Recent comments

  • than happy to buy all the things they used to buy had any money to speak of?

    Our expectations are so low now...

    Reply to: Consumer Spending Up 0.5% in November, Biggest Real Gain in 21 Months   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • I greatly appreciate that feedback for it is rare I hear how well I am communicating....or not.

    Supposedly something will happen after at least two weeks without funds, but don't bank on it for as well all know, Democrats will sell out workers, just at a slower rate than Republicans.

    We'll update the issue when there is movement. Happy holidays as best as you are able all!

    Reply to: Congressional Scrooges Deny Unemployment Benefit Extension   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • always find your writing exceptional and close at home...greed lives well and growing year by year. the poor will only get more poor. so it really means that we will only get more hungry year by year.

    ps. they managed to get the banks bailed out again a few days before this...! wtf, seems who is more important....

    seattle

    Reply to: Congressional Scrooges Deny Unemployment Benefit Extension   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Got a PCE "at least", GDP estimate for Q4 in the overview. I get even if there is zero growth in consumer spending, PCE would be 2.8 percentage points contribution to real Q4 GDP. The odds of that happening are next to nil, so I'd say we're looking at a 4.0 percentage point contribution to PCE if the strong spending maintains in December. Post is up at top of front, right at the the moment. Supposedly retail sales are strong for Xmas, we'll see, they always hype growth in retail sales claims during their biggest consumer driven holiday on the planet.

    Reply to: October Real Retail Sales Revised to ~.95% Increase; Real Sales for November Up by ~.91%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • yes, i probably should have said "forecasts of 4th quarter GDP" rather than estimates...most i've seen suggest that there will be an inventory pullback and hence a growth rate around 2%...real retail sales suggest that inventory is moving off the shelves; industrial production shows production of consumer goods up 1.5% MoM, replacing what's sold..

    i wanted to post this before i saw this morning's PCE so i could use the PCE deflators (or inflators) to check my thinking...as i expected, October's real PCE growth was revised to +0.4%, with goods up 0.9%...October real durable goods were up 1.2% (was + 0.8% in the first estimate) and non durables were up 0.8%, which is a bit of surprise since auto sales were revised down, so i expected the revision to boost non-durables PCE..

    but i missed by a bunch on November, as they have real goods up 0.7% with PCE up 0.5%...it was all durables; up 2.2% while non-durables were unchanged..

    BEA has three deflators for PCE; PCE excluding food and energy, which was up 0.1%, food, which was down 0.1%, and energy goods and services, which was down by 1.0%...so they are in effect, using a deflator that includes electricity and piped gas to deflate gasoline sales...since i used the CPI gasoline index, which was down 1.6%, to deflate (inflate) gas station sales, i just overrefined it a bit...there is further breakdown of non-durables in GDP, i'll have to check how they do that...

    Reply to: October Real Retail Sales Revised to ~.95% Increase; Real Sales for November Up by ~.91%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • You might be able to do a reality check by digging into the BEA for price deflators and NIPA inputs into consumer spending to see if you are right.

    You mean Q4 GDP will be higher than "many economists" are currently estimating for it has not been released yet.

    Interesting.

    Reply to: October Real Retail Sales Revised to ~.95% Increase; Real Sales for November Up by ~.91%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • I found the interview with Susan Rice yesterday embarrassing. Never expected Ms. Stahl to be so condescending, confrontational and down right rude ti Susan Rice. I would like to know WHY?
    Even when it came to her children's soccer game- she went to say- "HERE IS HOW COMPETITIVE SUSAN RICE IS?"
    I found her behavior disgusting. MAy be 60 minutes has run its course and it is time to retire it if that is the best that they can put on the air.

    Reply to: CBS 60 Minutes Has Gone to the Dogs   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • while it may seem odd that we adjust November retail sales for prices changes to October dollar values, that's a just what the BEA does when it computes real PCE and GDP based on chained 2009 dollars...since we are interested in knowing only the month over month change in real retail sales, we're using a shorter term adjustment which we could call "chained October dollars"

    Reply to: October Real Retail Sales Revised to ~.95% Increase; Real Sales for November Up by ~.91%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Espero que te va a traer la paz.

    Reply to: Holy Cow! Q3 GDP Revised Up to 4.1%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • really accelerated illegal immigration, it wiped out corn farmers in Mexico and other countries, so el norte they went.

    EP is a spin free zone on immigration, and we do take it on by the theory and statistics.

    This is all news to me that Mexico is offering health care plus employer paid training, about time! I thought I read they just privatized the oil fields, very bad news for the people.

    Bottom line, nations which invest in the people, create an economy for them will not send their excess labor outside the nation, they only do that when they want to shed people, as most of our ancestors were shed by Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Scotland and so on.

    Reply to: Holy Cow! Q3 GDP Revised Up to 4.1%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • First however -> " go into debt up to your eyeballs for the paper which states you are "educated" has got to end"

    This is costing us more than we know.

    Anyway...

    I find this more than humerous...

    Mexico is training people, even paying them to go to school, to get better jobs than we are creating here.

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/world/americas/in-the-middle-of-mex...

    We are richer as a country because of immigration. Of that I have no doubt. I also have no doubt that legalizing and encouraging immigration while there are from 3 to 25 people wanting every stinking little job out there is bad for everyone concerned - and the CBO backs that up, writing that unemployment will increase for at least a decade after we pass immigration reform.

    But what I find the most funny are people here that are nearly apoplectic over immigration. These people in Mexico aren't trying to get across our borders - they have health care provided by their taxes that won't bankrupt them, and now jobs with school, in addition to training, paid for by employers. The ones who are coming over are competing for jobs that will keep one poor, hardly worth fighting over.

    I wonder where they learned to do this "investing in your own country\people" from? Maybe we should follow in their footsteps.

    Reply to: Holy Cow! Q3 GDP Revised Up to 4.1%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • And what changes will occur? This has been going on for decades now and has to be story 10,000 globally about this crap. No changes, none, because the traitors in charge love that $ and admit they owe Americans jacksh*t. After all, they're multinationals unaccountable to anyone (except they deserve those massive salaries and bonuses because they are personally responsible for good stuff, not bad stuff), but hey, paradoxically, "corporations are people too"?! Huh?

    But the boardrooms and their puppets sure do love our State Dept. and DOD protecting their asses when it hits the fan overseas. They sure do love our State Dept. and White House and Congress lobbying for them overseas and those private jet rides where they buy drinks for the media. They sure do love NAFTA and the WTO and CAFTA and the Corporate Trade Representative aka "US" Trade Rep. looking out for the boardrooms and top officers. Americans, you know, the 99.9% of us out here getting jacked and robbed and booted from jobs and having our SSNs stolen and abused and entire lives destroyed, well, we count for less than nothing.

    Reply to: Hackers Love Black Friday, Just Ask Target   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • via our online world. Reality is on so many topics, one can master them between all of the online resources. Many top universities have entire courses online, for free, yet they will not give credit because, of course, that person isn't paying tuition.

    I believe there are some universities wanting to give credit for the initiative and they should. This massive go into debt up to your eyeballs for the paper which states you are "educated" has got to end. We also need employers to get back into the training,m apprentice, foot the bill for education, along with the paper which says the employee completed x.

    Reply to: Holy Cow! Q3 GDP Revised Up to 4.1%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Target offshore outsources their tech to Bangalore. The cause of the breach is still undetermined, but it seems to be software on POS terminals (POS are the devices where you swipe your card, the magnetic readers).

    Security experts are implying this is an inside job, in other words, it is possible Target's labor arbitrage and offshore outsourcing just came back to bite them.

    Reply to: Hackers Love Black Friday, Just Ask Target   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • They would just dig a nice deep grave and although they've already buried us, they would enjoy actually throwing on the dirt!

    Reply to: Congressional Scrooges Deny Unemployment Benefit Extension   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • I thought that 47% of Americans did not pay any taxes(most have a negative tax rate). I also thought that the 1% richest Americans paid 40% of all taxes.

    Reply to: Worker Wage Inequality Myth Exposed   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • If you can do it, what is stopping you? (not you personally, dear reader, but all of us).

    We take diploma in hand and go ask the Massah, "Massah, may I pleeeeese live in the house?" For what? The chance to compete against 27 other people, wherein your talent is buried because they like the tall, good-looking guy, or the cute chick with the big assets, the kind they hire to read teleprompters because they really can't do anything else right? Not you, the one who spent night after night learning how to flog that database until it could beat any horse on the track.

    Forget them.

    Instead of diplomas, let's figure out how to work together, cooperate, compete. In 1954 a priest in Spain took workers who had tried working for others, and in a country under a dictatorship no less, and taught them the principles of cooperative work, and technical engineering. They borrowed money from their neighbors and families and bought a paraffin stove mfg plant and ran it as co-owners. Today the Mondragan Cooperatives net about $14 million a year, they have their own university, their own bank, and are doing a damn site better than the rest of Spain. There are thousands of cooperatives here, with earnings in the billions.

    We don't need no stinkin' diplomas for that. Just competency, investing the same amont of time and effort and evaluating ourselvs and each other so we KNOW we have the same knowledge that some diploma is supposed to represent (but in reality doesn't) . and a willingness to decide that we and our neighbors are just as good, just as smart as the owner of the business we might hire out to.

    Back in 1865-1920 the Industrial Unions pushed to get worker control of what they did. Mother Jones and others knew that would require some ownership, and where that wasn't possible Big BIll and, later, for example, the folks with the UE like Matles told us that we needed to make the decisions even if we didn't own, for our own good. They were tarred with the labels of socialist and communist, but they weren't, obviously, because they weren't wanting state control of the assets, they wanted worker control and a fair share of what the workers, and the workers alone, were making possible. Of course, the business unions, government, and the wealthy tyrants conspired to end that, and brought us to where we are today

    We could do this.

    Reply to: Holy Cow! Q3 GDP Revised Up to 4.1%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Seriously, why bother hacking? Credit agencies, banks, "US" government contractors give our information free overseas to save a dime and build up boardroom bonuses when they send everything beyond our border (e.g., credit checks, medical records, etc. to foreign workers overseas). Why hack at all? Everyone overseas has our SSNs, credit histories, and on, and on with the seal of approval from our sell-out government officials and bureaucrats. Why hack security systems? Our sell-out government and corporate pawns invite foreign entities to basically install their spyware into our defense and intelligence plans. I mean before Qaddafi's fall, "our" State Dept. invited his son on a special visa to tour the US and special installations - something US citizens can't even do! Why enforce border control at all? Our corporate govt. will just invite anyone and everyone to run HR departments and every other department in business, education, and govt. through visa abuses. Why protest anymore? Why, why, why? Please, Target? Come on, like our govt. hasn't known about the dangers of outsourcing and allowing banks and other corporations to know/sell our personal info. for decades. Let's just assume everything the NSA gathers on law-abiding citizens is hacked by millions of people overseas daily - thanks NSA for making it that much easier to screw Americans over while invading privacy and violating the Constitution.

    In other news, the sky is blue and the US and many Western countries resemble the Roman Empire circa 400 AD.

    Reply to: Hackers Love Black Friday, Just Ask Target   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • covered retail sales & wanted to post it last sunday, but got involved in a plumbing fix and finished late...then a doctors appt & other work screwed up monday...then i thought i'd add a paragraph on the adjustment with CPI & put real sales up wednesday or thursday, but i never got past the back of the napkin calculations...so today i'm covering GDP, CPI and IndPro for my mailing tomorrow, and intend to add inflation/deflation adjustments to retail to the CPI coverage...

    so i'll have it done tomorrow morning, but i'm not even sure if i'll post it on my own blog then, as my brother is in from Houston & we have family plans...but the rest of my week looks free after that, so i should be able to get it up while working on my aggregate blog during what should be a slow news week..

    Reply to: Holy Cow! Q3 GDP Revised Up to 4.1%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • We need open source school where the mastering of the material is verified and then the person can get a certificate that is just as valid as a degree from Harvard. Seriously, education is so out of whack, where the person isn't someone to be educated and helped along, but is instead, a product, I don't know how long the U.S. can remain #1 in higher education.

    K-12 very obviously is a mess. With the Internets, self-teach is so easy to do and so many great people have put up information, all on their own initiatives, all for free yet none of this is being recognized as valid through a "diploma" or "graduation" of level "X" grade. It's free, what's not to like but it needs to be validated.

    Reply to: Holy Cow! Q3 GDP Revised Up to 4.1%   10 years 10 months ago
    EPer:

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