, may not be as clean over all as its proponents say.

Even as natural gas production in the United States increases and Washington gives it a warm embrace as a crucial component of America’s energy future, two coming studies try to poke holes in the clean-and-green reputation of natural gas. They suggest that the rush to develop the nation’s vast, unconventional sources of natural gas is logistically impractical and likely to do more to heat up the planet than mining and burning coal.

The problem, the studies suggest, is that planet-warming methane, the chief component of natural gas, is escaping into the atmosphere in far larger quantities than previously thought, with as much as 7.9 percent of it puffing out from shale gas wells, intentionally vented or flared, or seeping from loose pipe fittings along gas distribution lines. This offsets natural gas’s most important advantage as an energy source: it burns cleaner than other fossil fuels and releases lower carbon dioxide emissions.

“The old dogma of natural gas being better than coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions gets stated over and over without qualification,” said Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University and the lead author of one of the studies. Mr. Howarth said his analysis, which looked specifically at methane leakage rates in unconventional shale gas development, was among the first of its kind and that much more research was needed.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I agree with this :

Kudlow is talking about the Fed's new policy of QE3, announced last Thursday. Under QE3, the Fed will buy $40 billion of additional mortgage securities each month with money it prints out of thin air. QE stands for "quantitative easing," which means in English printing new money. It is called QE3 because this is the third time the Fed has pursued a policy of aggressive new money creation since the financial crisis.

But as the Wall Street Journal editorialized on Friday, "the difference this time is that Ben [Fed Chairman Bernanke] is unbounded." By that they mean that the Fed's policy is to continue the $40 billion a month magic money creation until the job market improves and the recovery takes hold. Or as the Journal further editorialized, "The Fed has declared that it is going all in to cut the jobless rate, no matter what it takes."

That echoes the recent announcement of the European Central Bank (ECB) that it will pump up the supply of euros there to "whatever it takes" to forestall the European sovereign debt crisis. What we are witnessing is a global trashing of major paper currencies.

The Fed is effectively in a panic now because it knows what the party controlled so-called mainstream press is so carefully keeping from the voters in swing states -- real, effective, unemployment is much worse than 8.1%, somewhere between 11.4% and 19% depending on how many of the disoriented, working-age Americans bouncing around out there without a real job are counted in the workforce. And that double-digit unemployment has now continued for the longest time since the Great Depression, with no relief in sight.

Under the Fed's QE policies, the Fed's balance sheet of its asset holdings has tripled from about $800 billion to $2.5 trillion. With QE3, that will now "go to $3 trillion, or $4 trillion, or who knows how high?" Kudlow says. Moreover, bank reserve balances at the Fed, created out of thin air by Fed electronic deposits, have exploded from $8 billion in September 2008 to $1.5 trillion today, an increase of almost 200 times.

And make no mistake about, this Fed policy is Obama Administration policy, backed by the Administration and the President himself.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/19/the-feds-ticking-inflation-bom

It Won't Work

The idea behind quantitative easing is that the new money will increase spending, investment, exports, and consequently jobs, resulting in the long overdue recovery at last. The new money will also support the Fed's rock bottom interest rates, which is also supposed to spur investment, the foundation for job creation.

It's standard Keynesian monetary economics. But it won't work. Quite to the contrary, it will be counterproductive. With the collapse of communism, Keynesian economics is now the second most destructive doctrine in the world, right behind Islamism.

Printing up new dollars and dropping them from helicopters is not going to make America any richer or more prosperous. That is all that QE is. It doesn't mean any increased real wealth, income, or production. You can't trick the real economy into producing more just by running the printing presses.

The new money supply just ends up increasing prices, as there is more money out there bidding for the available real goods and services, which are not increased by money manipulation. That is what Milton Friedman finally prevailed in teaching over 30 years ago. But in this new Obama/MSNBC world, civilization is hurtling backwards, losing learning and advancement, just like Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The only question is how long it will take for market prices to catch up to the new money supply. That short-term period can be extended by economic downturn and recession. But as the 1970s showed, Keynesian economics can produce the miracle of inflation and recession at the same time.

Indeed, the Fed has been purchasing three-fourths of the new federal debt issued to cover Obama's trillion dollar deficits, with the new money printed up in accordance with QE. This is a classic, historic policy for creating inflation, and ultimately national bankruptcy if continued.

 

[mercury14]

Not to worry, it is still a fossil fuel and still in the crosshairs...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/business/energy-environment/12gas.html?pagewanted=all

Interesting, never heard of that before. But it sounds like the problem is leaky pipes and intentional venting during shale harvesting, not anything inherent to using natural gas itself. Nothing is saying natural gas is being targeted though unless I missed something.

Can I say crosshairs without being accused of inciting violence?

Judge-killer.

 

[hogjack]

President Obama is the Jimmy Carter of the bi-racial world.