The Economic Populist
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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
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Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
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BREAKING: Wall Street Mega-Merger!!!
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Greece For Sale
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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
- 182275 reads
Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
- 29441 reads
BREAKING: Wall Street Mega-Merger!!!
- 21997 reads
Greece For Sale
- 23141 reads
The Golden Rule
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Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
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New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
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VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
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U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
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The war on the middle class
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House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
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Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
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One area might be the corporate tax code and parked profits offshore, although the finished product does reside in a foreign nation, say China for the iPhone, so I'm not sure how those profits from sales, where the product never re-enters the shores of the United States, could be taxed.
China's GDP I believe is scheduled sooner than that to exceed the United States. PPP gives cost of living measures.
The United States has been the world’s largest economy since 1871, but that may soon change. China has achieved economic growth averaging 10% since it initiated market reforms in 1978 and, in the process, lifted almost half of its 1.3 billion population out of poverty and became the undisputed second-largest economy in the world, overtaking Japan.
Rather than using the measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but instead, by using another measure known as Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), China is forecast to race past the U.S. in just a few more years. Last year the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a study that concluded that on the basis of PPP rates, China may surpass the Euro area’s GDP within a year, and that of the U.S. in another few years to become the world’s largest economy.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032013/us-vs-china-battle...
Paul Craig Roberts - "Official government statistics are make-believe. The government makes inflation and unemployment disappear by how it defines inflation and unemployment, and it makes the economy grow by how it defines Gross Domestic Product."
Please let me know if there are any bugs, some new menus for mobile are added and then turn the menu into a large toggle, touch screen sensitive.
Please let me know of bugs and secondly, would you like this added to tablets? Right now it will pop up on narrow displays.
Generally speaking all mobile users, please give feedback to make this a true mobile site, easy to use. It's hard to really test for all devices since there are so many out there.
Also, any desktop issues, including legacy browsers. The site should support ie8 browsers (although consider using firefox!)
A new report is claiming the GSEs are not adopting a new accounting system which would show billions in losses. I haven't investigated on the truth of this, story here.
They claim the GSEs aren't writing off their losses on non-performing loans, yet obviously the GSEs are also under attack politically and the hedge funds want in on this action, as this article is about.
with current tax structure? Low skilled labor pays does not produce a lot (because it is low skilled) then it pays 15% of its wages as payroll tax and then if company can eke out profit, Uncle Sam will ask for 35%?
Cut both these really counter productive taxes to zero (yes zero), offset shortfall by raising taxes on high income individuals and then we can talk about role of inevitable technological advances.
Well, they can get reasonably close with political polls where the same size to actual voter base is much lower, so it's possible, depending on the methodology and the representative spread.
That said, pretty clear to me most economic data is not understood at all, they don't care, they are trading on it, with no comprehension and it's just like the VIX or VAR.
I'd say the people in the U.S. who care about this from an overall real economy economic health have to be less than 100,000, even though there are at least a million with a BA in Econ in the U.S.
you're right, 90% of the market moves on the headline number, without a clue where it comes from or how small the sample is that it comes from...it's remarkable that these reports can even get close, when surveying just 4900 out of 1.8 million firms for the advance estimates..
One more thing. The banks with their teams of statisticians and data scientists who couldn't predict the collapse of the housing maket got rewarded, but the poor little with his with his calculator who also failed to predict it gets maligned. SMH.
Glad you overviewed it, I skipped it trying to focus on metrics that are really unusual, which were many this week. (check out the GDP estimates by calculation, 2.3% is the new guesstimate!).
Still, the MSM was all "isn't this awesome, all is humming along, retail sales grew by 0.2%"!
Really, do these people even understand what 0.2% is? That 0.2% is chicken feed? Next month might do a historical charge on percentage changes.
Also, I am thinking economic reports are just "number feed", traders go off of the headline buzz number, have no idea what it means and HFT algos auto ftp the number in nanoseconds of it's release and input that into their trading algos, running a millisecond after.
Don't you find it strange that regardless of the details, or most of the press getting it wrong, these economic reports have a news shelf life of 30 minutes? Seriously, after max 8 hours no one reads the details, it's all just to hay to feed the trading herd.
Wow, subprime auto loans, awesome. Are they being packaged up as derivatives, sold in bulk?
The game continues, just a new version?
Great overview!
Half of those people don't need more than 1 drug ....but as is they cocktail it to them ...
A bunch of liberal Democrats signed a letter, written by a financial lobbyists to make sure people's retirement accounts are NOT SAFE, I kid you not.
Read it here.
Right, getting caught up on GOP vs. Dem. is clearly insane for the only thing that has the slightest prayer's chance of being passed through Congress is corporate written legislation, demanded by corporations and written by them.
It's so bad, I really wonder if legislators can even write legislation these days. There's a budget cut, fire the legislative staffers since our politicians will only pass bills handed to them by corporate lobbyists!
I'm sure Bill Clinton, a "Democrat," really gives a crap about the long-term unemployed, vets suffering from PTSD that can't find jobs, and "overqualified" Americans with PhDs that can engage in useless battles against labor arbitrage, right? I'm sure Chelsea and Hillary have struggled just like the rest of us 99.9% to find living wage job after living wage job, right? Or maybe like the Bushes, Gores, and every other member of the elite from both parties, the media, and other sectors, they jump from banking to government to the media to academia and wherever else their friends hook them up in return for "something in the future" or "in return for past deeds."
Come on, the guy signed NAFTA and repealed Glass-Steagall. But he's thinking about us while he's collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars at Goldman Sux for "speeches" just like Obama makes millions for books that someone or some groups can't buy quick enough? And he got mega-wealthy by being an "honest" politician like Truman that actually struggled until his death? Hmmm. My past comments show I have no love for either party.
They all appoint the same $ people to Treasury, the Fed, etc., etc. Same with Bush, same with everyone. They are puppets. D vs. R? Really? Come on, it's a charade. Go to opensecrets.org to see how much Goldman Sux, JP Morgan, etc., etc. all contribute to both parties, candidates on both sides of the aisle, Presidential candidates (e.g., Obama was a favorite of JP Morgan and Goldman a few years back, but he's just like us, really, I'm sure) and to the DOJ (to buy protection), Treasury, and on, and on, and on. D vs. R? Uhm, the $ party has its hands up both parties' asses and controls them both at our expense. Now, if only we could contribute gobs of cash to create laws, ensure the DOJ doesn't prosecute us, get a seat at the primary dealer table like Goldman Sux, etc. D vs. R? Murdoch, allegedly Mr. phone hacker and child murder investigation/police bribing media mogul still not prosecuted by the DOJ under a Democrat. And he's hardcore GOP with his Fox News. So if he's GOP, and the Dems don't go after him still with mounds of evidence regarding FCPA and RICO, what can we conclude? Who cares, it's all the same clown show and a debate in a vacuum.
Robert, this isn't against you (I know EP understands it's all BS), but in 2013 it's madness to still see the D vs. R, this guy or girl really really cares about me while he/she dines with lobbyists thinking still out there. It's all madness and propaganda. These elections wherever anyone is and for any/all offices are all becoming useless and laughable in the face of massive unemployment, Fukushima, media corruption, rampant lies about inflation, and still more trade talks while we suffer and the world burns.
1) Intelligence and ambition are normally distributed.
2) Computers make the few who can use them more valuable then ever and the resulting increase in Marginal Revenue Product will continue to increase income inequality, even among those with only a BS degree.
3) Robots, cloud computing, cloud competition for high value small project contract, 3-D specialty manufacturing, and our flattening world will decrease the percentage of high paying jobs.
4) At the beginning of this century employers learned that only the top few of their high priced employees were worth extra money and began paying accordingly.
5. Cheap energy will make us energy independent.
6. The Over Educated American was published in the late 1970’s. 7. All attempts by to move the bottom half of our young people to the top half have failed. x attempt = x failures.
Walter Antoniotti http://www.textbooksfre.org
What's the real agenda? Also, point out specifically who is claiming this, it is not "all" Republicans and no doubt there are a couple of Democrats out there making the same statements.
The "Paul Ryan camp", Cantor, is typically where the fictional math originates.
Republicans say too many Americans receive food stamps, and that too many of them obtain benefits fraudulently when they could just get jobs instead. In fact, contrary to the idea that America's poor people are collectively gorging themselves on food stamps, they're actually leaving food on the table. In fiscal 2010 nearly 51 million Americans were poor enough to qualify but only 38 million received benefits. Older Americans are generally much less inclined to sign up for SNAP, with less than 40 percent of eligible seniors participating in 2010, according to the USDA.
Thx to Barry Ritholtz over at the Big Picture for a recommended read. This story just flew by most of the financial press, but Ritholtz generally speaking has been on the ball (and why he is so widely read and followed!)
Also, Naked Capitalism has one gem of a call out read here on the Obama administration lying on the actual cases of mortgage fraud, as in inflating the numbers but up to 10x!
These 3 articles listed below also discusses "job polarization" -- how technological advances and mechanization are creating too many low-paying jobs and more higher paying jobs -- while most middle-paying (middle-class) jobs are disappearing.
http://www.voxeu.org/article/jobless-recoveries-and-disappearance-routin...
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2013/08/13/Smart-Policies-Can-Rest...
http://oregoneconomicanalysis.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/more-on-job-growt...
Just follow the money - lobbying, campaign contributions, etc. - and you will understand the political drive for more work visas. These visas aid business and hurt workers by increasing the supply of (cheap) labor. Econ 101, really.
Roberts is a "paleoconservative", which were pushed out of power starting about the Reagan era. These are the old school GOP, which often actually did make a lot of sense economically, unlike today.
Glad to see this piece, what's going on in America, whether one leans conservative, hawkish or left, seems anyone not representing corporations or in DC agrees on what is wrong and what needs to happen.
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