Recent comments

  • So many in the press are claiming this report implies lower consumer spending and thus lower GDP. Sorry, first we're missing September. But more importantly, consumer spending as part of economic growth has price increases removed. A huge reason retail sales increases is due to increases in gas prices. Needless to say GDP is reported in real values, i.e. chained 2009 dollars which removes inflation. Secondly, retail sales is simply not consumer spending. The majority of consumer spending is on basic living, such as utilities, health care, which are not part of this discretionary spending report. Yes, PCE and retail sales are correlated but finally if one looks at the monthly changes, there is nothing here to imply some consumer spending implosion, just not the sudden magical gains.

    Why Wall street would think there would be magical sudden gains in retail sales in beyond me. Wages are down, people are out of work and credit is also down. Gotta wonder if some in the press even read these reports, or have the faintest fell for them before writing.

    Reply to: Retail Sales Saved by Autos, Up 0.2% for August 2013   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • They simply have no shame at this point. They tried to give "vouchers" for Medicare.

    Reply to: What Is It About the Hungry and Poor House Republicans Just Can't Stand?   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Republican members of Congress will not want soup kitchens outside their posh taxpayer-paid congressional offices. People like Eric Cantor would not want the "spectacle" of long breadlines of shabby poor people begging for food outside his home.

    http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-gop-wants-breadlines-not-food...

    Reply to: What Is It About the Hungry and Poor House Republicans Just Can't Stand?   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • New study just out showing the top 1% captured 19.3% of all income in 2012 and this is the worst income inequality since 1927. We might overview this latest research but for now, USA Today covered it here.

    Reply to: America's Growing Income Inequality Problem   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Sorry but these are police state policies and it has nothing to do with "communism". Your comment reads like you are wasted, so I suggest considering getting off drugs and then you won't have to worry about a pee test. Not that I approve of pee tests, except when workers are driving, operating machinery and so on.

    It boggles my mind how convoluted the conservative talk radio spins privacy violations, corporatism, police state as being somehow "socialist" or "communist". Even more frightening is I don't believe anybody cracked a textbook or history book. Try the Nazis for a better analogy, or even psycho Stalin, was a authoritative dictatorship vs. "communism".

    Reply to: Unemployment Rate Drops On Over Half a Million More Not In Labor Force   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • the foreclosure logjam is mostly about documents; home loans got packaged, sliced and diced and sold and resold during the boom and no one bothered to file the transfers with the county recorders as is required by law...so when it came time for the servicers to prove that they had the right to foreclose, they couldnt produce the paperwork...fabricated documents was what all that robosigning and the foreclosure fraud settlement was about...

    it's evident when one compares the judicial states to the non-judicial states; the time to foreclose is three times longer in states where the right to foreclose must be shown in court...

    Reply to: LPS: Mortgage Delinquencies Decline In July, But It Now Takes 876 Days to Foreclose   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Let them eat cake isn't enough to describe the hatred involved in such an agenda. What is wrong with this horse's ass that he has an agenda to force Americans into starvation? Seriously, this deserves vitriol, condemnation.

    Reply to: Long-Term Unemployed Baby Boomers in 2013   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • If the House majority leader Eric Cantor has his way, people like myself are totally screwed with his newly proposed plan to make cuts to SNAP. It limits benefits for jobless adults without children to just three months out of every three years.

    It also terminates those not meeting certain work requirements...even if there are no jobs available and people are willing and able to work. (It's unclear if this applies to people who are currently applying for disability, and therefore, unable to work.)

    As it now stands, this November cuts are already scheduled. My SNAP benefits go down from $200 to $189 a month --- or $6.22 a day. So that's a big bummer --- I'm already hungry.

    http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4009

    http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3899

    Reply to: Long-Term Unemployed Baby Boomers in 2013   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • I know at least 50 people including myself that dropped out of the work force many years ago due to the unconstitutional substance testing or drug testing... They can keep their anti-American communist job if I have to be a laboratory rat used for testing. Thousands of Americans will go back to work after the failed congress changes their insane policy.

    Thousands more have left the work force and businesses have shut due to the other insane and illegal policies fro the idiots in congress, such as the NDAA and other communist polices. After obama signed that unconstitutional law, I shut down my web development business,, waiting till congress fixes their insane policy so I can go back to work.

    Now we have the NSA basically shutting down the internet

    Lets have some more policies from the idiots in congress to put more people out of work.
    Congress should create a worker and business friendly environment for America to move forward, not more asinine policies that throw people from the work force and shut business down.

    Reply to: Unemployment Rate Drops On Over Half a Million More Not In Labor Force   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • That's an incredible amount of time to take to foreclose and I guess the good news is that means some people who are broke still have shelter but eventually they are gonna be out.

    Also, look at the employment payrolls overview, there was lost jobs in real estate and construction had no jobs. I suspect the housing hype is over and with so many foreclosures still in the pipe.

    Reply to: LPS: Mortgage Delinquencies Decline In July, But It Now Takes 876 Days to Foreclose   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • yeah i mean the story got a little local coverage but I could not find mention of it anywhere else. I guess i have seen reports of job fairs having hundreds of applicants but a fast food pizza chain...!!!

    It just blew my mind. This in the city that is home to Yale University, the institution which mints so many of our elite political and business leaders.

    The thing about CT is it had such a long history of being a robust manufacturing state. Even into the early '80's.

    As far as I'm concerned this represents a depression economy. I'm aware CT's economy is worse than perhaps all the other states but since I live here, it's a depression, not a recession.

    Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • This is absurd to claim America should make the tax system even more regressive to "simplify" the tax code. That is what a flat tax is, it would give even more income to the wealthy and would increase income inequality much further.

    Reply to: America's Growing Income Inequality Problem   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • This is one of the best articles I've read arguing “competitive markets" vs. “free markets" --- and the real difference between them; and why we need more regulation, not less --- because regulations (just like the tax code) are only as complicated as they are because of those who had abused and exploited them (they found the "loop holes" in previous regulations and tax laws).

    This piece also fits hand-in-hand with another good piece titled "Capitalism Requires Government".

    http://www.governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=13

    Reply to: Free Markets are Fraudulent Markets   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Income inequality is another reason we need a flat tax on all increases not just 'income' and short term capital gains. The complexity of the tax system allow those who can afford accountants to take advantage of the loop holes that others can't. We also need to cut bureaucrats from the picture as well. This can be handled by a 10% of net increase charitable mandate tax where you are required to give 10% to the poor either directly or through a non-profit. In this manner we can push wealth back to the bottom and let it filter it's way back up to the top thereby increasing the flow of the economy. In this manner everyone wins including the wealthy as the economy will take off.

    Reply to: America's Growing Income Inequality Problem   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Markets, without government regulation, are called free markets. The influential Ludwig von Mises Institute publishes a monthly journal entitled, “The Free Market,” praising its virtues. Neoliberal economic theory, which is main stream within academe, supports privatization, deregulation and globalization. The political power structure in Washington thinks that free markets are the solution to the 2008 credit crisis, not its cause. Consequently, Dodd-Frank legislation has yet to be implemented, and may never be. This is the power of free market ideology.

    People do not understand when government involvement in the economy is essential. Before the fact, government regulations are necessary, to create fair rules of business conduct, in order to be able to prosecute fraud, thereby establishing a level playing field. After the fact, government intervention, to insure that only crony capitalists win, is economically and socially destructive.

    Reply to: Free Markets are Fraudulent Markets   11 years 1 month ago
  • explain this:

    comparing the unadjusted data from the two surveys, the establishment survey shows payrolls jobs increased by 378,000 from 135,583,000 in July to 135,961,000 in August; the seasonal adjustment increased the payroll jobs to 136,133 but reduced the change to 169,000; meanwhile, the unadjusted household data shows employment dropped 604,000, from 145,113,000 in July to 144,509,000 in August...the action of the seasonal adjustment on the household survey was the opposite, in that it reduced the negative change to 115,000, from 144,285,000 in July to 144,170,000 in August....thus the seasonal adjustment subtracted from job gains in the establishment survey, but it added to those employed in the household survey..

    Reply to: Unemployment Rate Drops On Over Half a Million More Not In Labor Force   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • The surveys are taken at different months and there is also the "birth/death" model in the establishment survey. Why I show the annual change as well due to the huge variance, it's 100k for payrolls, 400k for the CPS in terms of confidence levels/error margin/accuracy.

    Reply to: Unemployment Rate Drops On Over Half a Million More Not In Labor Force   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • It is just so common it doesn't make the major press. Then, most press is fiction, they try to push either lobbyist stories or "feel good" stories as if the exception they dug out is the actual norm. It is not.

    Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Reply to: Outrageous Economic Shorts   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • The labor participation rate and those not in the labor force is not just a one month statistical variance. This has happened multiple times this year, where over half a million more.

    Over the weekend, I hope to do some drill down into these figures to get some more insight but bottom line, when I saw the release I knew this is much worse news than the top level figures imply simply because this has happened now multiple times in the last year.

    Reply to: Unemployment Rate Drops On Over Half a Million More Not In Labor Force   11 years 1 month ago
    EPer:

Pages