[quote=“BrentGolf”]
All in all, again, pretty damn solid work in the last 5 years considering where we were. [/quote]
I sense a certain desperation in your tone, as if you’re trying harder to convince yourself than to convince others.
You’re not in complete denial about trainwreck.gov, so that’s to your credit. Might you eventually come around to admitting that the US economy is not really pretty damn solid?
[quote]I sense a certain desperation in your tone, as if you’re trying harder to convince yourself than to convince others.
You’re not in complete denial about trainwreck.gov, so that’s to your credit. Might you eventually come around to admitting that the US economy is not really pretty damn solid?[/quote]
I’m not American, I’ll never live in the US, and I have a clear vested financial interest in having an unbiased understanding of the economy and where it’s going. There’s no desperation in my tone, I’m pretty much as unbiased as it gets. I can certainly see why many other people would not be willing to give the raw numbers a fair look though. 
People lie, but numbers don’t. I know a lot of people don’t like to admit that things are much improved because that doesn’t allow them to maintain their confirmation biases, but political affiliation aside that conclusion is becoming more inescapable with each passing year.
Don’t blame the metrics, it’s the jackass interpreting them. 
Back in 2008 we were hearing a lot about how the crash was Clinton’s fault and those evil Communists organization Freddic Mac and Fanny Mea. I even heard people blame the accounting rule change to mark-to-market. Really, an accounting rule change. :roflmao:
I can’t believe you guys posted on these threads over the weekend. Don’t you have a life? Sure, I can fully understand if you’re bored at work…I’m right there with you…but on the weekend??
OMG! Someone on the internet is wrong!!!
Reading this stuff is the same as the DPP vs KMT stuff in Taiwan.
Very juvenile.
You shouldn’t get so excited, Brent! I never claimed to be an expert in economics.
You can have your economic metrics that show that a recovery is underway (although apparently a very weak recovery), and I am happy to admit that my statement that the economy is worse now than in 2008 may be incorrect, technically. But, I stand by the indicators that I cited (and I notice that you did not refute those). So, while per your metrics, the economy is recovering and in much better shape than it was in 2008, it sure doesn’t feel that way to a lot of people.
And Obamacare is just getting started. 
You should have noted that in addition to my above statement, probably in error, that the economh is worse now, that I also stated that things are worse now. As per the above, I stand by that statement, as the things I cited are indeed, if FactCheck.org is to be trusted, worse than they were previously.
Technically nothing Factcheck said nothing incorrect and did caveat it’s facts reasonably well. You just can’t use them without reading the small print.
Feelings? Oh no!
The economy is better than 2008, but that is faint praise. Given the circumstances he’s done a reasonable job. I give him a B+.
[quote]Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job
NEWS IN BRIEF • Politics • War For The White House • Barack Obama • ISSUE 44•45 • Nov 5, 2008
Facebook3.2K
Twitter271
Google Plus24
WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, “It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”[/quote]
[quote=“Elegua”]I feel this is one of the funniest new’s articles I’ve read.
[quote]
Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job
NEWS IN BRIEF • Politics • War For The White House • Barack Obama • ISSUE 44•45 • Nov 5, 2008
Facebook3.2K
Twitter271
Google Plus24
WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, “It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”[/quote][/quote]
Yes, that’s good. I may have seen that before. 
Well nothing wrong with admitting you were mistaken. 
Actually I did. I stated in an unbiased way why those things you posted aren’t useful. Every one of them has more influential external variables affecting them, they all suffer from the problem of correlation vs causation, and any can exist perfectly well in a recession or an expansion phase of the economy. You can’t just find stats that show number X is larger than number Y. Without analysis and perspective, they’re just random numbers.
Now you’re just trying to keep one carrot dangling for me 
Because I could show you why that statement isn’t true either if you’d like. Like it or not, this recovery is stronger then other recessions of equal magnitude. We don’t have accurate data for the great depression, but it’s pretty clear we’re doing better this time around then we did back then. This recovery is still stronger than the one in 01’ and it’s quite comparable to several others in the last 30 or so years. In several ways it’s a very robust recovery, and in other ways it has still fallen short of where we’d like.
I know you hate Obama, and most likely the FED as well, and there are plenty of reasons people have for hating both. Subjective reasons that I won’t try to dissuade you of. However sometimes facts are just facts. Considering where we were just 5 years ago, we’ve done amazingly well. Credit counter cyclical fiscal policy if you’d like. That way you don’t have to actually say it was Obama. Any President would have recovered this quickly if they adopted a Keynesian fix to the problem.
Baby boomers were not retiring en masse during the Bush administration and they only account for roughly 1/3 of the decrease in the labor force in the Obama Administration.
This is what “we” call a false premise. And who is this “we” that is not using it?
Sorry, but anytime a liberal utters “statistics” or “facts” you know you had better take what they say with a grain of salt.
[quote=“BrentGolf”]What are people doing RIGHT NOW?
As I said, we went from shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs to now adding hundreds of thousands of jobs. That’s one pretty direct reason to think the job market is wildly improved. A second is of course initial jobless claims. This reflects what people are doing RIGHT NOW, and not what the demographics of people born 60 years ago are doing. [/quote]
Ahh, here we go. So now you are lauding the fact that full time jobs are being replacing with part time McService jobs? Maybe you should look at the types of jobs that are being “created or saved” under the Obama economy before doing your little victory dance.
If it weren’t already obvious enough, it’s safe to say that you are not an economist nor a statistician so I’m not sure how you lecture people about causation and correlation when your speculation that the drop in the labor force was due mostly to baby boomers retiring could be shown to violate these two principles.
Spouting off Keynesian theory does not make you an expert on the economy. Like many Krugmanites out there, you seem to not understand the Broken Window Fallacy and Opportunity Costs. As a result, you think that the answer to everything is to spend more, monetize debt, stimulus blah blah blah. Ya the economy is better off than it was at its worst point but that’s not saying very much. It would have gotten better on its own even without Obama’s “help.” You might want to ask yourself where this extra “spending” comes from and what kind of impact this “spending” might have on America in the long run.
Of course the economy is better now under Ben Bernanke than it was in 2008. The only way it could have gotten worse is for the Great Recession to have turned into the Great Depression and that’s clearly not the case. 85 billion magic dollars a month have to go somewhere and they’ve clearly gone into the pockets of those who need it the most.
The only thing that’s worrying is now that Bernanke is talking about removing the U.S. economy from life support he’s simultaneously looking for the door as if he knows something we don’t know.
What does ‘the economy is worse now or better now’ mean?
It depends where you live, what job you have, what property you own or not , how old you are, if you have shares or not , what industry you work in right?
It’s not like ‘the economy’ gets divvied up evenly between places.
Baby boomers were not retiring en masse during the Bush administration and they only account for roughly 1/3 of the decrease in the labor force in the Obama Administration.
This is what “we” call a false premise. And who is this “we” that is not using it?
Sorry, but anytime a liberal utters “statistics” or “facts” you know you had better take what they say with a grain of salt.
[quote=“BrentGolf”]What are people doing RIGHT NOW?
As I said, we went from shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs to now adding hundreds of thousands of jobs. That’s one pretty direct reason to think the job market is wildly improved. A second is of course initial jobless claims. This reflects what people are doing RIGHT NOW, and not what the demographics of people born 60 years ago are doing. [/quote]
Ahh, here we go. So now you are lauding the fact that full time jobs are being replacing with part time McService jobs? Maybe you should look at the types of jobs that are being “created or saved” under the Obama economy before doing your little victory dance.
If it weren’t already obvious enough, it’s safe to say that you are not an economist nor a statistician so I’m not sure how you lecture people about causation and correlation when your speculation that the drop in the labor force was due mostly to baby boomers retiring could be shown to violate these two principles.
Spouting off Keynesian theory does not make you an expert on the economy. Like many Krugmanites out there, you seem to not understand the Broken Window Fallacy and Opportunity Costs. As a result, you think that the answer to everything is to spend more, monetize debt, stimulus blah blah blah. Ya the economy is better off than it was at its worst point but that’s not saying very much. It would have gotten better on its own even without Obama’s “help.” You might want to ask yourself where this extra “spending” comes from and what kind of impact this “spending” might have on America in the long run.[/quote]
Sockpuppet much?
So…let me make sure I have this straight…
Is that essentially correct? Did I miss anything?
[quote]What does ‘the economy is worse now or better now’ mean?
It depends where you live, what job you have, what property you own or not , how old you are, if you have shares or not , what industry you work in right?
It’s not like ‘the economy’ gets divvied up evenly between places.[/quote]
You’re talking about two separate things. Obviously the economy is better now. We have long standing metrics to gauge these things and it’s a measurable fact the economy is far stronger now than it was when Obama took office.
Does that mean that every individual is also better off? Well no of course not, that goes without saying doesn’t it?
Well truthfully Bernanke has already stayed well past his term so I don’t think tapering QE and his departure are as related as it appears. Besides, Yellen isn’t that different from Bernanke so like it or hate it the general policy will continue as it was intended under Bernanke.
Talking about whether the economy is strong or not seems a waste of time to me, of course it’s strong. The far more interesting debate is what we should do FROM HERE. As in, how is the FED going to unwind the program they started without derailing all the progress that was made? Interesting times are ahead…
Yeah, I agree we’re in uncharted territory here. I’ve gone an swapped all of my loans to a fixed rate just in case.
[quote]Talk of Bernanke’s reluctance to be nominated for a third term at the Fed has been circulating for months. . .
Asked at a news conference in March about his plans, Bernanke said, “I don’t think that I’m the only person in the world who can manage the exit” from the Fed’s record-low-rate policies and $3 trillion in bond holdings.
Bernanke, who taught economics at Princeton University before he was Fed chief, was referring to the central bank’s multi-year effort to kickstart job creation and economic growth after the 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent recession. The Fed vastly expanded its portfolio of securities through bond purchases intended to keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing, spending and investing. . .
“He didn’t sound like someone who wanted to stick around in the job much longer,” says Tim Duy, an economics professor at the University of Oregon and author of the FedWatch blog."[/quote]
I wouldn’t want to be Fed chairman either when the U.S. economy is removed from life support and the only things propping it up are McJobs, ObamaAngst, deficit spending and borrowed money.
[quote=“Winston Smith”][quote]Talk of Bernanke’s reluctance to be nominated for a third term at the Fed has been circulating for months. . .
Asked at a news conference in March about his plans, Bernanke said, “I don’t think that I’m the only person in the world who can manage the exit” from the Fed’s record-low-rate policies and $3 trillion in bond holdings.
Bernanke, who taught economics at Princeton University before he was Fed chief, was referring to the central bank’s multi-year effort to kickstart job creation and economic growth after the 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent recession. The Fed vastly expanded its portfolio of securities through bond purchases intended to keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing, spending and investing. . .
“He didn’t sound like someone who wanted to stick around in the job much longer,” says Tim Duy, an economics professor at the University of Oregon and author of the FedWatch blog."[/quote]
I wouldn’t want to be Fed chairman either when the U.S. economy is removed from life support and the only things propping it up are McJobs, ObamaAngst, deficit spending and borrowed money.[/quote]
Worry more about emerging markets.
[quote=“Elegua”][quote=“Winston Smith”][quote]Talk of Bernanke’s reluctance to be nominated for a third term at the Fed has been circulating for months. . .
Asked at a news conference in March about his plans, Bernanke said, “I don’t think that I’m the only person in the world who can manage the exit” from the Fed’s record-low-rate policies and $3 trillion in bond holdings.
Bernanke, who taught economics at Princeton University before he was Fed chief, was referring to the central bank’s multi-year effort to kickstart job creation and economic growth after the 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent recession. The Fed vastly expanded its portfolio of securities through bond purchases intended to keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing, spending and investing. . .
“He didn’t sound like someone who wanted to stick around in the job much longer,” says Tim Duy, an economics professor at the University of Oregon and author of the FedWatch blog."[/quote]
I wouldn’t want to be Fed chairman either when the U.S. economy is removed from life support and the only things propping it up are McJobs, ObamaAngst, deficit spending and borrowed money.[/quote]
Worry more about emerging markets.[/quote]
True dat. Once Bernanke flies the coop and the hot money period ends the one bright side though might be home hunters may be able to afford real estate here in Taiwan when the bubble pops:
Among American workers, poll finds unprecedented anxiety about jobs, economy
This article echoes the anxiety and uncertainty I hear from even Americans who have good jobs/skills/education whenever I’m in the U.S. on business:
[quote]. . . A stagnant labor market
There is a reason workers like Stewart are so nervous in today’s economy. That reason is the economy itself. There are still 11 million Americans looking for work who can’t find a job. The unemployment rate is 7.3 percent, higher than it has been since 1980, except during recessions and their immediate aftermaths. Adjusting for inflation, average household incomes for the poorest 40 percent of workers have fallen steadily — by more than 10 percent, total — since 2000.
Lower-income workers get most of their money from wages, as opposed to investments or other capital gains, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, who writes extensively about unemployment and income.
“It’s no surprise that security concerns are off the map now [among those workers] because the labor market is so bad,” Shierholz said. “High unemployment hurts workers across the board, but it hurts workers with low and moderate incomes more.”
Even worse, there aren’t many signs that job and wage growth will rocket upward anytime soon — especially for workers like Stewart without college degrees.
“High-paying jobs for people who didn’t go to college just aren’t there anymore” in large numbers, said Melissa Kearney, an economist who directs the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.[/quote]
In my opinion unemployment is structural and has been for quite some time. Anybody expecting the unemployment rate to get much better than it is today is probably going to be quite disappointed. 7% or so, maybe closer to 12% if you use the real numbers instead of the fake government ones. Unless some new industry emerges that can provide work for all those millions, 12% is probably as good as it gets from here on out unfortunately.