The Economic Populist
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BREAKING: Wall Street Mega-Merger!!!
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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 182508 reads
Industrial production, capacity utilization rebound
- 23496 reads
Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
- 29610 reads
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BREAKING: Wall Street Mega-Merger!!!
- 22181 reads
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 182508 reads
Industrial production, capacity utilization rebound
- 23496 reads
Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
- 29610 reads
The Golden Rule
- 1826049 reads
Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
- 1215832 reads
New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
- 361412 reads
VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
- 344997 reads
U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
- 320581 reads
The war on the middle class
- 314607 reads
House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
- 313732 reads
Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
- 279502 reads
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Years from now the obvious will be stated - there was no recovery. And now with consumers disappearing as people can't buy anything as more and more jobs are destroyed/lost, the people in entire sectors will find that there are only so many Lear Jets and Tiffany rings the 1% can buy and it really does matter if 99% of the population don't have living wage jobs. HR, marketing, sales, real estate agents, health (because the unemployed and poor don't visit doctors or buy needed medications) will all suffer and will be among the people they viewed as somehow being damaged because they were "unemployed." US Government and 1%er talking points - meet reality, we've been here awhile, welcome to the club. And when more and more people can't buy goods and services and join the ever-growing unemployed ranks, they too will start railing against Bill "The Unemployed are all Lazy Bums" O'Reilly and MSNBC "Green Shoots are Everywhere" and start to question the American Dream and corporate government.
There is no recovery, it never started. We're in a Depression, both economic and far worse, a deeply social/political one that is tearing this country apart and destroying American citizens all in the name of money and power by a small group of people and companies. The groundwork was laid years ago in free trade and financial deregulation. Their puppets will join the unemployed and suffering, and then the fun really begins.
After number crunching our overviews, I often read the main stream media's take, or lack thereof.
I'm seeing apologists trying to claim Q4 and Q3 GDP are pretty much the same. Uh, no, they are not. Just because inventories increased 0.73 percentage points in Q3 does not negate Q4's -1.55 percentage point plunge. Anyway you slice it, that's bad news and anyone claiming consumer spending is so hot is also not in historical reality. Think about the fact there are more people in the United States, and while GDP is adjusted for inflation, it is not presented per capita.
Finally, the cuts to defense spending, all services, are a shadow of what is about to happen due to Congressional ineptitude.
While there is clearly investment and spending happening, there simply is not enough demand in the economy.
Bottom line, it sure looks like the biggest drag on the economy is Congress and that isn't going to change anytime soon.
Not existing home sales. I usually dig into shadow inventory on existing home sales, but considering the unemployment rate it does seem hard to believe. That's why one needs to look at the graphs. While the surge is from last month, the volume overall is way below 2006. Surge is relative.
Yeah, I know we're all broke, how can anything "surge" under those circumstances.
i think these numbers are complete bulls**t
i believe the banks (saved and funded by the american taxpayer) are keeping loads of distressed inventory off the market to drive prices up.
We live in a walmart nation where that particular company is the countries largest employer and outside of their management employees must are paid non-livable wages. U get my point.
I agree with this article that to help the "middle class" or whats left of it is to allow these homes to deflate to prices which the newly underemployed american can afford. That would be a real housing recovery.
I've said it before (and plenty of others have said it across the globe), people are elected to represent the people that elected them, not those that funded their campaigns, or those they are related to, or have affairs with, or owe business to (or expect business from). They are bound to look out for those that voted for them. In addition, and yes, it's this simple, they have to obey the laws they swore to uphold. There's a reason people have to raise their hands and promise to follow the Constitution (federal and state when appropriate). No one should think these things are "outdated" or "just TV spots." There's a reason people swear oaths - because they mean something. If people break the oaths and laws, there are consequences. When people can do as they please, then they need to step down from public office, stop collecting public salaries, and go away. And if they betray us while in office, then in the pre-globalist days, they were labeled appropriately and tried when appropriate.
Today, for example, the Davos crowd will try to tell us someone selling nuclear secrets to another country is just looking out for nuclear energy companies (and isn't that right, because profits matter above all to them), it's good for generating revenues for many military contracting companies, free trade should never be hindered in any industry, people from all nations have a right to work in our secure facilities (even on visas because they deserve a job no matter what), etc.
Let's keep it simple, oaths, laws, promises, security, treason. Words you won't hear from the elite or globalists.
It is even difficult to extract the facts from economic data. Just hidden, corporations force government agencies to sign NDAs, suppress statistics. Although extract we do often! Right now lobbyists are paying for a tsunami of bullshit ramping up to flood the U.S. market with foreign workers under the cover of "Comprehensive immigration reform" and shock of all shocks, I've seen a few of our articles glorified plagiarized but in a good way. I saw the New York Times and the Atlantic dig into some of the same databases I've used or check to show there is no worker shortage in the U.S., there is a PhD glut, they are not getting jobs. A sliver of hope the real press does their job, for right now it is literally a blizzard of lies, including in the SOTU that importing more foreign workers would "help the economy".
When governments work against the people they are supposed to govern, what's the end game? I think Europe, the Brits have a better chance at stopping this due to their parliamentary systems.
Interesting link just to show what happened at Davos regarding the global crisis of no jobs (which often leads to wars). Basically the elephant in the room of outsourcing and the race to the bottom of free trade was most certainly not mentioned by the globalists.
Here's the link: http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2013/01/25/how-davos-talks-about...
Two things of note. 1) Notice Infosys was there talking about what miracles it does and how great it is for creating jobs. Apparently no one at Davos mentioned that a job outsourced through Infosys or Tata or given to someone on an Infosys visa takes a job away from a citizen of Canada, or the US, or the UK, or elsewhere. Zero-sum game apparently is a foreign concept.
2) And this gem: "WEF founder Klaus Schwab warned in a blog post Europe’s rising unemployment problem, but also wrote that young people will no longer have jobs 'handed to them on a plate; they will have to create them for themselves.'"
Handed to them on a plate?! Seriously? Here in the US, I thought we were studying hard in junior high and high school, taking AP classes, taking the ACT or SAT and every other test under the Sun, enrolling in the most selective college we could get into, studying hard, getting internships, taking grad school exams, working summer jobs, taking professional exams, etc. all the while having our families and ourselves spend saved money and loan money so that one day we could get a job. And often obtaining that education while also working other jobs or meeting other obligations. Not sure if the students in Japanese cram schools preparing endlessly for tests to compete for ever fewer jobs are expecting anything on a plate.
"Handed to them on a plate?" The irony of that statement is that he wouldn't dare question how people and possible attendees with family names like Clinton, Kennedy, Rockefeller, Bush, etc. got their jobs or move from job to job so easily. Davos is the last place to talk about being handed things as if they have a clue about struggle. It must be because those related to famous people and politicians all busted ass, scored in the 99% on every test they ever took, scored all A's in brutally hard classes, took endless entrance and professional tests, etc. worked their way up from nothing all through hard work and brains and honesty. Yes, the elites that profit on connections and corruption lecturing us about work ethic and what it takes to get a job. Thank you for the lesson.
The proof was in the pudding when Obama had a golden opportunity when first in office. They could have nationalized the banks and dramatically cut CEO pay. Instead it was simply used as campaign rhetoric as Geithner, esp. gave carte blanche to the banks and CEOs generally. Hedge fund managers were a major Obama campaign contributor.
Now, we cannot even get Congress to stop tanking the economy over their inane "budget cut" absurdities.
That never stopped us from ranting with numbers and we should not stop.
We will be writing an overview and analysis on tomorrow's Q4 GDP revision. That said, this report doesn't bode well for inventories to be revised upward. We do expect an upward revision due to trade data and for GDP to turn positive. Current guestimate is 0.5% for Q4,
Public servants have written to both administrators and their respective AGs. They don't care. But you'll see, when some politician or wannabe governor or Senator decides to make it an issue, suddenly they will be seen as having tremendous insight and amazing intelligence as they tackle this "outrage." See, it's all in who says and does it. A politician or CEO does something, like taking a crap, it's pure genius. Common man or woman develops a cure for a disease, well, it's only because some CEO somewhere allowed him to breathe the same air as him. Forgive the cynicism, but damn, this country is just breeding it.
I have been so busy with server problems and trying to finish the site, I haven't sat down to crank through raw data as this site is know for. That said, expecting pension fund managers to ask this question, you're going to collect a lot of cobwebs waiting for it.
It's a good question and one I will bookmark. We're perfectly capable of generating that kind of information from raw statistics, first principles. Why this site is popular.
These graphs should go out with the regular mailings regarding the pensions' holdings and performance they have to send. I'm sure when everything is laid out in nice pictures the pension administrators in cities and states across the country would receive quite a few questions like, "Why the Hell does this hedge fund manager underperform the market year-after-year and why does he make $2 billion/yr. when my wife just got fired through austerity that the same manager demanded on TV! And why is he making 40,000 X the median salary I make as a public servant?! He demands punishing the public but gets rich from the same public."
Good times for the administrators and lobbyists.
I can try to get to some statistics on the obscene rise in executive pay vs. pension performance vs. worker wages.
Meritocracy is clearly something for glossy HR brochures and pamphlets that are all about not getting sued and controlling the staff.
That's really the point of this article, to amplify America has grown a super elite class, of the uber-rich similar to the aristocracy or the elite American class of the late 1800's, early 20th Century.
It's a complete joke at this point, they have literally wiped out America as we knew it from even 30 years ago.
Every pension and other fund the middle class pays into (where they still exist) should plot their performance vs. market index performance vs. managers' pay (based on AUM and profits). Then every single person in the fund should have a "yes" or "no" vote on whether the pension should continue allowing this pillage to go on. No closed-door meetings in Sacramento or Austin or Albany, the people who are losing money to poor performance and exorbitant fees decide, not the captured administrators and lobbyists. Worst case for the pension, people have the option of getting out completely because they can see the pension is losing money through outrageous fees and many people would feel better investing themselves vs. financing banksters' Swiss accounts. In addition, the pensions should force Goldman Sachs and other managers to show much their CEOs earn vs. the median salary of the public servants in the pension funds. Why should someone earning $40,000 in a tax-heavy state like NY help fund Blankfein's $32.5 million Hamptons estate while he appears at the White House and on TV complaining about "entitlements" and the need to basically let people rot?
This applies to basically every industry though. The CEO pay is so out-of-whack with actual performance. DOD can cut contracts or contract employees at the bottom rungs earn less and less and are never sure about their next job (sometimes years go by if anything) but the CEOs of these MNCs still collect massive paychecks that dwarf soldiers and civilian contract employees. Health CEOs making huge loot but insurance seems to cover less and less. And forget about those that don't have company-provided insurance (e.g., the unemployed and many other sectors) - they are screwed on monthlies and doomed if they get cancer or some other disease.
Pay for performance has never meant so little. Same with hiring people based on talent, skills, or education. Not true. Heads they win, tails we lose. Hiring, promotions, and pay all reveal the duplicity at all levels.
This is the wrong place for this but to respond, WSJ, executive pay up 8% from last year while layoffs keep coming.
In other words they are just raping the coffers while firing even more people to do so.
Throughout this overview and we do statistics by the book, like it or not, are warnings on the validity of this particular report. Read it and you will see, and we are the only economics site doing overviews which amplifies the margin of error for this reason.
Also, you see comments on how these prices are not affordable. We are assuredly not residential real estate porn or in the tank for the NAR, promoting the claim oh, a return to the housing bubble is all good.
Forbes is an economic, finance tabloid, plenty of lobbyist generated articles there, not here.
No, it's not that simple, and you underestimate, significantly the actual economic impact. Frankly, it gets very old for people thinking up is down and right is left. Government spending adds to economic growth, especially government spending which provides services to the people as well as jobs. That's why this impact is so bad, it's a hatchet job and cuts funding to just those types of government spending.
Take for example, the DoD, they can easily cut projects which do not pay off, large defense contracts on technology that isn't useful, highly costly, but due to this disaster they cannot, they are supposed to cut vital services instead.
I personally could care less who is at fault, although the infamous tea party members need to go to college and take economics 101.
"JPMorgan Chase & Co., (NYSE: JPM) the largest U.S.-based bank, plans to reduce headcount by as much as 19,000 people in its mortgage and community banking businesses by the end of next year"
Of course all these people will be looking to move up to buy those 'new' homes.
Makes sense to me!!!!!!!!!!!!
Total BS and when is this tabloid going to wake up
Enough! Put the blame where it really is. Right square on the WHITE HOUSE and in the President's lap. Why all the BS up top! You know as well as most people with a little since that the government does not need to do any of the above, all that needs to be done is to remove thses funds from all the give away programs to foreign entities. Also, why not state that the true impact would only effect 0.0258 % of spending for Fiscal 2012/2013
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