Recent comments

  • Right on brother. You hit the nail on the head. The Russians have become the "Phantom" bogeyman...a mythical source of evil. Surely the Dems can not believe they could have lost the election by themselves it had to be some mystical power that captured the DNC computers. By the way, did I miss something: Are we at war with Russia for them to qualify as the phantom bogeyman?? I thought with some clever foreign policy, we might make them into allies if we found common ground. To me the shock is the CIA wiretapping of Americans and then gifting their illegal derived data to the NSA for them to pass it on to the press. What I don't hear about are the criminal investigations into this activity. Where is the Justice Department on these criminal acts?

    Reply to: It’s Time for a Rant about this Trump/Russia Foolishness!   7 years 6 months ago
    EPer:
  • There is so much.
    One side wants preferential tax policies that favor people with money and profits over people who earn money and produce profits. They want freedom from Government (taxes and regulations) and favors from Government (contracts, services and bailouts). They favor trade treaties that benefit global corporations at the expense of our Nation and its citizens. They decry illegal immigration but savor using self-imported slave labor.
    The other side believes the answer to any problem is one more Government program. They place redistribution of existing wealth above creation of more wealth. They identify with women, blacks, LBGTs, Hispanics, Muslims, the poor…………. with the concerns average working Americans thrown in as an afterthought. They support those who have entered the Nation illegally at expense of those Americans at the bottom of the income ladder.
    Neither side wants their constituents to pay taxes, both sides want their spending priorities and neither side wants responsibility for the resulting debt. Both sides lack the courage to break from the policies of Empire and perpetual war that are the driving forces behind our accelerating decline.
    Take this as the tip of the iceberg.

    Reply to: Prevailing Truths   7 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • could you elaborate on your last sentence.

    Reply to: Prevailing Truths   7 years 7 months ago
    EPer:
  • The worse is finding the specifics on data. The import/export prices are truly revised over and over and the raw categories is almost impossible to find. We know that crude is less of a percentage yet here is the deficit roaring back, taking a chunk out of the economy.

    Reply to: 4th Quarter GDP Revised to Show Growth at a 2.1% Rate   7 years 8 months ago
    EPer:
  • Do tell what connection they have and what evidence is and where is based? Have you read his other articles?and i thought only media neoconservative clown proping propaganda mouth picez and pseudo democrats where spinning bs.

    Reply to: Prevailing Truths   7 years 8 months ago
    EPer:
  • A lot going on with "immigration" gets into such hype and fake news, statistical lies, it becomes impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. But...services I believe including imported foreigners just placed in the U.S. Say a corporation outsources it's support to India, but if that company establishes itself as a U.S. division, yet has all workers on work Visas from India, I believe that counts as a service export instead of an import.

    Reply to: Trade Deficit, Up 9.6% in January, on Track to Clip 78 Basis Points from Q1 GDP   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • our trade in services surplus is in jeopardy there have been widespread reports that tourism to the US will be way down because of the travel ban fiasco and the stepped up aggressiveness of DHS...even a Canadian group put out an advisory against travelling to the US....for the next several months, a lot of those tourist dollars wont be there to offset our massive trade imbalance in goods...

    Reply to: Trade Deficit, Up 9.6% in January, on Track to Clip 78 Basis Points from Q1 GDP   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • “non-existent “Russian connections”” This is as delusional as any neocon’s belief in WMDs or any liberal’s belief that illegal immigration is a good thing. That being said the remainder of your post is spot on. The Military Industrial Security Complex (MISC) has been suckling at the Government tit for 70 years and now our great savior is pouring even more resources into its black hole. The 2016 election showed that both sides can be wrong for America for entirely different reasons.

    Reply to: Prevailing Truths   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • That's quite a jump and oil shouldn't be the reason either.

    Reply to: Trade Deficit, Up 9.6% in January, on Track to Clip 78 Basis Points from Q1 GDP   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • It is now 2017. Perhaps it is time for an update on this article. I know I never re-entered the workforce. Still ready, willing, and able to work.

    Reply to: Long-Term Unemployed Baby Boomers in 2013   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I was laid off along with 39 other people during the recession following 2008. This was after going three years without a pay raise as the company explained they were having financial difficulties. I had it on the word of the person doing the bookkeeping that this comoany was NOT in troubke and rather enjoying great profits. At the time I was 58 years of age. As weeks turned to months, then to years of unemployment despite a wide job search and canvassing, both in and out of my field, all I could think was thank God I wasnt 49 as I would not be able to sustain myself long enough to collect a meager pension and Social Security. I could not obtain even a minimum wage job in retail ( "overqualified") The indignity of being left to rot with nothing but television and walking has left me chronically depressed and at times suicidal. The part that galls me the most is the company I once worked for simply picked up stakes, moved to another nearby town and hired completely new, more cost-effective staff. I am part of the living dead. Noone cares. When I finally collected my social security I officially declared I was not retiring, I stated I was unemployed with no other options. The clerk at SS said she hears that a lot. I explained I possess literacy skills and am highly computer literate. I refuse to join AARP for this reason. It just today came to my attention that my spouse enrolled me in AARP. I intend to write a letter and recind my membership as I am not retired, I am unemployed for seven and a half years. I am not a retiree. Ready, willing and able to work. Noone will give older workers a chance, yet we are told to reinvent ourselves. I hear you about wanting to belt them hard. One day I just may.

    Reply to: Long-Term Unemployed Baby Boomers in 2013   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Surprise, surprise, surprise so the skank businessman who‘s been ripping people off for years has given the pipeline steel contract to a Russian oligarch who is a close associate to Putin. Democrats, as you pointed out, are doubling down on kicking Americans while they’re down in their support of illegal immigrants and refugees. Democrats are the only Party who could jump off a bridge and miss the water. Republicans would give tax credits to a Russian gangster to build the bridge, charge a toll and pollute the water.

    Reply to: 4th Quarter GDP Growth Remains at a 1.9% Rate   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Truly, this revision was deceptive since the end result was no change and most probaby missed the revisions and how the trade deficit ate up all of the gains.

    Here is the original GDP release overview or comparison's sake.

    Let's just hope Trump gets somewhere with improving the trade situation. So far, he caved on US products for a pipeline, imported, not U.S. steel and seems to be just wrecking the environment as an accomplishment while liberals chant racism and shove unlimited immigration down the throats of America.
    Somehow I don't think the GOP is going to give America what it needs to reduce costs, universal single payer health care, so if he caves on Trade the silver lining is gone. Seems to be disappearing very fast.

    Reply to: 4th Quarter GDP Growth Remains at a 1.9% Rate   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • i'm seeing several media articles a day about how the OPEC cuts will restrict supply, and they're invariably cited as the reason for each oil price rise...but there it is, in black and white, two tables from OPEC own very wonkish global analysis of production and consumption that clearly say gloabl oil supply still exceeds demand by a bunch..

    Reply to: Despite OPEC Cuts, Global Glut Grows A Million Barrels a Day   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • This is really just shocking since I heard peak oil and supply will start to run out so often and in 2017, oversupply with dramatic production cuts.

    Reply to: Despite OPEC Cuts, Global Glut Grows A Million Barrels a Day   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • November trade deficit was revised higher from the originally reported $45.24 billion to $45.73 billion, and trade figures for every prior month of 2016 were also revised, meaning that prior quarter over quarter figures for GDP will have to be revised as well...in the advance report on 4th quarter GDP of two weeks ago, our December trade deficit was estimated based on the sketchy Advance Report on our International Trade in Goods which was released just before the GDP release...that report estimated that our December goods trade deficit was at $65.0 million, on goods exports of $125.5 billion and goods imports of $190.5 billion...this report revises that and shows that our actual goods trade deficit in December was at $65.7 billion on adjusted goods imports of $192.6 billion and adjusted goods exports of $126.9 billion...in addition, the November trade deficit was revised higher by nearly $0.5 billion…just those two revisions from the previously published data mean that the 4th quarter trade deficit in goods was roughly $1.2 billion more than was included in last week's GDP report, or roughly $4.9 billion on an annualized basis, which would subtract about 0.11 percentage points from 4th quarter GDP....

    however, trade in goods for July, August, September and October, which all go into figuring the change in GDP, were also revised with this report as well...to assess those changes, we can view the all previously published trade details in the pdf for November's trade report, and then compare them to the revised numbers in the pdf for December's trade report....without going into too much detail or attempting to adjust for fractional inflation factors, the net trade deficit for July was revised from $39,626 million to $39,977 million, the net trade deficit for August was revised from $39,626 million to $39,977 million, the net trade deficit for September was revised from $39,626 million to $39,977 million, and the net trade deficit for October was revised from $39,626 million to $39,977 million...that means the trade deficit in the 3rd quarter was roughly $1.05 billion more than was reported by the GDP report, which they would have reported at a $4.2 billion annual rate, and hence the change in the deficit from the 3rd quarter to the 4th quarter was that much smaller ...those 3rd quarter revisions would thus add about 0.10 percentage points back to the change 4th quarter GDP, ie, make it less negative than was reported in the advance report...

    Reply to: Over Half a Trillion 2016 Trade Deficit   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • There is much more that goes into inventories than the industrial component, it's in the BEA NIPA handbook...but they also get revision data that can go into GDP but is not yet published in monthly reports. I think they believe no one would bother to track to this level, yet many do and one would think they would simply make it easier on the public since so many do. Maybe it's job security.

    Reply to: Q4 GDP A Bumbling 1.9%   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • it's pretty easy to figure the variance in those reports, where they actually give you what their estimate for the 3rd month of the quarter was when they computed the advance GDP report...others, like the trade deficit, are not so easy...and i still haven't figured out what makes inventories tick...based on my assumptions, i seem to be missing their eventual impact by quite a bit every month..

    Reply to: Q4 GDP A Bumbling 1.9%   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • But that's none too good. There was a report about GDP still having seasonality in it, despite adjustments on the BEA website.

    Reply to: Q4 GDP A Bumbling 1.9%   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • wednesday's report showed that construction spending for all three months of the 4th quarter was higher than was reported by the BEA in their advance estimate last Friday....annualized construction spending for October was revised $7.25 billion higher, and annualized construction spending for November was revised $2.3 billion higher...in reporting 4th quarter GDP, the BEA's technical note (pdf) indicated that they had estimated December residential construction would be $2.2 billion more than that of the previously reported November figure, with single family construction valued at $249.4 billion and multifamily valued at $62.3 billion, and that December nonresidential construction would be $428.0 billion, $1.9 billion less than that of the reported November figure...with this report, December residential construction spending of 466,938 was up by $2.154 billion from the revised November figure, with new single family construction at $250,359 million and new multifamily construction at $63,725 million, and December nonresidential construction spending was at $430,053 billion, statistically unchanged from the revised November figure...hence, total construction spending in December was roughly $4.5 billion more than the figures used by the BEA to compute 4th quarter GDP …...hence, the annualized figure for 4th quarter construction spending would have thus averaged $4.67 billion more than the figure used by the BEA when computing 4th quarter GDP, which would mean that Wednesday's report implies a .12 percentage point upward revision to 4th quarter GDP...

    today's factory inventories report indicates the value of non-durable goods' inventories rose by $0.9 billion or 0.4 percent to $241.7 billion, following a revised 1.1% increase in November non-durable inventories...however, the BEA's technical note for 4th quarter GDP indicates that they had estimated that the value of non-durable goods inventories would increase at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $16.9 billion, so that would indicate that they overestimated the 4th quarter GDP inventory component by about $6.1 billion, which would imply that 4th quarter GDP will have to be adjusted downwards by 0.15 percentage points to account for what today's report shows..

    Reply to: Q4 GDP A Bumbling 1.9%   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:

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