--although it's not yet quite what I'd like to call a 'turn-around':
--although it's not yet quite what I'd like to call a 'turn-around':
Goood morning and welcome to new beginnings Monday! Stock indexes finally punched up above long term ceilings and futures are agog w/ more on the upside. Precious metals are also soaring w/ gold up to $1,359.65 and silver topping $20.49! No econ reports (bulk of that action will be at the end of the week) but at least we got pundits to keep us company:
'Good' Jobs Report Confirms Slowing Economy - Louis Woodhill, RCM
Is Anemic Growth the New Normal? - George Will, Investor's Business Daily
Brace for More Weak Earnings - Ciara Linnane & Tomi Kilgore, MarketWatch
When Hitting Panic Button Didn't Pay for Investors - Peter Hodson, NP
The Shameful Lefty Shakedown of Exxon - Steve Moore, Washington Times
Ryan Produces a Tax Plan to Make U.S. Great Again - Ralph Benko, Forbes
Is the Car Culture In the U.S. Dying? - Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
A friend working for an American company in Portugal during the early 1970s described the situation where Portuguese were streaming back into the country from the deteriorating African colonies (which were subsequently lost). To deal with this influx, many jobs were literally split in two - many people were working part-time due to the high unemployment that would result otherwise.
We are living through the same thing right now...
What a fool. If a drop in labor participation rate was really due to American productivity, we would not have a huge trade deficit. The trade deficit is proof that we are selling off our assets or simply handing funny money to our trading partners rather than producing so much that fewer people need to work.
I think the author misses a few things:
1. Much of our “prosperity” is being purchased with borrowed money. Right now the $$ being borrowed is cheap, at close to Zero interest. That may not always be the case, though the Powers-that-Be will certainly move Heaven and Earth to keep it that way. Why? Because it is the only way the Entitlement State survives.
2. The Left wants work force participation to be low. That just means there are more people dependent on the Government, which is good news for them. The last time time Democratic Party actually cared about the “working man” was sometime in the 1970s.
On the flip side, automation, robotics and intelligent software IS eliminating a lot of jobs. That trend will continue. I kind of doubt that those eliminated jobs will be replaced by other, better jobs. Even high tech jobs will be reduced—IT can be automated too. I think most future jobs will involve some kind of human-to-human interaction (which can’t readily be automated) and many of them will be low paid.
if Unemployment is around 5%, Then why do we need to keep borrowing billions?
Cat bounce.
I don’t believe it....it is just the next set of statistics to be corrupted by this administration.
Since the employment figures are imprecise and much manipulated, a 0.1% uptick means nuts.
The collapse in the Labor Force Participation Rate is partly driven by the demographics of aging, partly by a stagnant economy, and partly by the presence of illegal aliens working...illegally.
But the author of the article misses the corrosive effect of Uniparti-onomics. Heavily taxing a few mega producers plus borrowing from abroad to finance handouts so that large percentages do not work, is not sustainable, and perverts democracy. The non-workers for the most part are dependents living off the public dole, not millionaires in early retirement. Dependent people are subjects and should not have a say in government. That leaves a narrow elite to rule. Much better to have a prosperous, educated middle class pay a reasonable amount of taxes, have balanced budgets, and a much smaller proportion of the genuinely dependent. Government policies have produced the opposite, because government types prefer to rule, not be ruled.
It’s only going to go back up if the GOP shuts off the welfare spigot. And we all know they don’t have the spine for THAT!
If that graph depicted a stock price over time, most analysts would consider selling short.
