Posted on 01/19/2014 3:42:01 PM PST by Red in Blue PA
"So many people – politicians, journalists, I'm afraid market analysts – sort of believe this story of an economics recovery going on around the world," Roger Nightingale, strategist at RDN Associates, told CNBC. "This economics recovery hasn't occurred. In fact, actually for the past 18 months people have been talking about it, the data is pretty flat. If anything, it's getting flatter."
....
"The conventional response, among economists, is that the government must take action to boost domestic demand in the United States, with either monetary or fiscal stimulus, or by redistributing wealth," he said in a note, citing the one-time status of the U.S. as the world's "consumer of last resort."
But the U.S. doesn't appear to be able to boost global demand much, Chovanec said. The U.S. Federal Reserve's massive bond-buying program may have prevented a credit collapse during the financial crisis, he said, but it hasn't done much to boost consumer spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
As of now I’m not interested in trade or prosperity or even justice. That time is past and long gone. What I am interested is good old fashioned revenge.
It gets more blatant with every passing week -- they are coming for our IRAs and 401k accounts. After they steal your life savings, you'll be eating dog food in retirement and waiting for four months to see a nurse practitioner, but the gibsmedat crowd will have brand new Nikes, Obamafones, Section 8, full EBT cards, and all the meth they need. We'd "redistributed" $21 TRILLION and everything is worse than it ever has been.
consumer spending will take a hit with bigger healthcare premiums too
Median income is down. Petrochemicals are up. Staples for the table are up. Yes electronic devices are cheaper but you can’t eat them or warm your house with them. Obamacare will remove even more discretionary income from the marketplace as will ever increasing taxes. It’s called a death spiral.
It would be more accurate to say that we’ll be going after the people who promised that by shipping production (and therefore jobs) out of the country that everyone would benefit from “lower prices.”
Unless the imported products are free, it’s rather pointless to talk about whether or not people without jobs can afford them.
Suuuuuure it does.
We have given one the last remaining communist powers a huge stick to use against us and our military interests in the Pacific (and our economic interests in the entire world), and “our view is crumbling in the dust.”
Riiiight.
Well, bring it on. I'll be waiting for you. I don't care if you're an enemy also, just another to the list. I blame people like you also for the financial trouble we're in for not studying what the hell you're talking about and blaming those the liberals and unions blame. You want to buddy up with them, go ahead. You like to throw the word "traitor" around, you'll regret if you come around me when the SHTF.
Unless the imported products are free, it’s rather pointless to talk about whether or not people without jobs can afford them.
We could afford anything we wanted if we would fix our tax structure, our regulation system, and our relationship to unions.
Discretionary demand will return when the government stops arbitrary redistribution of that discretionary spending. Government expands the Ripple economy at the expense of the Korbell economy.
You obviously don’t know jack-all about international finance.
The reason why the PRC is able to take it all out of the US isn’t regulatory or even wage structure in the US.
It is because they’re kept their currency artificially pegged to the US dollar to insure that, no matter what, their products will enjoy a cost benefit relative to goods made where the wages and inputs are priced in USD. That’s it. Full stop.
You and your type have ignored this since China was allowed MFN status for their trade with the US. You continue to ignore it. You think that you’re trading with a bunch of foreign businessmen, but you’re too stupid to actually do your homework on the PRC and realize that most companies with any sort of important trade advantage are actually subsidiaries of the PLA, and are financed through cut-outs by the state. US businesses aren’t competing with other companies off-shore, they’re competing with the government of the PRC and their army.
Oh, and you’ve enabled the wholesale transfer of military and dual-use technology to the last of the communist powers on the planet.
Brilliant own-goal there, scooter.
No, it won’t.
Look at Japan. Has their discretionary demand returned? Has their economy come roaring back, 20 years after they started down the road we’re on now?
Nope. They just went from 66% debt:GDP in 1992 to about 215% debt:GDP. They’ve QE’ed their way to infinity and beyond. Economists now refer to two “lost decades” in Japan’s economic history.
Why hasn’t their economy hasn’t gone anywhere?
Because they pioneered the idiotic schemes that we’re now pursuing: The Japanese kept their big, over-levered banks afloat at the expense of the rest of their economy, while allowing the banks to have escaped punishment for their fraud and malfeasance.
What should have happened was that the large investment banks should have been allowed to crater. Yes, it would have been disruptive. But that’s how free-market economies work: Stupidity should be rewarded with pain, in amounts commensurate with the stupidity.
Instead, we’ve warped our entire economy into propping up Wall Street. That’s exactly what the Japanese have done for years. They thought they’d get away with it because they had a trade surplus (and we don’t) and they had a current account surplus (and we don’t) and therefore they thought that they could just QE their way out of this as long as demand stayed up in the US.
Well, it didn’t work for Japan, and they had those advantages.
We are pursuing the same idiotic schemes, but without any advantages other than we currently enjoy reserve currency status - and by handing the PRC enough cash, we’re insuring that the US dollar loses its reserve status. The Chinese are going to want a insulate themselves from a collapse in the US dollar, and they’re pursuing that agenda now (and have been for four years).
The GOP has been singularly stupid in carrying the water for the banks and Wall Street, where anyone who can read financial statements should have seen clearly that the bankers needed severe pain - either through free-market failure, or stiff regulatory penalties and criminal investigations. One or the other.
Meanwhile, the DNC is making sure that the banks have to swear fealty to the DNC to keep the fairly useless regulations off their backs.
Populism is usually a pretty ugly thing, but in this case, the populist position of allowing the banks to fail is perhaps the best thing that can be done to force Wall Street to stop robbing the US economy blind.
This is not true. There are MANY countries around the world experiencing large growth. S. Korea for example is going gangbusters. China and India still doing well. Brazil also.
Obama has been making sure this happens. He's slowing the US down and doing whatever he can to get other countries to compete effectively against us.
The irony with the sky high premiums is that it comes with equally high deductibles.
The next financial product I see on the market is “medical loans” for Obamacare enrollees.
How can the working stiff create a demand for anything when they’re more concerned about paying their Taxes at all levels.
Not too forget the disaster known as obamacare.
We’d do better to drill for oil and gas, mine for coal, sell timber and compete with Canada in the energy markets.
There are two billion people who have no power or unreliable power, and their demand will grow because they want to upgrade their lifestyles. That more than offsets the minor price declines due to increased supply.
Yep. Many of the local regulations against new, small manufacturing shops in rural areas are measures against domestic competition, too, so we know what kind of constituent is pushing those kinds of regulations from the shadows of politicians. Regulations against building: big builders’ rackets. Regulations against families (officiously pushed social pathologies): all of the aforementioned, bar associations, government-linked psych. interests, social work interests and so on. Most contemporary charities aren’t for helping the poor, either. They’re social engineering pushes for supporting the aforementioned and more.
Good Gosh ......No Employment + Lengthened Unemployment Benefits = NO CONSUMERS the math isn’t that damn hard !
Unemployment Benefits do NOT create Jobs they create dependency Dependency creates the lack of WANT and more creation of NEED if your right minded you want to feed clothe and house your kids before you want a new car or Ipad like i said the Math is not that hard !
govmedia?
its about concentration more and more money in fewer and fewer hands...
I'd love to conduct an experiment to see if you're right. Let's cut spending, go to a low flat income tax, get rid of the corporate tax, and cut regulations back to where they make sense and see if we continue to lose high-end manufacturing to low-wage countries like China.
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