Excellent article. I've noticed that some people actually have a hostile reaction to hearing the type of insights you present here. It's apparently just too painful for them to face.
Thanks for trying to get folks to wake up. It's probably too late to avoid most of the problems ahead of us, but waking up sooner is sure to be better than waking up later or not at all.
Nice piece. All you have to do is go to the national debt clock and look at the unfunded liabilities we have for Medicare, and Social Security to see that the economic end game is at hand. I'm 30, and I fully expect to be taxed to death in order to help come up with this money (in addition to the benefits cuts that will be bestowed upon the baby boomers). We're like Bethlehem Steel was with astronomical unfunded legacy costs that can never be paid. And the sad part is that the benefits are so needed by the many baby boomers that are ill prepared for retirement.
I want to know why doesn't the media talk about the income disparities, the 1 in 7 Americans on food stamps, federal unfunded liabilities, etc? I think it's because the traditional media is purely entertainment based, and increasingly, I find myself coming to blogs to get unfettered information. The Fed is obviously desperate at this point. The sad thing is the writing has been on the wall for a long time about our economy. This report here: http://www.pwib.org/downloads/GrowFast.pdf outlined in the early 2000's the problems we would(and now are) facing as far as a lack of native born adults in their prime work years, and lack of skills. There's no national will to realize we're in it together, and hence no will to act to take care of the deficit, or unemployment. I believe the worst is still ahead.
I put a call into the DOL and if I ever get a real human, I'll post what else I can dig out. Also, each agency is different to me as well as very different attitudes towards public information and us regular folk questioning or examining these reports. Because I agree with you, it makes no sense during the holidays to have the adjustment be less due to seasonal hires should still be on the job...unless of course the assumption is they are fired right after Xmas.
So, how come during the week of Christmas, would the two be that much off?
I just don't know. This drives me nuts too, they should be publishing, in graphic detail, not only the seasonal adjustments, but their code, their algorithm and the assumptions.
The yearly adjustments on the unemployment report have only been off by a million jobs (not exact but it's a massive error!) which are adjusted after the fact.
While I agree one must make seasonal adjustments, I find it odious the algorithm, the software, the code and the assumptions, well, I cannot find them and when you're off by 200k in a week, I'd say we need some explanation.
I can tell you they assume there are significant seasonal layoffs during January, February, but this is December. I'm pretty sure they do not adjust for major unusual events, such as this week's blizzard.
Finally, initial unemployment claims is notorious as "happy talk", which I've railed against week after week.
The way the numbers are produced, each week appears to be a decline, when in fact it's poor data collection and reporting which causes it.
So, while this was a major event, you notice I make a lot of statements on the weather and believe this will be a data outliner, an anomaly too...
bottom line is we cannot even trust the monthly unemployment report so relying on the weeklies, because a very large time window and a time lag....is a huge error.
I call this the warm fuzzy but not really report. ;)
In other words, what I'm saying is I'll bet it jumps back up to 422k or so next week.
They just forget all about the homeless, the unemployed with no prospect of work, and the damn wars that are bankrupting us. It's all happy talk. Another example of "framed" media is the recent corporate media CNN poll that found "78% of Democrats" support Obama in the next election. They either cooked the question or the results. Nobody is excited about this guy in 2012. This is what's called plausible deniability - creating a fake reality to justify behavior that's clearly wrong and against the nation's interest.
Thanks for reminding me. I'll just repeat OBEY CONSUME several times an hour. Someone just sent me an article about the world starting to look like it did in the Middle Ages, which claimed there were a lot of good things happening in Europe at that time (assuming we'd be like Europe this time around). What a crock. The Middle Ages was only decent for the Church and aristocrats. The vast majority were slaves with no opportunities. Hey, wait a minute, maybe that was the point. We need to happily OBEY and CONSUME.
The nonseasonally adjusted unemployment figure -- which I thought represented actual claims made by real unemployed people -- was 521,834.
I don't understand seasonally adjusted number is so much smaller, especially, as you note, there were numerous events in play to discourage people from filing. If anything, shouldn't the SA number been much higher than the NSA number?
Also -- why is everybody so happy? Isn't the 388,000 more or less a mirage that will disappear in a few weeks, when the holiday workers are dismissed?
Yet with all the above stated undisputed and true, hope floats on a sea of despair. Everyone will continue to desperately pretend things are great and getting better, for to open our eyes and see our world as an illusion is beyond the capacities of our manipulated reasoning.
Better to prepare for the worst, than to live as if every day will be a continuation of the past,for when the system crumbles it will snap suddenly and with much damage like a metal cable under tension that destroys all around it when it fails.
Use these days as few or as many as they may be to prepare for a less energy and money intensive life style.
Shelter, water, food - let these be your goals, learn to acquire and preserve and fill your hearts and minds with knowledge rather than fear and doubt.
Yet with all the above stated undisputed and true, hope floats on a sea of despair. Everyone will continue to desperately pretend things are great and getting better, for to open our eyes and see our world as an illusion is beyond the capacities of our manipulated reasoning.
Better to prepare for the worst, than to live as if every day will be a continuation of the past,for when the system crumbles it will snap suddenly and with much damage like a metal cable under tension that destroys all around it when it fails.
Use these days as few or as many as they may be to prepare for a less energy and money intensive life style.
Shelter, water, food - let these be your goals, learn to acquire and preserve and fill your hearts and minds with knowledge rather than fear and doubt.
The media spin is ridiculous and yes they "frame messaging". If one notices the "news" is trying to make the path that the only way to reduce the deficit of course is to attack social safety nets.
Unfortunately the task that really needs to happen, remove the profits from these for profit health industries, we completely lost. That's where the "budget deficit" needs to cut and that's private, for profit health industries. That's what will bankrupt the nation.
But I'd claim this great media "consensus of economists", is a cherry picked group once again. Like running the Christmas retail sales numbers over and over instead of the record homeless, desperate and needing a job the real America is about.
Truth is stranger than fiction. The only thing for sure is death, taxes and inflation. What used to be the haves and the have nots has become the have everythings and the have nothings. But cheer up, being a slave in america is glorious
Climate Change was JOURNALISM'S Iraq War of lies.
Climate change did to journalism what abusive priests did to religion.
We will never trust mainscream media ever again.
Whether or not property owners should have mortgage loans –and whether or not people realize basis for opposing home repossessions, serious foreclosure frauds are deliberately being done by certain foreclosure lawyers! Even if it became remotely valid to label all defaulted homeowners as deadbeats, NOTHING IS VALID ABOUT real estate racketeering.
Not even ‘the powerful banker’ / lender has authority concerning the judicial Rule of Law. Bankers and lenders ARE NOT the entities who file foreclosure proceedings in civil and in bankruptcy courts; and NEITHER are lenders the persons who record illegal deeds for properties after NULL FORECLOSURE AUCTIONS (which creates defective deeds and all sorts of long term problems).- http://chn.ge/eU2zAm
Intentional foreclosure fraud entails foreclosures naming defunct mortgage companies, or having no ownership of notes; unfair fees beyond “Acceleration Clauses" that impairs borrowers’ ability to repay arrears; falsified Bankruptcy Court motions to “Lift Stay" and falsified “Proof of Claims” for accomplishing"simulated" foreclosure auctions via “straw buyers."
Scores of homeowners do not contest foreclosures because of not having legal knowledge to recognize illegal foreclosures and fraud; they lack funds to pay for attorneys to represent them; and they are told to come to foreclosure auctions with money that they do not have, so they stay away from foreclosure auctions. It is outrageous that there are families living outdoors whose homes have been confiscated via real estate racketeering.
Also, some PREDATORY mortgage loans appear to be issued for the very purpose of people defaulting so that properties can become flipped, repeatedly (hence blight); and lenders gain tax credits, mortgage-default insurance, and more! Too often, not only is it true that the lender DID NOT file foreclosure, certain homes wound up becoming flipped by the foreclosure lawyers who carry out simulated auctions with “straw buyers” who illegally “credit bid”!
Foreclosure lawyers are officers of the court; knowledge of applicable laws and civil procedure is not required from mortgage lenders, nor loan servicers. In states that require judicial foreclosures, FORECLOSURE LAWYERS are the ones who file lawsuits to seize and sell property; and lawyers are responsible for filing and recording foreclosure property deeds. *Request for Congressional Foreclosure Panel to Examine Foreclosure Lawyers @ http://www.change.org/petitions/view/request_for_congressional_foreclosu...
No personal offense intended, but economists are little different from lawyers in this regard.
Try to find an economist immune to the temptation of more money, or one willing to drop the act and communicate in clear language. Honestly schooled, a child can understand the essential truths of this social (and psychological so-called) "science."
On 12/22/08, Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times:
"By selling more to other countries and spending more of our own income on U.S.-produced goods, we could get to full employment without a boom in either consumption or investment spending."
What's changed?
The growing power of multinational money over American politics and propaganda.
This remains true: A standard of living must be supported by a standard of productivity.
Some time before economy experts and Nobel Prizes and stuff, Abraham Lincoln said:
"If we purchase a ton of steel rails from England for twenty dollars, then we have the rails and England the money. But if we buy a ton of steel rails from an American for twenty-five dollars, then America has the rails and the money both."
What multinational campaign financier would allow a U.S. President to say this today?
Thankfully, anyone, even a credentialed expert badly in need of adult supervision, can learn how to follow a money trail.
When non-economists stop expressing their opinions on the economy, we're doomed.
Cable noise for the most part is just that. Even on Dylan Ratigan, who is seemingly trying to cut through the noise on economic issues, he gets on so called "experts" who spin the dialog to promote whatever agenda they are peddling. All of those shows, that's politics as well as pure propaganda media spin, it's not economics. Either is CNBC economics for that matter, but at least Bloomberg TV and a few others have real people on. CNBC would do some "debate" with some propaganda guy on, with an agenda and some other guy on with the data, as if somehow data, statistics is something up for debate? I don't think so unless one wants to 'debate' methods on cable noise.
BTW: Instapopulists are primarily for economic reports, the site is pretty much a "news" site...
but since you wrote up your piece, I'm thinking I need to put on the site a pure question, discussion, poll, quiz type of thing. Would that be useful? A section that is for pure conversations instead of being more of a article/news/quicknews type of thing?
Here is one piece, tax cuts for the rich do not generate jobs, that has some statistics. More references are always linked, so when you see a link, it's almost always a reference for further details/statistics when I write up something.
I think Glenn Beck has up charts and graphs but as I recall he usually takes some event and then misinterprets it to spin to something else.
I think when the Fed absurdly increased the money supply, that was a major Glenn Beck freak out moment. Well, it was one hell of a scary graph, but if you don't take money velocity into the picture, it's more meaningless. Then, it's really to me at least, counter intuitive to think of deflation as being a problem, but it is, it implies a collapse of demand and that's what was starting to go on when they "turned on the money printing presses", they were trying to counteract a deflationary spiral.
Like who intuitively could believe increasing taxes would spur economic growth? Not I, but it's possible under certain conditions.
Your blog on why tax cuts for the wealthy are a bad idea was EXACTLY the kind of information I have been looking for.
I guess the crux of my argument is that people like Sarah Palin and Glen Beck have made a lot of hay out of criticizing "intellectuals," portraying academics and professional economists as "elites" who pretend that these economic issues are complex merely to convince the populace that they should just trust in their leaders and do what they are told when the "truth" is that economics is really easy to understand, as long as you adhere to certain core principles (no government intereference, etc., etc.). Ironically, they make that argument to discourage the populace from doing any serious research or self-education on economic matters (which, as I am discovering is difficult and fairly tedious) and to just trust them that these principles are the right way to go.
I guess that's actually pretty similar to their standard worldview on natural law as well.
One can no more say they want to jump on the Progressive platform, or agenda, or the Democratic platform or agenda as to the GOP platform or agenda and you mention a really good reason! When it comes to labor markets, especially on immigration, facts fly out the window! We even have massive amounts of white paper spin, trying to manipulate the data and claim unlimited migration "helps the economy". That only helps corporations and businesses through increasingly cheap labor, eroding labor laws and rights. You also have so called Progressives believing examining what China is doing is somehow "racist" and "those people need our jobs". It's just absurd in terms of national economies and the winners and losers and yes the U.S. is the loser on this one. So many Progressives are really focused on a political agenda, while they have a few things adopted that make a lot of economic sense, they too won't pay attention to the theory and statistics and get upset when others do.
That said, so many special interests have labeled things "Progressive" for labeling purposes.
On the other side of this, the attack on FDR has been going on since he got into office. The biggest target is social security. FDR's policies do not cause a prolonging of the Great Depression, just as much as Smoot-Hawley did not.
Which reminds me of a Bernanke speech where there is evidence that Gold manipulation helped cause the Great Depression, which is interesting. A lot of it had to do with monetary policy, our fav. bank failures and it was a deflationary spiral which caused demand to collapse. It's a huge topic, but one thing to note is these conservatives trying to attack FDR simply because they have an agenda to destroy what is left of any social safety nets.
This is a layperson's economics blog, so #2 I believe obviously one can, but I'd say at minimum, they need high school calculus, the ability to read a graph at least and the ability to self teach.
On number 1, I'd say no. The reason is having an opinion or even an economist's claim, does not make it so, not at all. They need to learn, not just regurgitate some things they picked up on Fox news, or Glenn Beck or even my writings.
On number 3, that is one of the things this site spends a lot of time on, hard data. There is no "one stop shop" to even get to the raw data, the government has a host of sites that when I write up the overview on, I always link to, and a lot of raw data isn't even tabulated, which is unfortunate.
Economics is hard and it's the dismal science to boot. Take GDP multipliers, where a lot of the theory comes from for Stimulus spending. That's a mistake. If one bothers to read Keynes, he clearly had assumptions for the theory to be valid, the biggest of which the spending must stay in that domestic economy and another which it must go into the pockets of the workers, the people, i.e. direct spending.
On tax cuts for the rich, I've written up a serious of posts which show they simply do not create jobs, so not only does the data show that statement is false, the GDP multipliers, flawed as they are, also show it's false.
One needs to look at the results, where do the rich spend their money? Well, they do not and right now we have massive investments going on....overseas.
On FDR, ya know these people are political, and the politics become obscene when you have people trying to spin with mathematics. I've seen absurd assumptions used for mathematical models, biased data, cherry-picked data, setting a host of variables to "zero" to get the result they want, which is mathematically invalid...
you name it, so these people are not Economists in my view. Economists should not spin numbers, that's politics, not economics.
1. No. Those opinions are wrong and you no more entitled to them than you are entitled to disbelieve in Maxwell's Laws in a electrical engineering project.
2. Yes, by completely ignoring all economists and looking at what historians and the historical record has to say which universally contradicts the religion of economics. Economic is not a science it is a religious apologetic for slavers. See http://www.amazon.com/Economics-As-Religion-Samuelson-Chicago/dp/0271022841
3. No. I believe that this the biggest problem. There are no Corporate Think Tanks on behalf of the truth that do what the Slavertarian Cato institute and other disinformation hubs preaching the Plutocrat dogma.
Truth be told I'm not interested in so-called "progressive economics" policies as I believe that they tend toward a kind of utopian vision regarding immigration and at same time are completely dystopian toward industry and technology leaning toward nonsense Luddite Malthusianism and environmental doomism which is historically a bias of Oligarchism not populism.
What we need is a center for Populist and Nationalist Economics i.e. Protectionism, Dirigism, Producerism, and doctrine of High Wages i.e. the 19th century American School.
Excellent article. I've noticed that some people actually have a hostile reaction to hearing the type of insights you present here. It's apparently just too painful for them to face.
Thanks for trying to get folks to wake up. It's probably too late to avoid most of the problems ahead of us, but waking up sooner is sure to be better than waking up later or not at all.
Nice piece. All you have to do is go to the national debt clock and look at the unfunded liabilities we have for Medicare, and Social Security to see that the economic end game is at hand. I'm 30, and I fully expect to be taxed to death in order to help come up with this money (in addition to the benefits cuts that will be bestowed upon the baby boomers). We're like Bethlehem Steel was with astronomical unfunded legacy costs that can never be paid. And the sad part is that the benefits are so needed by the many baby boomers that are ill prepared for retirement.
I want to know why doesn't the media talk about the income disparities, the 1 in 7 Americans on food stamps, federal unfunded liabilities, etc? I think it's because the traditional media is purely entertainment based, and increasingly, I find myself coming to blogs to get unfettered information. The Fed is obviously desperate at this point. The sad thing is the writing has been on the wall for a long time about our economy. This report here: http://www.pwib.org/downloads/GrowFast.pdf outlined in the early 2000's the problems we would(and now are) facing as far as a lack of native born adults in their prime work years, and lack of skills. There's no national will to realize we're in it together, and hence no will to act to take care of the deficit, or unemployment. I believe the worst is still ahead.
I put a call into the DOL and if I ever get a real human, I'll post what else I can dig out. Also, each agency is different to me as well as very different attitudes towards public information and us regular folk questioning or examining these reports. Because I agree with you, it makes no sense during the holidays to have the adjustment be less due to seasonal hires should still be on the job...unless of course the assumption is they are fired right after Xmas.
So, how come during the week of Christmas, would the two be that much off?
I just don't know. This drives me nuts too, they should be publishing, in graphic detail, not only the seasonal adjustments, but their code, their algorithm and the assumptions.
The yearly adjustments on the unemployment report have only been off by a million jobs (not exact but it's a massive error!) which are adjusted after the fact.
While I agree one must make seasonal adjustments, I find it odious the algorithm, the software, the code and the assumptions, well, I cannot find them and when you're off by 200k in a week, I'd say we need some explanation.
I can tell you they assume there are significant seasonal layoffs during January, February, but this is December. I'm pretty sure they do not adjust for major unusual events, such as this week's blizzard.
Finally, initial unemployment claims is notorious as "happy talk", which I've railed against week after week.
The way the numbers are produced, each week appears to be a decline, when in fact it's poor data collection and reporting which causes it.
So, while this was a major event, you notice I make a lot of statements on the weather and believe this will be a data outliner, an anomaly too...
bottom line is we cannot even trust the monthly unemployment report so relying on the weeklies, because a very large time window and a time lag....is a huge error.
I call this the warm fuzzy but not really report. ;)
In other words, what I'm saying is I'll bet it jumps back up to 422k or so next week.
"... hope floats on a sea of despair. " Excellent advice as well.
They just forget all about the homeless, the unemployed with no prospect of work, and the damn wars that are bankrupting us. It's all happy talk. Another example of "framed" media is the recent corporate media CNN poll that found "78% of Democrats" support Obama in the next election. They either cooked the question or the results. Nobody is excited about this guy in 2012. This is what's called plausible deniability - creating a fake reality to justify behavior that's clearly wrong and against the nation's interest.
Happy New Year to you and EP!
Thanks for reminding me. I'll just repeat OBEY CONSUME several times an hour. Someone just sent me an article about the world starting to look like it did in the Middle Ages, which claimed there were a lot of good things happening in Europe at that time (assuming we'd be like Europe this time around). What a crock. The Middle Ages was only decent for the Church and aristocrats. The vast majority were slaves with no opportunities. Hey, wait a minute, maybe that was the point. We need to happily OBEY and CONSUME.
I am really confused about this.
The nonseasonally adjusted unemployment figure -- which I thought represented actual claims made by real unemployed people -- was 521,834.
I don't understand seasonally adjusted number is so much smaller, especially, as you note, there were numerous events in play to discourage people from filing. If anything, shouldn't the SA number been much higher than the NSA number?
Also -- why is everybody so happy? Isn't the 388,000 more or less a mirage that will disappear in a few weeks, when the holiday workers are dismissed?
Yet with all the above stated undisputed and true, hope floats on a sea of despair. Everyone will continue to desperately pretend things are great and getting better, for to open our eyes and see our world as an illusion is beyond the capacities of our manipulated reasoning.
Better to prepare for the worst, than to live as if every day will be a continuation of the past,for when the system crumbles it will snap suddenly and with much damage like a metal cable under tension that destroys all around it when it fails.
Use these days as few or as many as they may be to prepare for a less energy and money intensive life style.
Shelter, water, food - let these be your goals, learn to acquire and preserve and fill your hearts and minds with knowledge rather than fear and doubt.
Yet with all the above stated undisputed and true, hope floats on a sea of despair. Everyone will continue to desperately pretend things are great and getting better, for to open our eyes and see our world as an illusion is beyond the capacities of our manipulated reasoning.
Better to prepare for the worst, than to live as if every day will be a continuation of the past,for when the system crumbles it will snap suddenly and with much damage like a metal cable under tension that destroys all around it when it fails.
Use these days as few or as many as they may be to prepare for a less energy and money intensive life style.
Shelter, water, food - let these be your goals, learn to acquire and preserve and fill your hearts and minds with knowledge rather than fear and doubt.
The media spin is ridiculous and yes they "frame messaging". If one notices the "news" is trying to make the path that the only way to reduce the deficit of course is to attack social safety nets.
Unfortunately the task that really needs to happen, remove the profits from these for profit health industries, we completely lost. That's where the "budget deficit" needs to cut and that's private, for profit health industries. That's what will bankrupt the nation.
But I'd claim this great media "consensus of economists", is a cherry picked group once again. Like running the Christmas retail sales numbers over and over instead of the record homeless, desperate and needing a job the real America is about.
Truth is stranger than fiction. The only thing for sure is death, taxes and inflation. What used to be the haves and the have nots has become the have everythings and the have nothings. But cheer up, being a slave in america is glorious
Climate Change was JOURNALISM'S Iraq War of lies.
Climate change did to journalism what abusive priests did to religion.
We will never trust mainscream media ever again.
Whether or not property owners should have mortgage loans –and whether or not people realize basis for opposing home repossessions, serious foreclosure frauds are deliberately being done by certain foreclosure lawyers! Even if it became remotely valid to label all defaulted homeowners as deadbeats, NOTHING IS VALID ABOUT real estate racketeering.
Not even ‘the powerful banker’ / lender has authority concerning the judicial Rule of Law. Bankers and lenders ARE NOT the entities who file foreclosure proceedings in civil and in bankruptcy courts; and NEITHER are lenders the persons who record illegal deeds for properties after NULL FORECLOSURE AUCTIONS (which creates defective deeds and all sorts of long term problems).- http://chn.ge/eU2zAm
Intentional foreclosure fraud entails foreclosures naming defunct mortgage companies, or having no ownership of notes; unfair fees beyond “Acceleration Clauses" that impairs borrowers’ ability to repay arrears; falsified Bankruptcy Court motions to “Lift Stay" and falsified “Proof of Claims” for accomplishing"simulated" foreclosure auctions via “straw buyers."
Scores of homeowners do not contest foreclosures because of not having legal knowledge to recognize illegal foreclosures and fraud; they lack funds to pay for attorneys to represent them; and they are told to come to foreclosure auctions with money that they do not have, so they stay away from foreclosure auctions. It is outrageous that there are families living outdoors whose homes have been confiscated via real estate racketeering.
Also, some PREDATORY mortgage loans appear to be issued for the very purpose of people defaulting so that properties can become flipped, repeatedly (hence blight); and lenders gain tax credits, mortgage-default insurance, and more! Too often, not only is it true that the lender DID NOT file foreclosure, certain homes wound up becoming flipped by the foreclosure lawyers who carry out simulated auctions with “straw buyers” who illegally “credit bid”!
Foreclosure lawyers are officers of the court; knowledge of applicable laws and civil procedure is not required from mortgage lenders, nor loan servicers. In states that require judicial foreclosures, FORECLOSURE LAWYERS are the ones who file lawsuits to seize and sell property; and lawyers are responsible for filing and recording foreclosure property deeds. *Request for Congressional Foreclosure Panel to Examine Foreclosure Lawyers @ http://www.change.org/petitions/view/request_for_congressional_foreclosu...
The tyranny of the experts.
No personal offense intended, but economists are little different from lawyers in this regard.
Try to find an economist immune to the temptation of more money, or one willing to drop the act and communicate in clear language. Honestly schooled, a child can understand the essential truths of this social (and psychological so-called) "science."
On 12/22/08, Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times:
"By selling more to other countries and spending more of our own income on U.S.-produced goods, we could get to full employment without a boom in either consumption or investment spending."
What's changed?
The growing power of multinational money over American politics and propaganda.
This remains true: A standard of living must be supported by a standard of productivity.
Some time before economy experts and Nobel Prizes and stuff, Abraham Lincoln said:
"If we purchase a ton of steel rails from England for twenty dollars, then we have the rails and England the money. But if we buy a ton of steel rails from an American for twenty-five dollars, then America has the rails and the money both."
What multinational campaign financier would allow a U.S. President to say this today?
Thankfully, anyone, even a credentialed expert badly in need of adult supervision, can learn how to follow a money trail.
When non-economists stop expressing their opinions on the economy, we're doomed.
Cable noise for the most part is just that. Even on Dylan Ratigan, who is seemingly trying to cut through the noise on economic issues, he gets on so called "experts" who spin the dialog to promote whatever agenda they are peddling. All of those shows, that's politics as well as pure propaganda media spin, it's not economics. Either is CNBC economics for that matter, but at least Bloomberg TV and a few others have real people on. CNBC would do some "debate" with some propaganda guy on, with an agenda and some other guy on with the data, as if somehow data, statistics is something up for debate? I don't think so unless one wants to 'debate' methods on cable noise.
BTW: Instapopulists are primarily for economic reports, the site is pretty much a "news" site...
but since you wrote up your piece, I'm thinking I need to put on the site a pure question, discussion, poll, quiz type of thing. Would that be useful? A section that is for pure conversations instead of being more of a article/news/quicknews type of thing?
Here is one piece, tax cuts for the rich do not generate jobs, that has some statistics. More references are always linked, so when you see a link, it's almost always a reference for further details/statistics when I write up something.
I think Glenn Beck has up charts and graphs but as I recall he usually takes some event and then misinterprets it to spin to something else.
I think when the Fed absurdly increased the money supply, that was a major Glenn Beck freak out moment. Well, it was one hell of a scary graph, but if you don't take money velocity into the picture, it's more meaningless. Then, it's really to me at least, counter intuitive to think of deflation as being a problem, but it is, it implies a collapse of demand and that's what was starting to go on when they "turned on the money printing presses", they were trying to counteract a deflationary spiral.
Like who intuitively could believe increasing taxes would spur economic growth? Not I, but it's possible under certain conditions.
Your blog on why tax cuts for the wealthy are a bad idea was EXACTLY the kind of information I have been looking for.
I guess the crux of my argument is that people like Sarah Palin and Glen Beck have made a lot of hay out of criticizing "intellectuals," portraying academics and professional economists as "elites" who pretend that these economic issues are complex merely to convince the populace that they should just trust in their leaders and do what they are told when the "truth" is that economics is really easy to understand, as long as you adhere to certain core principles (no government intereference, etc., etc.). Ironically, they make that argument to discourage the populace from doing any serious research or self-education on economic matters (which, as I am discovering is difficult and fairly tedious) and to just trust them that these principles are the right way to go.
I guess that's actually pretty similar to their standard worldview on natural law as well.
One can no more say they want to jump on the Progressive platform, or agenda, or the Democratic platform or agenda as to the GOP platform or agenda and you mention a really good reason! When it comes to labor markets, especially on immigration, facts fly out the window! We even have massive amounts of white paper spin, trying to manipulate the data and claim unlimited migration "helps the economy". That only helps corporations and businesses through increasingly cheap labor, eroding labor laws and rights. You also have so called Progressives believing examining what China is doing is somehow "racist" and "those people need our jobs". It's just absurd in terms of national economies and the winners and losers and yes the U.S. is the loser on this one. So many Progressives are really focused on a political agenda, while they have a few things adopted that make a lot of economic sense, they too won't pay attention to the theory and statistics and get upset when others do.
That said, so many special interests have labeled things "Progressive" for labeling purposes.
On the other side of this, the attack on FDR has been going on since he got into office. The biggest target is social security. FDR's policies do not cause a prolonging of the Great Depression, just as much as Smoot-Hawley did not.
Which reminds me of a Bernanke speech where there is evidence that Gold manipulation helped cause the Great Depression, which is interesting. A lot of it had to do with monetary policy, our fav. bank failures and it was a deflationary spiral which caused demand to collapse. It's a huge topic, but one thing to note is these conservatives trying to attack FDR simply because they have an agenda to destroy what is left of any social safety nets.
This is a layperson's economics blog, so #2 I believe obviously one can, but I'd say at minimum, they need high school calculus, the ability to read a graph at least and the ability to self teach.
On number 1, I'd say no. The reason is having an opinion or even an economist's claim, does not make it so, not at all. They need to learn, not just regurgitate some things they picked up on Fox news, or Glenn Beck or even my writings.
On number 3, that is one of the things this site spends a lot of time on, hard data. There is no "one stop shop" to even get to the raw data, the government has a host of sites that when I write up the overview on, I always link to, and a lot of raw data isn't even tabulated, which is unfortunate.
Economics is hard and it's the dismal science to boot. Take GDP multipliers, where a lot of the theory comes from for Stimulus spending. That's a mistake. If one bothers to read Keynes, he clearly had assumptions for the theory to be valid, the biggest of which the spending must stay in that domestic economy and another which it must go into the pockets of the workers, the people, i.e. direct spending.
On tax cuts for the rich, I've written up a serious of posts which show they simply do not create jobs, so not only does the data show that statement is false, the GDP multipliers, flawed as they are, also show it's false.
One needs to look at the results, where do the rich spend their money? Well, they do not and right now we have massive investments going on....overseas.
On FDR, ya know these people are political, and the politics become obscene when you have people trying to spin with mathematics. I've seen absurd assumptions used for mathematical models, biased data, cherry-picked data, setting a host of variables to "zero" to get the result they want, which is mathematically invalid...
you name it, so these people are not Economists in my view. Economists should not spin numbers, that's politics, not economics.
Ok, I'll give it a shot.
1. No. Those opinions are wrong and you no more entitled to them than you are entitled to disbelieve in Maxwell's Laws in a electrical engineering project.
2. Yes, by completely ignoring all economists and looking at what historians and the historical record has to say which universally contradicts the religion of economics. Economic is not a science it is a religious apologetic for slavers. See http://www.amazon.com/Economics-As-Religion-Samuelson-Chicago/dp/0271022841
3. No. I believe that this the biggest problem. There are no Corporate Think Tanks on behalf of the truth that do what the Slavertarian Cato institute and other disinformation hubs preaching the Plutocrat dogma.
Truth be told I'm not interested in so-called "progressive economics" policies as I believe that they tend toward a kind of utopian vision regarding immigration and at same time are completely dystopian toward industry and technology leaning toward nonsense Luddite Malthusianism and environmental doomism which is historically a bias of Oligarchism not populism.
What we need is a center for Populist and Nationalist Economics i.e. Protectionism, Dirigism, Producerism, and doctrine of High Wages i.e. the 19th century American School.
financial situation like Greece? I agree encourage of debt creation needs to stop!
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