Posted on 05/08/2008 8:00:49 PM PDT by B-Chan
Personally I'd like to see all statistical measurements restored to where they where, say, 50 years ago. What would a proper historical perspective tell us?
Kevin Phillips was the author of “The Coming Republican Majority” back in the 70s. I’ve always enjoyed reading his work. As usual around here he is a Good Guy when what he writes agrees with the party line. And then he’s a Marxist when he writes something about the emperor’s clothes.
If things are so bad why did Disney do so good?
“I find it difficult to believe the economy is as bad as they make it out to be...”
Sounds like your area, like many others, is doing well. The attempt to measure a national economy is about as useful as a global mean temperature. If someone in Siberia says it’s cold, you can say no, the GMT is 63 degrees, it’s quite nice out.
There are various parts of the USA booming while other areas are in recession, and this has steadily become more common since about 1980. Most of these local conditions, good or bad, relate to local factors, not federal ones. Which is why large federal actions help in some places, while fouling things up in others.
My job is to work around whatever the conditions are, finding a way to take advantage of the opportunities that are always present. The local economy can be good or bad,opportunities are always there, changing constantly.
This writer is great at identifying all the tress, but he is blind to the forest.
funny after greenspan just said the worst of the credit crunch is over
on drudge.com
referance *
You've got it exactly. The closedmindedness and slavish devotion to the official Chamber Of Commerce / Radio Talk Show Seed-Faith Prosperity Gospel Of Purpose-Driven Wealth around here gets a bit tiresome at times.
depression...inflation....recession....its all in the eyes of the beholder....
the people out in Middle America KNOW whats going on....we don't need to be told that there is no inflation....we know that its here..
most people can sense what the economy is doing ....
where I live I don't see a bad economy.....I see lots of shopping..lots of big cars....people seem to be pretty well off...
Funny how people no long talk about the dot-com bubble. I lost a chunk of change because of it. So I remember that Clinton’s economy ended with a bust that the media refused to talk about.
How many of them paid money they earned working, and how many just added another $60 to the $20,000 in credit card debt they already have?
Microeconomic examples don't scale up to macroeconomic realities. Some bankers made lots of money during the Depression. But this isn't going to be like 1929 - the Fed will do whatever it has to prevent a stock market crash and bail out the big banks. Don't look for a Big Bang this time - it will be a bunch of little explosions like Bear Stearns and the forthcoming implosions of Fannie Mae and Citigroup, neither of which will be allowed to fail.
And what the Fed has to do to keep the banks solvent is to make sure they can recapitalize by inflating away the value of your dollars while the companies issue new stock and dilute the value of your 401k's mutual fund holdings. In ten years we'll be lucky if our retirement funds have half the purchasing power they do today, even though the dollar values will certainly be higher. During this process, preserving the illusion that "things aren't that bad" is the Fed's number one mission - and judging by the comments here they've been very successful so far.
As Warren Buffett pointed out recently, to match its modest 5.2% annual return from the years 1900 to 2000, the Dow will have to get to 2,000,000 by the end of this century. Eight years in the equity markets are pretty much standing still. The climb is getting steeper.
Interesting article; GRRRREAT post. Thanks.
I 100% agree with that article and love the key phrase “pollyanna creep”. Note it cuts across political parties — endemic to the notion of big government.
Trying to get away with some sloppy use of language late on Friday night? Accountants have never reported macro economic statistics, nor made inferences based on them, which is the true province of the statistician. Positive or negative bias is not and shouldn't be.
Ok, late Thursday night or early Friday morning.
Is that the same as 7 days a week? (Grin)
The Sidlinger Corp. tracked the true numbers back in the Nineties, but Old Man Sidlinger is gone. Now John Williams tracks the true stats at his Shadowstats website.
This article is a Unified Field Theory of Governmental Manipulation of Statistics. And both parties were in it up to their necks.
“Funny how people no long talk about the dot-com bubble. I lost a chunk of change because of it. So I remember that Clinton’s economy ended with a bust that the media refused to talk about.”
People who were warning about the housing bubble often brought up the NASDAQ bubble. It was another manifestation of the same illness, a great expansion of credit resulting in serial bubbles. It’s likely the bubble is currently in commodities right now.
The money I lost because of that and 9/11 would have set me up nicely for a vacation condo in Destin. In all fairness, a lot of the loss was my fault. I got complacent and didn't pay nearly enough attention to the dot-com implosion.
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