Quote of the day from Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics: “The wheels aren’t coming off the economy.”
From the White House:
Now tell me how the Bush tax cuts just helped the rich. Was it the doubling of the child tax credit or the removal of all federal income taxes for 15 million middle-class taxpayers, er, ex-taxpayers?
You don’t get job growth by taking money from investors and handing it to the government.
And, despite inheriting the Clinton Recession and managing through the corporate scandals and the 9-11 attacks that crippled the US economy, the average monthly unemployment rate during the Bush years now bests the Clinton years:
Through October 2007- US Unemployment Rate History.
Today's encouraging employment news boosted the Bush Administration ahead of the previous administration.
Democrats used to preach that this was a "jobless recovery".
As usual, and damn near as always, they were wrong.
AP reported:
Maybe in 2008, Republicans should stop looking for the next Reagan and start looking for the next George Walker Bush.
Yesterday I heard a report that the public opinion about "the direction the country was headed in" reached a 15 year low.
15 years?
1992
Last time we had a Democratic Congress & Republican President.
The ing for political advantage is contagious.
Good news on the economy and jobs.
yeah, right. i'd like mine in euro's please. thank you.
how do wage increases compare to the rising costs of , healthcare, gas, inflation.. etc? seems to me that wages have fallen behind so that the middle class make less money than they did before bushonomics took affect. The numbers look great but they seem to be great for a small portion of our populace? any numbers on what type of jobs are created?
Last edited by George Gervin's Afro; 11-02-2007 at 02:26 PM.
Speaking for myself, there's more of my paycheck left at the end of the bills today than there was in 2001. And I have the same job as I had in 2001 and I haven't retired any major debt.
As to your second question, it was in the article:
I guess my point is that the numbers may sound fantastic but does it affect just a few. Now I am not going to argue that the numbers do indicate that the economy is doing fine rather my point is that no one can argue that a majority of the country is not seeing the benefots from it. To me that's not very honest to not include who exactly is benefiting from the economy. I would have much more respect for yoni's stats if he acknowledged that the middle class isn't necessarily benefiting from it.
I am middle class.
I take, and keep, more than I did in '01 as well; on similar salary.
Well I have been fortunate to have received generous cmpensation increase over the past few years but healthcare is more expensive, gas is more expensive, groceries are more expensive and my paycheck goes does not go as far. I am not complaining because I live a comfortable life and am very fortunate however the majority of Americans make less than I do on average. This, to me, means that a majority of Americans have a hard time making ends meet.. Now I know the predictable responses will be "well they have to live within their means.." etc.. but let's take a look at those without healthcare or a job that offers it. They are behind the 8 ball from the very beginning.... Anyway The numbers look good but I don't believe a majority of Americans directly benefit from it..
I think people can argue that. I think the media narrative has been that the economy is in a nosedive and, yet, quarter after quarter, the numbers keep proving them wrong.
For example, The New York Times noted the positive jobs report, along with other good economic news released today, in an article led A Wall St. Switch: Good News May Be Good News. What's funny about this is that earlier this morning, before the jobs report came out, the article was led "Wall St. Switch: Bad News May Be Bad News," [you can tell because the NYTimes failed to change the url which includes the le of the previous article.] The Times apparently was expecting bad news on the job front; when the Labor Department report came out, the on-line le was hastily changed and the paper's coverage led with the statement that "the October employment report came in stronger than expected."
This has been the persistent narrative of the media when, in fact, the economy, under President Bush has outperformed the economy under Clinton on almost every indicator.
The article told you where the jobs came from...most, if not all, middle class jobs.
But, not to put too fine a point on it, everyone is benefitting from the up economy.
I don't buy that most Americans are having a tougher time of it; I think that is what we are being sold, however.
My friends, acquainences, and contacts seem to be doing alright. A small sampling, but taken with the, as Yoni points out, consistently strong economic numbers, tell me that things are pretty good.
well it is the exact opposite for my friends & associates..
Well, you know George, you're never going to have an economy where 100% of the population does well. I mean, 4.7% of the population is still without a job and, in a country our size, that a pretty big number of employable adults.
My finances sucked during the Clinton administration...the only upside were the tech stocks I bought, sat on, and (completely by coincidence) dumped, right before the bubble burst.
I suggest you pick new friends and associates because you're hanging with a small minority of people who are either actually doing poorly in this economy or, I rather suspect, however, you're just hanging with a crowd who has been conditioned to believe their doing poorly because George W. Bush is the President of the United States and, by God, things just can't be good with him at the reins.
yeah george, pick new friends and widden the gap.
without a doubt this guy is an asshole.
uh my friends aren't political animals. i see how they struggle daily to make ends meet. they are not complainers nor do they blame others for thier plight. oh and yoni i live in katy texas which is a very republican area..
well i guess i should just hang out with the SUV crowd..
D'okie dokie, doesn't change what I said much.
The inflation rate from January 2001 to Sptember 2007 was 19.07%, according to this inflation calculator: http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/I...or.asp#results
And it looks like they are using the CPI, which is a lie that underreports the real inflation rate, as we all know.
I also didn't see anything about household debt in the article. The US has had a negative savings rate since 2005. Only twice before has the US had a negative savings rate for at least a year: during the Great Depression in 1932 and 1933.
The Fed engineered a debt financed spending spree to get us out of the 01-02 recession. Odds favor that a person has more debt now than in 2001. But even if you don't, the fact is that the American consumer in general does (despite having a lower real wage), and his rampant consumption at the expense of his personal savings over the last few years has kept the GDP growing. Credit bubbles don't last forever, though.
Next tsunami about to hit wall street...
Level 3 storm about to hit Wall Street
By Martin Hutchinson
ATimes...# Securitized credit card obligations. $915 billion of credit card debt is currently outstanding, the majority of it securitized, and its default rate is likely to soar as the full effects of the home mortgage market's crack-up spread to the credit card area. The risks in Level 3 portfolios derived from this asset class arise particularly in the areas of complex derivatives and manufactured assets based on credit card debt pools.
# Leveraged buyout bridge loans. After a hiccup in August, the market in these has reopened recently, although around $250 billion of them still remains on banks' balance sheets. The value of a leveraged buyout bridge loan that has failed to find a pier to support the other end of the bridge is very dubious indeed, even though these loans are being carried in the books at or close to par. As the value of underlying assets declines and the cash flow fails to match debt payments, the deterioration in credit quality of these loans will accelerate.
# Asset backed commercial paper. The amount of asset backed commercial paper outstanding has dropped from $1.2 trillion to $900 billion in the last three months. This financing structure was always unsound; it was basically a means of removing the assets backing the commercial paper from bank balance sheets, and always faced the problem of a severe mismatch between asset and liability duration. The $100 billion vehicle intended to rescue this market has found a mixed reception to say the least. It is likely that as credit conditions deteriorate, the assets underlying ABCP vehicles will increasingly find themselves on bank balance sheets, where they will prove to be almost completely unmarketable.
# Complex derivatives contracts. Even simple interest rate swaps and currency swaps caused large losses in the last significant credit tightening in 1994, although most of those losses were suffered by Wall Street's customers rather than Wall Street itself. The more complex transactions that have been devised during the last 12 giddy years are much more likely to prove impossible either to sell or to hedge. Goldman Sachs reported that in the third quarter of 2007 its profits on derivatives used for hedging more or less matched its losses on subprime mortgages. It is likely in reality that the bulk of those profits were incurred through model-based write-ups of value on contracts that were within the Level 3 category - after all, Goldman's Level 3 assets increased by a third during the quarter. It's not much good shorting to match a long position you don't like if your hedging shorts prove to be impossible to close out.
# Credit Default Swaps, the global outstanding value of which in June 2007 was $2.4 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. These are a relatively new instrument, the efficacy of which has not been tested in a downturn. It appears likely that the value in banks' books of their Level 3 credit derivatives contracts bears no relation whatever to reality. As discussed above, the incentives have been all in favor of inflating it.
The capital underlying Wall Street, at the top, is not all that large - a matter of a few hundred billion. Given the piling of risk upon risk that has been engaged in over the last few years, and the size of the losses in the mortgage market alone that seem probable - my own estimate last spring of $980 billion looks increasingly likely to be somewhat below the final figure - it appears almost inevitable that in a bear market in which liquidity dries up and investors become skeptical, Wall Street's capital will be wiped out. Only the commercial banks like Wachovia and Bank of America whose investment banking ambitions have been largely thwarted and whose portfolios of Level 3 rubbish are correspondingly lower, are less likely to disappear...
I have seen the benefits of it all my life. Life is good
for you and me. Saying otherwise is just plain lying.
You really want to know who isn't seeing the bennies.
Those not working and living off of welfare. You cannot
benefit if you aren't working.
Yep, the media is real good at brainwashing people.
Well, they can make those predictions if they like. I see semi-regular and frequent short term downs in the market for a few specific reasons, with quick recovery, and nominal growth over the long term.
Those items listed are hot large enough to affect the market, unless they can scare investors like they appear to be attempting.
166,000 jobs without health insurance, paid sick days, or retirement benefits. yay.
If the elections were about the current state of the economy, the GOP would win easily.
Oh jobs equate to health insurance, paid sick days and166,000 jobs without health insurance, paid sick days, or retirement benefits. yay.
retirement bennies. I thought business was in business
to make money and PROVIDE jobs. Didn't know they
were in the socialism industry.
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