A Political Reality Check on the Economy
Reader Comments
Hmmm... What I remeber...
My grandmother faithfully every night after the tonight show would watch the Dow Jones report. If it went down 20 to 30 points she would not be an easy person to live with. She is probably flipping around in her grave if she would know that her grand children and great grand children with the economy of today live check to check and no way of supporting themselves other than maybe fishing to eat or feed our children. This is worry some for me because I know just enough to see that the stock market crashed. I see just enough and read that the banks will have a run on them if it has not started already. People will turn to what is real and not a bank note or a reserve insured promise. I know just enough to know MYSELF, MY FAMILY OF FOUR AND TWO DOGS ARE IN SEVER FINANCIAL SCREW UP IF I CAN'T FIND A WAY TO INVEST OR COME UP WITH A WAY TO SURVIVE. OKAYE THIS IS REAL... NOT A JOKE ANYMORE THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. WHERE DO PEOPLE LIKE US DO OR GO. WE CAN'T EVEN THINK OF LEAVING THE COUNTRY. MIDDLE CLASS IS WHERE WE ARE TRYING TO GET TO BE BUT WE ARE GOING TO BE THE WORSE CLASS OF ALL. I SHOULD OF LISTENED TO MYSELF FROM THE VERY BEGINNING AND NOT GOT A BANK ACCOUNT. NEVER SHOULD OF USED DRAFTING SYSTEM. NEVER WILL I BUY ANYTHING WITHOUT SAVING IT ON MY PERSON AGAIN. IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE GET THROUGH THIS WITHOUT A REVOLUTION I WILL BE AMAZED. WE ARE NOT THE PEOPLE WE USED TO BE. THE PLAIN TRADE AND BARTER SYSTEM IS ALMOST OBSELETE IN OUR VOCABULARY AND IT WAS WHAT WE WERE FOUNDED ON.
I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SAY EXCEPT VOTE FOR MICKEY MOUSE BECAUSE BOTH CANIDATES HAVE NOT SHOWN ANY WAY OF BEING HELPFUL TO OUR SITUATION.
Economic Tailspin
Mr. Barone: The entire country is not on the same valium you are on. The cost to heat my home has tripled in one year. My gasoline price is up 50 percent in one year. My groceries are up 40 percent in one year. This is no small trend. No matter how you mis-report the numbers, the country is now on the ropes, soon to be on the mat with grocers, oil companies and manufacturer's kicking at its dying body. Get off of whatever sedative du jour you are on. If you're going to "call the play by play", give your readers the right score.
jg
Michael, you are an outstanding political commentator.
A few thoughts on your economics column:
The recession start and stop dates are set by the National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee. They do NOT use two consecutive quarters of falling GDP; this is their announcement of the last recession:
http://www.nber.org/cycles/november2001/
The four metrics that they list in paragraph two -- industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale-retail trade -- have all peaked and begun declining over October 2007-March 2008.
The recession is underway, and the NBER BCDC will announce such within a few months.
Oh, and the economy is terrible because of the horrendous household debt overhang. It is without precedent; the Great Depression was caused by easy credit and high household debt levels (and the recovery was tripped and slowed by stupid government fiscal policies and regulations). Yet, today, household debt to GDP is 50% higher than in 1929, the start of the Great Depression.
It is ugly out there, Michael.
Keep up the outstanding work on political commentary, and drop a line if you need direction to logical, factual, and true (alternative) views on the economy.
Visit shadowstats.com
The inflation and unemployment numbers (and most other government statistics) are contrived, and have no basis in reality. Inflation is deliberately understated because increases in Social Security payments and Federal pensions are tied to them.
If you visit www.shadowstats.com you will see that the true inflation rate is about 10%, and that monetary growth (measured by M3, which the governement stopped reporting more than a year ago) is now up more than 16%, year over year. If you don't want someone to know he's sick, just smash the thermometer.
Sooner or later that monetary inflation will translate into higher prices, no matter what the government says. Actually, it already has, and I don't mean just food and energy. Have you been to the dentist lately? Or looked at college tuitions? Or tried to buy anything but a flat screen TV? And if you think $4 gas is bad, wait til it's $7, like every other industrialized country in the world.
Voters and the economy
When 80% of people say to pollsters that the economy is in effect in a recession, that matters more politically than what the Washington number-crunchers tell you. And in response to the bottle of whine about the "liberal media", you don't need the media to see that you are getting gouged at the grocery store and the gas station.
CEO's and upper level management may be able to give themselves enough raises to make the income numbers look respectable, but when jobs are being shed and those with them are not getting raises commensurate with the cost of living, those in other classes are more likely to use that as their touchstone to vote on. And core inflation is indeed low--unless you have to eat or sometimes drive somewhere. Whoops.
The Economy
Mr. Barone, please don't write that the economy is faring okay at the present. time. The liberal media has been trying to push the economy into a recession for months now. You hear the word "recession" continually on the nightly news, particularly from ultra-liberal, Obama loving NBC. I hope in this instance, they do not get what they wish for. We are not in a recession. The economy is still growing, albeit slowly and that does not a recession make. But the liberal media is panting, drooling and wishing for one, so that their candidate will win in November. Gas prices are rising, foreclosures are rising, people are getting laid off, etc., but we are not in a recession. Matters will soon look up and and it won't be "the economy, stupid" in November per Mr. Carville in 1992.
Facts Are Stubborn Things
The fact is that the unemployment rate has been calculated exactly the same way and is a meaningful comparison. The same people who call out the "underemployed" and those that "have given up" were the same people who exulted the unemployment figures when Clinton was the president.
And, when confronted with actual numbers these anectdotal claims of "underemployment" simply do not hold up. These types of employment problems exist in the same relative rates to the unemployment rate over historical time periods. That is, at 5% unemployment there is going to be a certain amount of underemployment and a certain amount of workers who have given up looking for work.
And, the reports on hourly wages and compensastion just do not support the "burger flipping" claims. These are myths that are made up for political reasons to make the economy seem worse than it is. They are all anecdotal because they are based upon someone that you know's brother's cousin. Since you have some distant connection with the myth you are willing to believe it.
recession - never defined as current
It is both disengious and deceptive to use the patented government line to explain a recession as 2 quarters of contraction, when if we look at past recessions, they were not declared "recessions" until after the fact. Government numbers are always prettied up when released and then downwardly revised, unless of course they are inflation numbers and then the reverse procedure is followed.
The problem with the internet and the faster transmission and sharing of data, is the blatant lies by the government, the politicians and the media become easier to recognize. We the people cannot be kept stupid, ignorant and manipulated for the purposes of the ruling oligarchy and its minions in the press.
Control is slipping away and the true terror of our time turns out to be our rulers and their economic games which are destroying the economy and the peoples of this nation and by default the economies of many of our trading partners and those who use the USD as a default currency of trade.
So recession is indefinable using the parameters you've chosen. It sure feels like a recession where I live, except for the price of food and gas rising like floodwaters in New Orleans.
I haven't had a raise in 8 years and feel lucky I've been employed 6 of the past 8 years, and I work in High Tech - you know the information age, that was going to replace the old manufacturing economy.
A Few Thoughts
Simply put. People like the writer of this article do a disservice to people reading their articles. I don't know how much sicker I can get of folks who wave "party line" unemployment figures around claiming they tell the story while blowing right by the underemployed and those who for one reason or another are ineligible for unemployment benefits. Sometimes I wonder who pays people like this guy to put his hand on the back of the public's neck and help shove their heads into a hole.
Save the stories about trudging through 30 feet of snow on the way to school for people with way too much time on their hands and a vial of happy pills in their pocket. Nobody with any brains is gonna buy that this country is not headed down at Mach 3 just because in your day (and the T-Rex's for that matter) you skipped around unsaddled by the additional domestic burdens of trillion dollar deficits, having your job shipped overseas to some clown who manufactures goods you used to make, still need to consume, and now get charged 300% markup to re-acquire, lack of health care, $100 tanks of gas needed for cars you probably can't get to work without, and a political base so rich that a president making 5 times the average American's salary is taking a pay cut by being elected.
I mean there are actually people that look at consumer debt as it stands right now, the fact that salaries haven't budged in years while mean hours worked have climbed, the skyrocketing of the bankruptcy rates, the bilking of entire company payrolls out of their life savings, and the fact that the government is spending 60-80% of its income on debt service, and say "two thumbs up"?
How much do they charge for that drug by the ounce? I'll take a pound. Since I have all this money to burn compared to my predecessors out back in Jurassic Park.
And as for "Happy Father's Day", are you even FROM here or did you get your political history lessons from watching Bullworth with the sound turned off? You credit FDR for pulling the country out of the Depression? You ever heard of World War II? You want to credit something, credit that, because the increased production demands this country experienced put people back to work in droves and the ones who weren't working domestically were fighting the war and getting paid instead of standing around outside closed factories and soup kitchens waiting for a handout.
And please. Next time you want to call whites that don't blindly endorse white candidates race traitors and blame the lack of said blind support on this mysteriously stealthy and unstoppable juggernaut of black political influence, do it at stormfront.org. That whole song and dance is so old it's wearing the dirt Jesus kicked on it. You want an answer for why that stuff is happening just take a look at how long your "parents" have been leaving you alone while they gamble with your lunch money.
Or better yet scratch all that. Learn to organize sentences and we'll call it even.
Father Day Reflection on Election Campaign 2008 :
Father Day Reflection on Election Campaign 2008 :
Election 2008 is not a election but a decision for homecoming. Americans are on the crossroad of homecoming or to the abyss. They are currently facing Great Depression II and the only conscious solution is to repeat what they had done in the last Depression and emerged as a much stronger country. In the 1930s Americans were smart enough not to elect a politician as president but to return home to their parents, FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, who had nurtured them back to health and wealth. Today, we are facing the same dilemma, should Americans elect a radical politician who has given them empty promises? Or, to return home to their parents, John and Hillary? The choice is really quite simple. Obama and Black supporters reminisced wrestlers whose matches are pre-arranged and play by hitting under the belt theatrics causing economic downturn just to win. So, stop watching American games. Obama's white supporters are insulting their own race as incompetent and incapable of managing their own country . Whether Obama will be elected his "super delegates", who endorsed at other's expense, must be sentenced to live in Black neighborhoods for more than four years to find out what they are really like. The democratic governor of Oklahoma who had just endorsed Obama must be executed for causing their supernatural tornadoes. The communication media of the U. S. are circus clowns not worth commenting on because they have never given any honest election comments. American voters in general are "blind" to good judgement. Hillary Clinton, best American candidate in history, can be identified with a unspoiling mother who has wasted her own $10 million just to warn her stubborn and ignorance daughter not to date strangers in the street. John McCain who has shown the ability to set aside party differences for the common good, working relentless for the American by running on many elections and his decency has earned the trust of most Americans. Together as a team John and Hillary will carry Americans out of the current Great Depression. But will a good father send his children to early grave for a war that cannot be won? Happy Father Day!
