Thread: The strongest economy in the world

Originally Posted by OhOh

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

I've paid into SS for many moons and now it's time to reap my more than just rewards

Would you be happy if the sum paid to you each year was reduced by 75%?

Fek no! As it is, I will not be able to collect what I've paid in over the years unless I live to 100...

A balanced view of the financial crisis facing the US Government from a concerned citizen

At the House of Sunny, we’re reminded that our gargantuan government could be funded for an entire year if bureaucrats would just confiscate every last penny from those greedy millionaires and billionaires.

US drops to 5th place in global competitiveness - Business - Stocks & economy - msnbc.com

Finland a more competitive economy than the US

"GENEVA — The U.S. has tumbled further down a global ranking of the world's most competitive economies, landing at fifth place because of its huge deficits and declining public faith in government, a global economic group said Wednesday.
The announcement by the World Economic Forum was the latest bad news for the Obama administration, which has been struggling to boost the sinking U.S. economy and lower an unemployment rate of more than 9 percent.
Switzerland held onto the top spot for the third consecutive year in the annual ranking by the Geneva-based forum, which is best known for its exclusive meeting of luminaries in Davos, Switzerland, each January.

Singapore moved up to second place, bumping Sweden down to third. Finland moved up to fourth place, from seventh last year. The U.S. was in fourth place last year, after falling from No. 1 in 2008.
The rankings, which the forum has issued for more than three decades, are based on economic data and a survey of 15,000 business executives.
The forum praised the U.S. for its productivity, highly sophisticated and innovative companies, excellent universities and flexible labor market. But it also cited "a number of escalating weaknesses" such as rising government debt and declining public faith in political leaders and corporate ethics.
The results of a survey of 142 nations comes a day before Obama is preparing to tackle jobs issues in a speech to the U.S. Congress, and just as U.S. polls show a clear majority of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy.
Major Market Indices
Switzerland held onto its top ranking, the forum said, because of "continuing strong performance across the board" with innovation, technological readiness, even-handed regulation and having one of the world's most stable economic environments.
Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, was sixth, followed by the Netherlands and Denmark. Japan came in ninth, and Britain was 10th. France was 18th, and Greece, saddled with debt, fell to 90th.
The report looked at broader trends: While the U.S. slipped, emerging markets gained traction. China took 26th place, highest among major emerging economies; Brazil was 53rd; India was 56th; and Russia was 66th.
"Fiscal imbalances that have been building up around the world are really a danger to future competitiveness, in terms of the ability of countries to invest in those things that will be very important for competitiveness going forward, things like education, infrastructure and so on," said Jennifer Blanke, an economist with the forum."

Americans flee north of the border for jobs. “Americans make up the second-largest group of temporary workers in Canada, only behind Filipinos, most of whom work as nannies.”

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

And how's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?...cont:

Median Male Worker Makes Less Now Than 43 Years Ago.

North Dakota's economic 'miracle' - it's not oil - English pravda.ru




"North Dakota has had the nation's lowest unemployment ever since the economy tanked. What's its secret?

In an article in The New York Times on August 19th titled "The North Dakota Miracle," Catherine Rampell writes:

Forget the Texas Miracle. Let's instead take a look at North Dakota, which has the lowest unemployment rate and the fastest job growth rate in the country.

According to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today, North Dakota had an unemployment rate of just 3.3 percent in July-that's just over a third of the national rate (9.1 percent), and about a quarter of the rate of the state with the highest joblessness (Nevada, at 12.9 percent).

North Dakota has had the lowest unemployment in the country (or was tied for the lowest unemployment rate in the country) every single month since July 2008.

Its healthy job market is also reflected in its payroll growth numbers. . . . [Y]ear over year, its payrolls grew by 5.2 percent. Texas came in second, with an increase of 2.6 percent.

Why is North Dakota doing so well? For one of the same reasons that Texas has been doing well il!

Oil is certainly a factor, but it is not what has put North Dakota over the top. Alaska has roughly the same population as North Dakota and produces nearly twice as much oil, yet unemployment in Alaska is running at 7.7 percent. Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming have all benefited from a boom in energy prices, with Montana and Wyoming extracting much more gas than North Dakota has. The Bakken oil field stretches across Montana as well as North Dakota, with the greatest Bakken oil production coming from Elm Coulee Oil Field in Montana. Yet Montana's unemployment rate, like Alaska's, is 7.7% percent.

A number of other mineral-rich states were initially not affected by the economic downturn, but they lost revenues with the later decline in oil prices. North Dakota is the only state to be in continuous budget surplus since the banking crisis of 2008. Its balance sheet is so strong that it recently reduced individual income taxes and property taxes by a combined $400 million, and is debating further cuts. It also has the lowest foreclosure rate and lowest credit card default rate in the country, and it has had NO bank failures in at least the last decade.

If its secret isn't oil, what is so unique about the state? North Dakota has one thing that no other state has: its own state-owned bank.

Access to credit is the enabling factor that has fostered both a boom in oil and record profits from agriculture in North Dakota. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) does not compete with local banks but partners with them, helping with capital and liquidity requirements. It participates in loans, provides guarantees, and acts as a sort of mini-Fed for the state. In 2010, according to the BND's annual report:

The Bank provided Secured and Unsecured Federal Fund Lines to 95 financial institutions with combined lines of over $318 million for 2010. Federal Fund sales averaged over $13 million per day, peaking at $36 million in June.

The BND also has a loan program called Flex PACE, which allows a local community to provide assistance to borrowers in areas of jobs retention, technology creation, retail, small business, and essential community services. In 2010, according to the BND annual report:

The need for Flex PACE funding was substantial, growing by 62 percent to help finance essential community services as energy development spiked in western North Dakota. Commercial bank participation loans grew to 64 percent of the entire $1.022 billion portfolio.

The BND's revenues have also been a major boost to the state budget. It has contributed over $300 million in revenues over the last decade to state coffers, a substantial sum for a state with a population less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County. According to a study by the Center for State Innovation, from 2007 to 2009 the BND added nearly as much money to the state's general fund as oil and gas tax revenues did (oil and gas revenues added $71 million while the Bank of North Dakota returned $60 million). Over a 15-year period, according to other data, the BND has contributed more to the state budget than oil taxes have.

North Dakota's money and banking reserves are being kept within the state and invested there. The BND's loan portfolio shows a steady uninterrupted increase in North Dakota lending programs since 2006.

According to the annual BND report:

Financially, 2010 was our strongest year ever. Profits increased by nearly $4 million to $61.9 million during our seventh consecutive year of record profits. Earnings were fueled by a strong and growing deposit base, brought about by a surging energy and agricultural economy. We ended the year with the highest capital level in our history at just over $325 million. The Bank returned a healthy 19 percent ROE, which represents the state's return on its investment.

A 19 percent return on equity! How many states are getting that sort of return on their Wall Street investments?

Timothy Canova is Professor of International Economic Law at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. In a June 2011 paper called "The Public Option: The Case for Parallel Public Banking Institutions," he compares North Dakota's financial situation to California's. He writes of North Dakota and its state-owned bank:

The state deposits its tax revenues in the Bank, which in turn ensures that a high portion of state funds are invested in the state economy. In addition, the Bank is able to remit a portion of its earnings back to the state treasury . . . . Thanks in part to these institutional arrangements, North Dakota is the only state that has been in continuous budget surplus since before the financial crisis and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

He then compares the dire situation in California:

In contrast, California is the largest state economy in the nation, yet without a state-owned bank, is unable to steer hundreds of billions of dollars in state revenues into productive investment within the state. Instead, California deposits its many billions in tax revenues in large private banks which often lend the funds out-of-state, invest them in speculative trading strategies (including derivative bets against the state's own bonds), and do not remit any of their earnings back to the state treasury. Meanwhile, California suffers from constrained private credit conditions, high unemployment levels well above the national average, and the stagnation of state and local tax receipts. The state's only response has been to stumble from one budget crisis to another for the past three years, with each round of spending cuts further weakening its economy, tax base, and credit rating.

Not all states have oil, of course (and it's hardly a sustainable economic basis), but all could learn from the state-owned bank that allows North Dakota to capitalize on its resources to full advantage. States that deposit their revenues and invest their capital in large Wall Street banks are giving this economic opportunity away."

Maybe something is this view, or not.

Originally Posted by sabang

Enjoy yerselves while 'nanny states' eat yer lunch.

Nanny States will never eat anyone's lunch because they are predicated on 'others' money. Some factual statements:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity

2. What one person receives without working for...another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation

Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy

"Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Economic policy in the United States and Europe has failed, and people are suffering.

Economic policy failed for three reasons:

(1) policymakers focused on enabling offshoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign countries, such as China and India, where labor is inexpensive;

(2) policymakers permitted financial deregulation that unleashed fraud and debt leverage on a scale previously unimaginable;

(3) policymakers responded to the resulting financial crisis by imposing austerity on the population and running the printing press in order to bail out banks and prevent any losses to the banks regardless of the cost to national economies and innocent parties.

Jobs offshoring was made possible because the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in China and India opening their vast excess supplies of labor to Western exploitation. Pressed by Wall Street for higher profits, US corporations relocated their factories abroad. Foreign labor working with Western capital, technology, and business know-how is just as productive as US labor. However, the excess supplies of labor (and lower living standards) mean that Indian and Chinese labor can be hired for less than labor’s contribution to the value of output. The difference flows into profits, resulting in capital gains for shareholders and performance bonuses for executives.

As reported by Manufacturing and Technology News (September 20, 2011) the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages reports that in the last 10 years, the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent. http://www.manufacturingnews.com/

These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to offshoring. Some are the result of business failures.

US politicians, such as Buddy Roemer, blame the collapse of US manufacturing on Chinese competition and “unfair trade practices.” However, it is US corporations that move their factories abroad, thus replacing domestic production with imports. Half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations.

The wage differential is substantial. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of 2009 average hourly take-home pay for US workers was $23.03. Social insurance expenditures add $7.90 to hourly compensation and benefits paid by employers add $2.60 per hour for a total labor compensation cost of $33.53.

In China, as of 2008 total hourly labor cost was $1.36, and India’s is within a few cents of this amount. Thus, a corporation that moves 1,000 jobs to China saves
saves $32,000 every hour in labor cost. These savings translate into higher stock prices and executive compensation, not in lower prices for consumers who are left unemployed by the labor arbitrage.

Republican economists blame “high” US wages for the current high rate of unemployment. However, US wages are about the lowest in the developed world. They are far below hourly labor cost in Norway ($53.89), Denmark ($49.56), Belgium ($49.40), Austria ($48.04), and Germany ($46.52). The US might have the world’s largest economy, but its hourly workers rank 14th on the list of the best paid. Americans also have a higher unemployment rate. The “headline” rate that the media hypes is 9.1 percent, but this rate does not include any discouraged workers or workers forced into part-time jobs because no full-time jobs are available.

The US government has another unemployment rate (U6) that includes workers who have been too discouraged to seek a job for six months or less. This unemployment rate is over 16 percent. Statistician John Williams (Shadowstats.com) estimates the unemployment rate when long-term discouraged workers (more than six months) are included. This rate is over 22 percent.

Most emphasis is on the lost manufacturing jobs. However, the high speed Internet has made it possible to offshore many professional service jobs, such as software engineering, Information Technology, research and design. Jobs that comprised ladders of upward mobility for US college graduates have been moved offshore, thus reducing the value to Americans of many university degrees. Unlike former times, today an increasing number of graduates return home to live with their parents as there are insufficient jobs to support their independent existence.

All the while, the US government allows in each year one million legal immigrants, an unknown number of illegal immigrants, and a large number of foreign workers on H-1B and L-1 work visas. In other words, the policies of the US government maximize the unemployment rate of American citizens.

Republican economists and politicians pretend that this is not the case and that unemployed Americans consist of people too lazy to work who game the welfare system. Republicans pretend that cutting unemployment benefits and social assistance will force “lazy people who are living off the taxpayers” to go to work.

To deal with the adverse impact on the economy from the loss of jobs and consumer demand from offshoring, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates in order to create a real estate boom. Lower interest rates pushed up real estate prices. People refinanced their houses and spent the equity. Construction, furniture and appliance sales boomed. But unlike previous expansions based on rising real income, this one was based on an increase in consumer indebtedness.

There is a limit to how much debt can increase in relation to income, and when this limit was reached, the bubble popped.

When consumer debt could rise no further, the large fraudulent component in mortgage-backed derivatives and the unreserved swaps (AIG, for example) threatened financial institutions with insolvency and froze the banking system. Banks no longer trusted one another. Cash was hoarded. Treasury Secretary Paulson, browbeat Congress into massive taxpayer loans to financial institutions that functioned as casinos. The Paulson Bailout (TARP) was large but insignificant compared to the $16.1 trillion (a sum larger than US GDP or national debt) that the Federal Reserve lent to private financial institutions in the US and Europe.

In making these loans, the Federal Reserve violated its own rules. At this point, capitalism ceased to function. The financial institutions were “too big to fail,” and thus taxpayer subsidies took the place of bankruptcy and reorganization. In a word, the US financial system was socialized as the losses of the American financial institutions were transferred to taxpayers.

European banks were swept up into the financial crisis by their unwitting purchase of the junk financial instruments marketed by Wall Street. The financial junk had been given investment grade rating by the same incompetent agency that recently downgraded US Treasury bonds.

The Europeans had their own bailouts, often with American money (Federal Reserve loans). All the while Europe was brewing an additional crisis of its own. By joining the European Union and (except for the UK) accepting a common European currency, the individual member countries lost the services of their own central banks as creditors.

In the US and UK the two countries’ central banks can print money with which to purchase US and UK debt. This is not possible for member countries in the EU.

When financial crisis from excessive debt hit the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) their central banks could not print euros in order to buy up their bonds, as the Federal Reserve did with “quantitative easing.” Only the European Central Bank (ECB) can create euros, and it is prevented by charter and treaty from printing euros in order to bail out sovereign debt.

In Europe, as in the US, the driver of economic policy quickly became saving the private banks from losses on their portfolios. A deal was struck with the socialist government of Greece, which represented the banks and not the Greek people. The ECB would violate its charter and together with the IMF, which would also violate its charter, would lend enough money to the Greek government to avoid default on its sovereign bonds to the private banks that had purchased the bonds. In return for the ECB and IMF loans and in order to raise the money to repay them, the Greek government had to agree to sell to private investors the national lottery, Greece’s ports and municipal water systems, a string of islands that are a national preserve, and in addition to impose a brutal austerity on the Greek people by lowering wages, cutting social benefits and pensions, raising taxes, and laying off or firing government workers.

In other words, the Greek population is to be sacrificed to a small handful of foreign banks in Germany, France and the Netherlands.

The Greek people, unlike “their” socialist government, did not regard this as a good deal. They have been in the streets ever since.

Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the ECB, said that the austerity imposed on Greece was a first step. If Greece did not deliver on the deal, the next step was for the EU to take over Greece’s political sovereignty, make its budget, decide its taxation, decide its expenditures and from this process squeeze out enough from Greeks to repay the ECB and IMF for lending Greece the money to pay the private banks.

In other words, Europe under the EU and Jean-Claude Trichet is a return to the most extreme form of feudalism in which a handful of rich are pampered at the expense of everyone else.

This is what economic policy in the West has become–a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population.

On September 21 the Federal Reserve announced a modified QE 3. The Federal Reserve announced that the bank would purchase $400 billion of long-term Treasury bonds over the next nine months in an effort to drive long-term US interest rates even further below the rate of inflation, thus maximizing the negative rate of return on the purchase of long-term Treasury bonds. The Federal Reserve officials say that this will lower mortgage rates by a few basis points and renew the housing market.

The officials say that QE 3, unlike its predecessors, will not result in the Federal Reserve printing more dollars in order to monetize US debt. Instead, the central bank will raise money for the bond purchases by selling holdings of short-term debt. Apparently, the Federal Reserve believes it can do this without raising short-term interest rates, because back during the recent debt-ceiling-government-shutdown-crisis, the Federal Reserve promised banks that it would keep the short-term interest rate (essentially zero) constant for two years.

The Fed’s new policy will do far more harm than good. Interest rates are already negative. To make them more so will have no positive effect. People aren’t buying houses because interest rates are too high, but because they are either unemployed or worried about their jobs and do not see a recovering economy.

Already insurance companies can make no money on their investments. Consequently, they are unable to build their reserves against claims. Their only alternative is to raise their premiums. The cost of a homeowner’s policy will go up by more than the cost of a mortgage will decline. The cost of health insurance will go up. The cost of car insurance will rise. The Federal Reserve’s newly announced policy will impose more costs on the economy than it will reduce.

In addition, in America today savings earn nothing. Indeed, they produce an ongoing loss as the interest rate is below the inflation rate. The Federal Reserve has interest rates so low that only professionals who are playing arbitrage with algorithm-programmed computer models can make money. The typical saver and investor can get nothing on bank CDs, money market funds, municipal and government bonds. Only high risk debt, such as Greek and Spanish bonds, pay an interest rate that is higher than inflation.

For four years interest rates, when properly measured, have been negative. Americans are getting by, maintaining living standards, by consuming their capital. Even those with a cushion are eating their seed corn. The path that the US economy is on means that the number of Americans without resources to sustain them will be rising. Considering the extraordinary political incompetence of the Democratic Party, the right wing of the Republican Party, which is committed to eliminating income support programs, could find itself in power. If the right-wing Republicans implement their program, the US will be beset with political and social instability. As Gerald Celente says, “when people have have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”"

This piece is very US centric but it could apply to any "western" style countries - that has the ability to print money.

Check out this parody. Sung to the tune of House of the Rising Sun.

There is a fraud in Washington
They call the President
And he never did a worthwhile thing
Any where he went.
His mother was an airhead
Haight-Ashbury type.
His father was a worthless jerk
Full of left-wing hype.
Now the only thing this faker knows
Is how to read and grin.
And the only thing that interests him
Is that next term to win.
Now voters, do your duty
Give him the one and done
Throw him and all the lib’rals out
And clean up Washington.
Reduce the size of government.
Repeal Obamacare.
Set limits on all Congress terms
And make the budget square.
Don’t let the left wing break us
With welfare and food stamps
And years of unearned benefits
For aliens and tramps.



Grouchy Old Cripple

Here's a report from the ECRI: Ouch.
--
Weakness in leading economic indicators has become so pervasive the Economic Cycle Research Institute now predicts a new recession is unavoidable.

"The vicious cycle is starting where lower sales, lower production, lower employment and lower income [leads] back to lower sales," co-founder Lakshman Achuthan declares in the accompanying video.

Whereas Achuthan said the jury is still out in late August, the weakness in leading economic indicators — and ECRI uses a dozen for the U.S. alone, he notes — has become a "contagion" that is spreading like "wildfire."

Although the recovery has been "subpar" by nearly every measure, Achuthan refutes the idea the economy never got out of recession in the first place. "Just because it looks and feels a certain way doesn't mean it's a recession," he says. "You haven't seen anything yet. It's going to get a lot worse."

It's too soon to predict just how bad it's going to get, but he expects another spike in unemployment and further expansion of the federal government's $1 trillion deficit. This forecast has huge ramifications for the 2012 election and the already struggling U.S. consumer and Achuthan says a "mild" recession is the best-case scenario.

By now you may be wondering what separates ECRI's recession call from the myriad other recession calls out there. First, ECRI's primary raison d'etre is predicting recession and recovery calls. Second, and more importantly, The Economist reports ECRI has never issued a "false alarm" on a recession call, meaning many of the Chicken Littles currently declaring "the sky is falling" might actually be right this time around.

It's Going to Get a Lot Worse�: ECRI’s Achuthan Says New Recession Unavoidable | Daily Ticker - Yahoo! Finance

Economic Cycle Research Institute | Public Home | ECRI

CBO: Obama Jobs Act Would Increase 2012 Deficit By $288 Billion

Why sure, let's pass it, eh?



The Congressional Budget Office reports that the “American Jobs Act” would make the federal deficit jump $288 billion in 2012. In other words, the 2012 deficit would rise by about twenty-five percent — from $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion. The most recent budget fight between Republicans and Democrats resulted in just a $22 billion cut to the 2012 deficit.
The CBO predicts that over 10 years the American Jobs Act would raise enough taxes to pay for the short-term stimulus:
CBO estimates that enacting the bill would increase the budget deficit by $288 billion in 2012 and decrease deficits by $3 billion over the 2012–2021 period. That estimated deficit reduction of $3 billion over the coming decade is the net effect of $447 billion in additional spending and tax cuts in titles II through III and $450 billion in additional tax revenue from the offsets specified in title IV."

Fundamentally transforming America...that's for sure!

Originally Posted by OhOh

Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy

"Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Economic policy in the United States and Europe has failed, and people are suffering.

.....Jobs offshoring was made possible because the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in China and India opening their vast excess supplies of labor to Western exploitation. Pressed by Wall Street for higher profits, US corporations relocated their factories abroad. Foreign labor working with Western capital, technology, and business know-how is just as productive as US labor.

Thanks for putting up anything by Paul Craig Roberts. He's solid.

Again, I recommend his book: "How the Economy was Lost."

Indeed, after the fall of the USSR and the opening up of China by Deng Xiaping, the influx of western companies to chase the cheaper labor really took off.

"non tradable domestic service jobs" are left in the US.

An example of globilisation is the UK Dyson Company.

A British company originally developed a "revolutionary" vacuum cleaner. Advertising and technical ability made it a hit around the world.

The company management, now listed on the stock exchange and owned by many "overseas" entities, decided to move "production" overseas to maximise profits.

The company, although it headlines a different tale, has now moved R&D along with marketing overseas.

The UK now has the following facilities, similar to any local market. A local distribution centre and a local sales office.

The "company", still listed on the UK stockmarket, is judged to be a success due to continuing sales and revenue on it's UK books.

The value to the UK economy has shrunk from a full design, construct, manage company to a financial bookkeeping company. The jobs that historically would have supported many UK citizens and employed graduates have been sent overseas by the multinational "owners/management" of the company to maximise their profits.

Any employment opportunities, other than warehousing or bookkeeping, have been shipped overseas.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Any employment opportunities, other than warehousing or bookkeeping, have been shipped overseas.

True. Fact. Exactly.

But is this, on the mainstream media?

This started (as we discussed,a few decades ago). Now, we are feeling the results. This is permanent. But what's pathetic, is that politics is even mentioned. What's the point?
--
Recession officially over, but US incomes kept falling
Drop appears to be the largest in several decades, Census Bureau data shows

By ERIC DASH
updated 10/10/2011

In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.

Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June 2009 — household income fell 3.2 percent.

The finding helps explain why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even as the economy has been growing. Unhappiness and anger have come to dominate the political scene, including the early stages of the 2012 presidential campaign.

President Obama recently called the economic situation “an emergency,” and over the weekend he assailed Congressional Republicans for opposing his jobs bill, which includes tax cuts that would raise take-home pay. Republicans blame Mr. Obama for the slump, saying he has issued a blizzard of regulations and promised future tax increases that have hurt business and consumer confidence.

Entire: NYT: Recession officially over, but US incomes kept falling - Business - US business - The New York Times - msnbc.com

Originally Posted by barbaro

True. Fact. Exactly.

I was a little over simplifying there.

There is a shortage of a decent Butler, pheasant beaters, shotgun loaders, willing housemaids and of course the general cap tapper.

Another Blow to Obamanomics… 2 Anti-Keynesians Win Nobel Prize for Economics

Two anti-Keynesians won this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics.
Investor’s Business Daily reported:

Failed Policy: The Nobel Prize for Economics goes to two Americans who have separately exposed the flaws in government stimulus spending. For a Keynesian president, it’s the Anti-Peace Prize.
When President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during his first year in office, detractors said it was for doing nothing.
That can’t be said for of New York University and Princeton’s Christopher Sims, whose macroeconomics work has been of invaluable help to central bankers and other economic policymakers, and for which they now share this year’s economics Nobel.
Sargent’s discoveries in particular echo the rationale Republican leaders in Congress have presented in opposing the massive Democratic stimulus spending during the first two years of the Obama administration — that such spending seeks to give the economy nothing more than what House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan over the weekend aptly called a “sugar high.”
As the New York Sun pointed out Monday, Sargent has also criticized Obama’s stimulus policies specifically. It pointed to an interview a year ago in which he called the calculations of the Obama Council of Economic Advisers “surprisingly naive for 2009.”
According to Sargent, “They were not informed by what we learned after 1945″ regarding fiscal policy. He suspected the council “was asked to do something quickly, and they did what they thought was ‘good enough for government work,’ as some of us said during my days at the Pentagon.”

Government as a jobs killer - good piece:

I guess Obama doesn’t know that the Transcontinental Railroad was a Solyndra-like Big Government scandal. The railroad didn’t make economic sense at the time, so the government subsidized construction and gave the companies huge quantities of the best land on the continent.


As we should expect, without market discipline — profit and loss — contractors ripped off the taxpayers. After all, if you get paid by the amount of track you lay, you’ll lay more track than necessary.


Credit Mobilier, the first rail construction company, made enormous profits by overcharging for its work. To keep the subsidies flowing, it made big contributions to congressmen.
Where have we heard that recently?


The transcontinental railroad lost tons of money. The government never covered its costs, and most rail lines that used the tracks went bankrupt or continued to be subsidized by taxpayers.
The Union Pacific and Northern Pacific — all those rail lines we learned about in history class — milked the taxpayer and then went broke.


One line worked. The Great Northern never went bankrupt. It was the railroad that got no subsidies.


Government is the biggest job killer | John Stossel | Columnists | Washington Examiner

The Obungler certainly never studied history - or anything else for that matter...

A new Gallop Poll is out where Americans blame government for the economy. “When asked whom they blame more for the poor economy, 64% of Americans name the federal government and 30% say big financial institutions. 78% say Wall Street bears a great deal or a fair amount of blame for the economy; 87% say the same about Washington.”

So much for those Flea Baggers and their failed 'message', eh?

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

A new Gallop Poll is out where Americans blame government for the economy. “When asked whom they blame more for the poor economy, 64% of Americans name the federal government and 30% say big financial institutions. 78% say Wall Street bears a great deal or a fair amount of blame for the economy; 87% say the same about Washington.”

So much for those Flea Baggers and their failed 'message', eh?

I agree that the federal gov, wall street/financials are responsible.

But the entire government economic policy for the last 65 years has been to outsource and offshore jobs overseas.

The US is now left with the result of this intentional economic policy.

A lower standard of living and this standard of living will continue to decline for decades.

As I stated before, it's the comparative advantage mantra of David Ricardo that is 200 years old.

Nothing will change in the USA. It's too late.