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Explaining Two Trade Busts: Output VS. Trade Costs In The Great Depression And Today Douglas L. Campbell David Jacks Christopher M. Meissner Dennis Novy 19 September 2009 Trade has declined massively during the crisis. This column assesses the relative roles of falling demand and rising trade costs in explaining the collapse and compares it to the Great Depression. Surprising, the increase in trade costs today is as large as in 1929, despite the absence of any modern protectionism resembling Smoot-Hawley. It appears that reviving global demand alone will be insufficient to revive world trade. If the world economy is now...

A. Gate #1: Motivational Arrogance. 1. Definition and Description. a. All arrogance starts with thinking, moves into motivation, and from there moves into decisions and actions. b. By definition, motivational arrogance is a complex of mental attitude sins, all of which are related to arrogance or have their foundation in the basic concept of the sin of pride. c. Pride is defined as inordinate self-esteem, unreasonable conceit, preoccupation with self, insolence, rejection of authority, vanity, self-justification, an inflated concept of self, and the exaggeration of one's own self-importance. d. The complex of sins in motivational arrogance includes pride, jealousy, bitterness,...

OK: here's why I got kicked out of the U.S. Navy, short version. Autumn, 1984: I was a 4.0 (top-performing) sailor, a petty officer (NCO) right out of "A" School (Navy vocational training school), and was on the fast track to a great career as a naval nuclear power worker -- until I lost my marbles. Summer, 1985: It happened while I was in Nuke School (Naval Nuclear Power School, then located in Orlando, Florida): the stress levels, lack of sleep, and physical environment of Rickover City triggered in me a full-on case of clinical depression, complete with physical symptoms...

From the White House web site entry page, on two of the rotating banner announcements: "A staggering new report indicates that under the status quo, around half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point in the next ten years. The President pledges not to allow this future to unfold." "The President looks back at how we managed to avoid a depression, and looks forward at how we will help the economy recover and ensure the financial industry never again drags our economy down with reckless behavior." http://www.whitehouse.gov

Both bank credit and the M3 money supply in the United States have been contracting at rates comparable to the onset of the Great Depression since early summer, raising fears of a double-dip recession in 2010 and a slide into debt-deflation.

At the end of this past July, one of the largest ports in America, Long Beach, reported that the 20% year-over-year cargo business decline is among the sharpest since the Great Depression. This is not a trend specific to Long Beach. “It’s phenomenal how much things fell away even since December,” said Paul Bingham, managing director of global trade and transportation for IHS Global Insight, the business research firm that monitors North America’s biggest ports for the National Retail Federation. As of September 4, 2009, shadowstats.com reported that unemployment in the US is now near 21% and is showing no...

It's clear that President Barack Obama's $787-billion stimulus hasn't worked as advertised, but some economists are worried it could backfire and cause something much worse. According to a new study by economists Charles Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute and endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, the Keynesian tactics employed by Obama "will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the U.S. economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years." The study accuses the president of making Depression-era mistakes. Stephen Moore, member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and senior...

Job outlook hits worst-ever level Employers' hiring plans at lowest point in Manpower survey's history Hiring plans for the upcoming fourth quarter dropped to their lowest level in the history of Manpower's Employment Outlook Survey, which started in 1962. A net -3% of employers said they'll hire in the fourth quarter, down from -2% in the third quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Milwaukee-based firm's survey of more than 28,000 employers. Before this year, the survey's previous low point was a net 1% hiring outlook for the third quarter of 1982.

Massachusetts is experiencing its first wave of jobless workers to exhaust unemployment benefits after nearly two years of rising unemployment, state labor officials said. The state this week sent out letters notifying about 2,500 jobless workers that they had or would soon receive their last unemployment checks, having used up state and federal extensions that provided up to 79 weeks, or about 18 months, of benefits. The state expects about 21,000 jobless workers to run out of unemployment benefits by Thanksgiving. Nationally, about 400,000 jobless workers will exhaust their benefits over the next few months. The depletion of unemployment benefits...

One of the biggest myths about the great depression is that FDR's NEW Deal and the related government intervention and public works projects got us out of the Great Depression. The truth is that the New Deal did not work. Instead of creating growth in the private sector, it created government growth that squeezed out the private sector. Of course, the number one public golf course in the country Bethpage Black (where the US Open played this year) was a was a New Deal Federal works project, but that only cures MY depression, it did little for the country. As...

Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the Great Depression, according to a new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan. By Edmund Conway Published: 06 Sep 2009 History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. His policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to Third World status last century, the paper says. There...

I cracked up – for the first time - on June 4, 1988, three weeks short of completing my Masters degree in Psychology. Some would say I had a nervous breakdown. The psych ward doctors said it was major depression. I say that I saw just how evil my sin is in the eyes of God and it scared the hell out of me. I cracked up, broke down, and de-pressed. I cobbled together some mad reality and blew a fuse. I despaired, decompensated, detached, and derailed. I lost my mind, never to be the same again. Thanks be to...

According to the Obama administration’s mid-session budget update, the federal government will have to borrow nearly 40 percent of its total expenditures in 2010, a level not seen since World War II. The report, “Mid-Session Review, Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2010,” shows that 39.9 percent of all federal income will be borrowed, making borrowing the single largest share of revenue in 2010. The next largest component of federal revenue is the personal income tax, which accounts for only 27.3 percent of federal funds. This is only slightly lower than in 2009, when the federal government borrowed 43.3...

It's twilight in Peter Schiff's America, and, if painful and drastic changes aren't made soon, he foresees an economic depression lasting at least a decade. The future, as envisioned by Schiff, will be marked by rampant inflation — a gallon of gas could cost $10 — food shortages and rolling blackouts, unless government sharply shrinks and the free market is allowed to flourish.

A future of poverty and upheaval And so those very same silly sods, who claim to be professionals in the financial world, who never saw this thing, the current economic crisis, approaching, are now the ones who loudly proclaim that the worst is behind us and though the recovery will be difficult, an upswing has now at least begun. There were, of course, a few sane voices out in the wilderness, often ridiculed or simply ignored by CNBC, who warned of an impending implosion. It is these voices we as a people should be paying more attention to, rather than...

Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke, who was reappointed to a second four-year term Tuesday, is a renowned expert on the Great Depression, driven to avoid a repeat of such devastation. Bernanke has earned plaudits for helping steer the US economy through one of its most perilous periods and toward recovery, with President Barack Obama repeatedly thanking him for his contribution. He was aided in his bid for a second term at the helm of the Fed by the strong working relationship he has forged with Democrat Obama's economic team -- despite being a holdover from George W. Bush's Republican...

The US economy will shrink far more than expected this year and will rebound much more slowly than forecast after that, according to a bleak new assessment by the White House Budget Office. Th federal government also faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, far worse than what the Obama administration had estimated just a few months ago.

Excerpt ... Assets for failures for [the current] crisis total $7.1 trillion to date. This is nearly eight times the assets compared with the inflation-adjusted total for the S&L crisis. The data for bank failures in the Great Depression is shown in the following table. The total deposits involved were about $7.6 billion over a span of 13 years. Adjusted for inflation, that is $100 billion in 2009 dollars. The size of the crisis today, adjusted for inflation, is more than 70 times larger than the entire Great Depression. It's unlikely that bank failures can peak until we are close...

A paper released by McKinsey & Co. last week concludes that 28% of asset managers are not responding adequately to the recent storm hitting their industry. McKinsey chalks this behavior up to “depression and denial”. But wait. There is hope for the future of the asset management industry. The consultancy also concludes that 13% of asset management firms are “decisive operators” who have pared back costs and preserved profits (or at least, mitigated a fall in profits). These conclusions and accompanying prescriptive remedies are contained in a report called “Recovering from the storm: The new economic reality for U.S. asset...

In the 1960s and 1970s, psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania found that animals receiving electric shocks which they had no ability to escape or prevent, were unable to take action in future distressing situations, even when avoidance or escape was possible. Expanding his research to humans, Seligman came to the same conclusions. A human’s drive to initiate action is thwarted by a sense of a lack of control over his surroundings. Seligman labeled this phenomenon learned helplessness and found that it hinders normal development and leads to emotional disturbances, most predominantly, depression. In other words, people are...

Australian economist Steve Keen is one of the very few who have called this economic crisis correctly. What distinguishes Keen is that his economic forecasts are based on levels of debt and changes in levels of debt as opposed to money supply, output capacity and other things that led most economists astray. The following video is about 19 minutes long but very much worth listening to in entirety, improving as it goes along.

Investors tend to love templates and patterns. Why? They provide a market guidance that offers a higher probability of accuracy than most other research. Some say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. How is this for historic irony, the first leg of the Great Depression reduced the Dow Jones (DJI: ^DJI) by 48%. The subsequent rally lifted the Dow nearly 50%. Fast forward and you will find that the first leg of this recession melted the Dow Jones (NYSEArca: DIA - News), S&P 500 (SNP: ^GSPC), and Nasdaq (Nasdaq: ^IXIC) by just over 50%,...

A new study shows that homosexuals and lesbians seek mental health counseling far more than heterosexuals. The UCLA School of Public Health found that to be true in California, but there have been other studies with similar results. Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality says homosexuals usually respond that they would not have so many problems if society would simply accept their behavior as normal. "You can't just keep going back to homophobia and societal stigma to account for this huge difference between straights and homosexuals with regard to various pathologies," he contends. "First of all, we're talking...

A new study says the average age of video-game players in the United States is 35, and oh, by the way: They're overweight and tend to be depressed. Investigators from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emory University and Andrews University analyzed survey data from 552 adults in the Seattle-Tacoma area. The subjects ranged in age from 19 to 90, according to the study, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The hypothesis was that video-game players have a higher body mass index — the measure of a person's weight in relation to...

PHILADELPHIA — The Army plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency, military officials say. The training, the first of its kind in the military, is meant to improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, that plague about one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard will receive the training, which will also be available to their family members and to civilian employees. The new program is to be introduced at two...

A summary of Second Quarter 2009 Negative Equity Data from First American CoreLogic shows that Nearly One-Third Of All Mortgages Are Underwater. • More than 15.2 million U.S. mortgages, or 32.2 percent of all mortgaged properties, were in negative equity position as of June 30, 2009 according to newly released data from First American CoreLogic. As of June 2009, there were an additional 2.5 million mortgaged properties that were approaching negative equity. Negative equity and near negative equity mortgages combined account for nearly 38 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide.

1st Lady's Staff Jackie Kennedy had a staff of five, Barbara Bush four, two were part time for letters and invitations. You wonder who would approve this huge expense with so many out of work and our economy what it is. Could the two daughters also have a staff. Makes you wonder. First Lady's Staff First Lady Requires More Than Twenty Attendants! Your tax dollars at work.

Which U.S. president ranks as America's greatest depression fighter? Not the fabled Franklin Delano Roosevelt, since unemployment averaged 17 percent through the New Deal period (1933–1940). What banished high unemployment was the conscription of 12 million men into the armed forces during World War II. FDR actually prolonged high unemployment: he tripled taxes; he signed laws that made it more expensive for employers to hire people, made discounting illegal, and authorized the destruction of food; and he launched costly infrastructure projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority that became a drag on states receiving TVA-subsidized electricity. America's greatest depression fighter was...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average's triple-digit decline Friday morning is prompting many to ask this question. But contrarian analysts have been worried about the rally's sustainability for several weeks now. And their concern has only increased over the last couple of days as the latest sentiment data have been released.

We clicked over to Zero Hedge last night for a brief check-in on the decline and fall of civilization. We found these two beauts. As with many reports in this genre, the logic is weakened by the dismissiveness and arrogance of the rhetoric, but the reports make some excellent points. They're also a fun contrast to endless celebrations of the v-shaped recovery crowd. To briefly summarize: Our collective debt is still vastly higher than it was in the early 1930s and in Japan in the 1990s. Consumers account for 70% of economic growth, and they're broke The banks are still...

Video at site Another happy forecast from Elliot Wave gury Bob Prechter (who may waste his time staring at charts most of the day, but also talks fundamentals): Peter Gorenstein, TechTicker: In July, Ben Bernanke told a town hall meeting, "I was not going to be the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over the second Great Depression." According to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in that regard he's succeeded. Bernanke's rescue of the financial sector in tandem with the Obama Administration's stimulus plan prevented a "full replay" of the Great Depression, the Nobel Prize-winning economist writes. But like President...

The Atlantic is wakening up for a while, likely for the next couple of weeks. There are three main areas of concern that I am watching for possible development into tropical systems. First, we have tropical depression 2 which on satellite appears it could already be a tropical storm. Here is a look at some of that satellite analysis estimates on the strength of the current depression. A couple of the satellites are estimating that winds could be as strong as 55 knots and for a system to become a tropical storm it needs winds of 35 knots.

The Atlantic Tropical region is starting to heat up with activity and we will likely see our first tropical named system of the year in the Atlantic Basin, possibly as early as later tonight. Tropical Depression 2 is located near 31W Longitude and 15 N Latitude or about 400 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, this Tuesday afternoon. TD is moving to the west around 13 MPH and the general track over the next day or two will be to the West to West-Northwest. As of 10 AM, maximum sustained winds were around 30 MPH and the estimated pressure...

Video at site In July, Ben Bernanke told a town hall meeting, "I was not going to be the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over the second Great Depression." According to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in that regard he's succeeded. Bernanke's rescue of the financial sector in tandem with the Obama Administration's stimulus plan prevented a "full replay" of the Great Depression, the Nobel Prize-winning economist writes. But like President Bush declaring "Mission Accomplished" in 2003, Elliott Wave International founder, Bob Prechter thinks Krugman and Bernanke are premature in declaring victory over the credit crunch. Prechter, who famously...

"The big question is whether the rally is over," Prechter says, suggesting "countertrend moves can be tricky" to predict. But the veteran market watcher is "quite sure the next wave down is going to be larger than what we've already experienced," and take major averages well below their March 2009 lows.

It's been said that history does not always repeat itself, but it does rhyme. It's also been said that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. How is this for historic irony, the first leg of the Great Depression reduced the Dow Jones ... by 48%. The subsequent rally lifted the Dow by over 40%. Fast forward and you will find that the first leg of this recession melted the Dow Jones ... S&P 500 ... and Nasdaq ... by just over 50%, while the rally from the March lows - reminiscent of the 1930s rally...

I've been wanting to post this July 2009 article, and provide more commentary. I do usually link to several related pieces that relate in my posts in general. But in light of the Obama and media mistruths being spread about the status of the economy, and using stock numbers and fuzzy interpretation of indicators, I'm posting this now for you to peruse in it's entirety. It paints a less than pretty picture compared to the rosy views being fed to the American citizen by the O'admin and his puppet media. But surviving economic realities requires removing the rose colored glasses,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found. "Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry. "Not...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.

OK. So let me get this straight. According to the US Census Bureau, there are 93 million houses in the U.S. Also, according to the Census Bureau, 18.7 million of these houses are vacant. That equals 20% of all the houses in the country. It doesn't include vacation homes. Based on the survey noted below there are another 20 million homes that people would like to sell, but haven't put them up for sale. There are 4.1 million new and existing homes currently for sale. There will be another 2 million foreclosures this year. Millions of Option ARM mortgages will...

DEPRESSION! Why don’t politicians tell the TRUTH, the WHOLE TRUTH and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH?!?! I must report that in my visits throughout the Detroit area to get to talk with people, I hear the word, “DEPRESSION” again and again… they are NOT using the OFFICIAL TERM, “recession.” Ha! Dah! I think WE THE PEOPLE KNOW something that our government leaders do NOT know… or, perhaps, want to cover up… what do YOU think? HOPE you will comment NOW! I am in Detroit, MI area this week teaching my regular AP US Government & Politics Seminar for Teachers. This is...

The U.S. economy performed better than expected during the second quarter, but revised data revealed that the intensity of the economic downturn has been much greater than economists thought. The economy contracted much more slowly in the second quarter than during the previous nine months Continues... Prosperity is still just around the corner! Alleged "reporters" are so worried about Obama's shrinking poll numbers that they're ferociously trying to manufacture an economic recovery out of whole cloth. The Associated Press declared, Recession eases; GDP dip smaller than expected. The Dailyfinance.com announced that "the economy shrank at a lower-than-expected rate in the...

HAVING BIPOLAR vs. BEING BIPOLAR (excerpt from the book, "Blessed With Bipolar: 36 God-Given Gifts of Manic Depression) I have bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder does not have me. Bipolar disorder is not, my identity. It is not who I am. Bipolar disorder impacts my personality, emotions, and behavior. It does not dictate what I think, believe, say, or do. There are blessings that come with “having bipolar disorder.” “Being bipolar,” on the other hand, would be nothing but a burden. If I think of myself as “being bipolar” (or of bipolar as being my being), then I am controlled by...

As I have previously pointed out, the current economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression. See this and this. I have also pointed out that two economists said as recently as June that the global economic downturn was worse than the Great Depression. But if you don't believe them, here it is from the horse's mouth . . . Ben Bernanke said 3 days ago: .

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight." Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire After ruling much of the known world for centuries, Rome fell due to a number of factors that, historians believe, would not have been fatal in isolation, but that proved terminal in combination. Military overspending and overreach,...

“There is nothing inevitable about another depression. We have a simple choice: We can repeat the errors of the past or we can avoid them.” Those were my words, Feb. 8, 2008. It’s time for a “depression watch” update. Unfortunately, it’s mostly bad news. While another 12-year depression still isn’t inevitable, the post-financial-crisis policy blunders of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt are being re-enacted with eerie similitude by the current president. Hoover devastated America’s exporters by signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, triggering a devastating trade war. President Obama triggered retaliatory tariffs from Mexico when he appeased his Teamster supporters by blocking...

Zero Hedge is pleased to provide its perspectives on the highly pertinent topic of the ongoing recession � This presentation has been prepared in collaboration with the terrific work of David Rosenberg, Chief Economist & Strategist, Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. � We believe an aggressive “fact-finding” investigation into the true depths of the recession is critical due to increased pressure by members of the Mainstream Media and conflicted Investment Banks to present a myopic, unjustified opinion � Furthermore, opinions based on overoptimistic projections and “hope” are the primary reason the Credit Bubble persisted as long as it did �...

US State Dept has advised embassies worldwide to stock up on a year's worth of the local currency in anticipation of collapse of the US dollar. Look for a temporary banking shutdown timed for around September 2009. As under Roosevelt, some banks won't reopen. 96% of bank reserves are currently held with the Federal Reserve who tells the banks not to loan the money, but rather to save it for further banking acquisition and consolidation. Chapman foresees a bank holiday lasting 4-5 days. Chapman thinks this first bank holiday presages a much more significant bank holiday months to years later...

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” George Orwell – Animal Farm The United States has gradually degenerated from a Republic based on individual liberties to a socialized oligarchy run by an exclusive few. The country was founded upon the platform of individual rights. We declared our independence from Great Britain because of excessive regulation and taxation. Americans fought for the right to live their lives free from the subjugation of an overbearing governmental body. The Founding Fathers declared our independence with these immortal words: 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all...

Washington, July 24 (ANI): The impact of the global financial meltdown on the United States can be gleaned from the fact that sixteen of the country’s fifty states are currently doling out unemployment benefits. The number of unemployed Americans has doubled since 2007 to 15 million. About 9.5 million people are collecting benefits, up from about 2.5 million two years ago. Spending is expected to reach nearly 100 billion dollars this year, about triple what it was two years ago.