Posted on 05/30/2008 6:30:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
Economy: Many (if not most) pundits, economists and policymakers seem to think the U.S. is in a recession. And if polls are to be believed, so do the American people. Funny, the data just don't show it, at least not yet.
We certainly recognize that the economy isn't in great shape. There's no ignoring, for instance, that home sales have fallen off the table — down 42% in April from a year earlier, the biggest drop since 1981 — with prices off a whopping 21%.
And of course oil has breached $130 a barrel, a sure sign in the past that recession cannot be avoided. (Oil prices, adjusted for inflation, have never climbed above $40 a barrel without a subsequent downturn.)
Add in depressed household balance sheets, weak consumer confidence, rising mortgage defaults and the lingering effects of last year's credit crunch — plus bearish comments by everyone from home builder Eli Broad to economist Martin Feldstein, whose think tank officially decides when we're in recession — and it's no wonder two out of three Americans believe a slump is at hand and nearly nine in 10 think things will get worse.
And yet, as Ronald Reagan once said, facts are stubborn things.
The fact is that real GDP, viewed on a year-over-year basis, increased 2.5% in this year's first quarter — the same as in last year's fourth. (Year-over-year comparisons, not quarter-to-quarter, are most telling.)
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
If the ‘RATS’ MSM says that it’s so, it must be true. It’s on the “Nightly News” on TV ain’t it? It’s got to be true! Doesn’t it?
Data is plural, so you should state "these data".
So to rewrite ala Ezra Pound, "these data just don't show, at least not yet."
“The data” is not incorrect, regardless of the word being plural.
With gas at $4.00+, there WILL BE a recession. And it will be ugly.
chicken little. Ugly is the nineteen seventies. Do you remember?
Go do a little research on the inflation adjusted price of gasoline......
Likely, 99% of the numbers reported by them are as good as can be expected; not perfect by any means, but at least "good 'nuf for 'gubment work." But the headline numbers have been under too much political pressure, for too many decades, and the beauracrats in Washington, D.C. have leaned too far left for far too long, for me to imagine that those numbers are unbiased.
Now and then I read some persuasive analyzes of these numbers, explaining how they push inflation down, maladjust employment and otherwise cook the books. So not only do I not trust them, I find they have both the motive and the means, and the willing press to disseminate their propaganda.
There is a channel that has Nasdaq, Stock Market and job news...the consensus isn’t as bleak as you say....at least not until 2010.
I have to eat crow that we are not in an “official” recession, even as I wonder if we would be if the ACTUAL inflation numbers were reported.
Nevertheless, I said we would see negative growth last quarter, and officially we did not. I’m wrong.
I’m sticking to my guns and I believe a recession must come. So far I’ve been wrong. I admit it.
The one that Warren Buffett (D), George Soros (D) and Alan Greenspan (D) keep praying for predicting.
Actually if you use the real data and not the hedonically, and seasonally adjusted data from the Ministry of Truth that has been changed multiple times since 1980, the recession actually started in the 3rd quarter of 2006 and continues.
For the actual data, go to Shadow Government Statistics ... do a Google search and start using your brain, not the Ministry of Truth’s data.
No one is so blind as those that refuse to see the actual data in front of them when they go to the cash register or the gas pump.
But then the U.S. is in a state of denial about its fiat currency which has only dropped about 40% in value since January 2002.
Or about its ability to pay for all those unfunded liabilities its representatives have promised to its citizens.
I was making a political point, not an economic one. Whether there is a recession or there is not one, the Democrats and their media and business boosters are going to shout that there is one until at least November 5th, 2008.
There’s the problem ... political points... failure to look at the real world and make policy decisions on real data.
A decision made upon bad data is invariably worse than a decision made under uncertainty using the best available data.
Unfortunately, as Alan Greenspan said, the reason he could get away with convoluted and confusing testimony before Congress was that the representatives did not have a clue about what he was discussing ... just a few like Ron Paul had any inkling about economics and their impact. But then what do you expect from a bunch of lawyers? Knowledge ... of course not, they are trained to go for the throat of their opponent and not for justice.
There’s the problem ... political points... failure to look at the real world and make policy decisions on real data.
I don't make policy decisions, sir. But if the men I mentioned in my original post have their way, Barack Hussein Obama and his enablers will be making policy decisions aplenty, almost all of them predictably bad.
That's the political point I was making, and it is self-evidently correct.
It’s an election year and a republican is in the white house.
Expect Grandma eatin’ dog food stories.
It’s all been done before.
the one that 100+ oil inevitably wreaks upon even the strongest economies.
go back to ‘91 with the Desert Storm. All the wise pundits were screaming that oil may hit $100 a barrel, triggering another depression. they were wrong. again.
Actually in most cases dog food is more expensive than human food nowadays. It will be grandma eating value supermarket lines as this all she can afford and having to feed them to her dog because she cannot afford dog food stories instead.
The datum would be correct. These data is the correct plural. I don’t make the rules, RC.
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