Dude, Where is our Recovery?

[David]

You Call This a Recovery? Obama Offers More Excuses Than Solutions

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/...#ixzz1L4Sa6a3g

[Rifleman]

Hey many of the people I KNOW aren't wondering if the US had a recovery or not, they are preparing for an economic collpase. The writer, Dr. John Lott, is correct, whatever GDP growth can be easily explained by governmental "schemes" such as QE 2, and Obama's continued deficit spending! I would take bets, that were a person to add QE 2 and deficit spending are probably equal to the amount of the GDP growth.

As for reality, housing is one of the most obvious sympyoms, I see many more. At work we are fairly busy, the problem being that materials are hard to come by. The economy, isn't what it was 2 years ago, and the industrial capability isn't what it was. if these kind of shortages, and long term loss of production capability get into the food supply, combined with Inflation? "Whoa Nellie!" Basically, Obama spent money to trash the housing market. And that money is gone, the value won't come back for years, and that is, only if Obama is stopped!

Let's recap;

An increase in GDP, that is so low, isn't really an increase at all. And considering that the Fed and the Obama are STILL juicing the system, it is quite likely that is the source iof the increase.

The major spending that Obama and CONgress did to prop up the housing market, as Lott points out, have insured the prices remain low, whoops! Gotta watch those Unintended Consequences when you are trying to manipulate the economy.

Unemployment STILL looms at 8.8%, like pretending it's good news makes it good news. And really, I still don't really understand the unemployment numbers, like the GDP figures, they have become so manipulated by the government in order to make things look GREAT, they have lost much of their meaning. The so-called "economic experts" that go along with the recovery idea, are little help. The end might come and we won't even see it coming. Luke 17: 26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

With unemployment so high and GDP so low, there is lost capacity, the economy has shrunk, and it can't respond. That's why there are shortages, and problems with resupply.

[GeronL]

I agree. We will never have a recovery while the government is forcing more and more anti-growth policies onto this country. There will less and less for them to "spread around" year after year.

[Rifleman]

GeronL wrote: I agree. We will never have a recovery while the government is forcing more and more anti-growth policies onto this country. There will less and less for them to "spread around" year after year.

That's very true, but it goes well beyod that. Obamanomics is the equivalent to crack-cocaine for the economy. I am convinced, that deficti spending, whether by the Fed, or on or off budget, accounts for ALL the recovery. Take that away, and YES, there will probably be an almost instaneous recession, however it is something WE MUST DO, because eventually, the economy will drop and a recession will occur BECAUSE and in spite of the government spending.

It's like this: I have made no secret about how I hang out at "survivalist" websites when i am not here. Survivalists, or "preppers" as they call themselves these days, spend money "prepping, that is, stockpiling guns, food, medicine, gold, and such to prepare for a disaster, and more recently, what they believe will be an economic disaster. And even if it isn't a disaster, it won't be pleasant. It has gotten to such, that THE major freeze dried food manufacturer in the US is constantly running behind on orders, because they can't keep up and since the market has gone "mainstream'. We saw similar "shortages" for the first two years of Obama's presidency related to firearms and ammunition.

So how is that different, from a economic stimulus effect from government spending? That's easy, you can't eat "stimulus"! The (Hoarding) purchases of the "preppers" is in tangable supplies and property. The money "wasted" propping up the stock market, or housing market, is essentially GONE, since these markets have tended to go down anyway. Maybe "years" from now, the value will come back, but for many, they can't wait. They might have to sell, at the lowest market price to get by, or they can't afford the prop taxes waiting for everything to come back. The worst you could do with food, is having to eat it.

Therefore Obamanomics is essentially equivalent to borrowing off one credit card to pay off the others, and then pretending that you are in good financial shape, because you were able to buy a new car as well. [b]Therefore, the problem with the economy goes WAY beyond forcing the "anti-growth policies in this country.

So, I am convinced that once the basic problems are "fixed", hopefully at the very latest, in early 2013 with a "new President" and a new majority in the Senate, I would expect a major dip before a long lasting rise.

[GeronL]

I am not sure a new Congress and President will fix anything. They might trim future growth a tiny bit but the GOP has shown no real interest in real fixes.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by GeronL

I am not sure a new Congress and President will fix anything. They might trim future growth a tiny bit but the GOP has shown no real interest in real fixes.

So you're content to keep the present crew and trust them to fix it?

[schaabdl]

We keep replacing current critters with those who will do more than just trim. The real budget heroes are definitely in the minority.

[GeronL]

lol. I'm definitely not content with the present crew, of either party

[FastEddy]

And that $35K dollar a plate "fund raiser" in SF last week had an outburst from the vocal further left ... " We paid our dues, where is our change? " chanted by a few protestors who had ponied up for the rubber chicken.

(Not very well covered by the MSM ...)

[FastEddy]

And the civilized wingnuts on the left are not going quietly into that good night, either:

"BLACK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CEO BLASTS ‘MARXIST,’ ‘BROWNSHIRT’ OBAMA" - Breitbart.TV

=====

And speaking of left wing nutcakes, did anyone see that tubbo "reporter " on CNN dressed in a genuine commissars' brown shirt ... with a small bit of editing, it would have made a great SNL/Comedy Central bit. She is sitting in a pumped up chair so she can look down on the two hapless congress critters in the interview, and every question was spun with the far left/eco-fascist agenda on upping taxes and crucifying those nasty oil companies this AM Sunday after Easter.

[David]

Stocks on Wall Street slumped more than 2 percent and Treasury yields fell on Wednesday as new economic statistics sent a bleak picture of the employment and manufacturing sectors.

SOURCE

[GeronL]

I saw a headline saying Wall Street is "baffled" by the lack of economic improvement. It must be the same people who are always shocked at the latest unexpected numbers. lol.

[David]

Consumer Confidence Is Now Lower Than During All Recent Financial Crises And Tragedies

SOURCE

[David]

I agree with Carville. Civil unrest is a real possibility this summer. We already are seeing some of this with the Black Urban Beach parties and flash mobs. Chronic unemployment worse than during the Great Depression. The protective news media distorting the reality of this current fiasco. 89% say economy bad and getting worse, ABC/Wash Post poll. And that's a pro Dem skewed poll. More on that soon.

[FastEddy]

"President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout" - Glenn Kessler blog from Washington Post (!?!) 6/7/2011

"“Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency.” — President Obama, June 4, 2011

[This post has been updated.]

With some of the economic indicators looking a bit dicey, President Obama traveled to Ohio last week to tout what the administration considers a good-news story: the rescue of the domestic automobile industry. In fact, he also made it the subject of his weekly radio address.

We take no view on whether the administration’s efforts on behalf of the automobile industry were a good or bad thing; that’s a matter for the editorial pages and eventually the historians. But we are interested in the facts the president cited to make his case.

What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.

Let’s look at the claims in the order in which the president said them.

[Lie #1]“Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency — and it repaid that money six years ahead of schedule. And this week, we reached a deal to sell our remaining stake. That means soon, Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands.”

Wow, “every dime and more” sounds like such a bargain. Not only did Chrysler pay back the loan, with interest — but the company paid back even more than they owed. Isn’t America great or what?

Not so fast. The president snuck in the weasel words “during my presidency” in his statement. What does that mean?

According to the White House, Obama is counting only the $8.5 billion loan that he made to Chrysler, not the $4 billion that President George W. Bush extended in his last month in office. However, Obama was not a disinterested observer at the time. According to The Washington Post article on the Bush loan, the incoming president called Bush’s action a “necessary step . . . to help avoid a collapse of our auto industry that would have had devastating consequences for our economy and our workers.”

Under the administration’s math, the U.S. government will receive $11.2 billion back from Chrysler, far more than the $8.5 billion Obama extended.

[Reality Bites]Through this sleight-of-hand accounting, the White House can conveniently ignore Bush’s loan, but even the Treasury Department admits that U.S. taxpayers will not recoup about $1.3 billion of the entire $12.5 billion investment when all is said and done.

The White House justifies not counting the Bush money because, it says, that money was completely spent when Obama was making a tough political decision on whether to extend another loan. In other words, a decision to do nothing at the time would have resulted in the immediate loss of the $4 billion that Bush had extended.

This is chicanery. Under the president’s math, Chrysler paid back 100 percent of Obama’s loan and less than 70 percent of Bush’s loan. A more honest presentation would combine the two figures to say U.S. taxpayers got back 90 percent of what they invested. In fact, that is how the Treasury and other administration officials frequently portray it; it is just when Obama speaks that the numbers get so squishy.

The White House justifies saying that Chrysler will be in 100 percent “in private hands” because there will no longer be government ownership once Fiat completes its purchase of the U.S. stake. For the record, the United Auto Workers will own 46 percent of the company.

[Lie #2]“All three American automakers are now adding shifts and creating jobs at the strongest rate since the 1990s.”

The White House says the data to back this claim concerning the Big Three automakers is not public information. The official Bureau of Labor Statistics data refers to the entire auto industry — including foreign auto manufacturers, auto parts manufacturers, auto parts dealers and auto dealers. If you look at the data, the 113,200 jobs added between June 2009 and May 2011 amounts to about a 5 percent increase — from a rather low base.

UPDATE, 10:45 AM: Yen Chen, automotive business statistical analyst at the Center for Automotive Research, says CAR's analysis of Big Three auto data shows this statistic is correct. The Detroit Three are expected to add 10,000 hourly and 5,000 salaried workers this year, from a base of 115,805 hourly workers and 56, 432 salaried workers. That's an increase of about eight percent in each case. More than 16,000 hourly workers were added in 1991, but from a much higher base--440,000-- and 10,000 were also added in 1995, when there were 433,000 hourly workers. Meanwhile, salaried workers have been on a steady decline since 1990 (when the big Three employed 157,000).

[Lie #3]“GM plans to hire back all of the workers they had to lay off during the recession.”

This is another impressive-sounding but misleading figure. In the five years since 2006, General Motors announced that it would reduce its workforce by nearly 68,000 hourly and salary workers, creating a much smaller company. Those are the figures that generated the headlines.

[Reality Bites]Obama is only talking about a sliver of workers — the 9,600 workers who were laid off in the fourth quarter of 2008. About 4,100 were sent home for a few weeks. Another 5,500 were put on indefinite leave, meaning there were no jobs at the time for them. All but 1,000 have returned to work, and the rest should be back at work by year’s end, according to GM spokesman Greg A. Martin.

[Lie #4]“In the year before I was President, this industry lost more than 400,000 jobs, and two great American companies, Chrysler and GM, stood on the brink of collapse. Now, we had a few options. We could have done what a lot of folks in Washington thought we should do — nothing.”

This is quite a straw man — that many people wanted to do nothing. It was never so black and white. The debate was over the right course to take in the bankruptcy process.

[Reality Bites]The Wall Street Journal published Monday an interesting conservative critique of the government’s intervention by David Skeel, a law professor at University of Pennsylvania. Skeel says that the revival of the auto industry “is a very encouraging development,” but “to claim that the car companies would have collapsed if the government hadn’t intervened in the way it did, and to suggest that the intervention came at very little cost, is a dangerous misreading of our recent history.”

To support the claim that “a lot of folks” wanted to do nothing, the White House referred us to statements by the House minority leader, John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Sens. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

We do not read Boehner’s quote that way; in this 2009 comment, he is questioning the administration’s approach while saying, “The success of our automotive industry is critical.”Shelby and Kyl in 2008 were protesting the use of taxpayer funds by Bush to delay a bankruptcy filing; they preferred immediately putting the companies through the bankruptcy process.

It will be up to historians to decide what the best solution would have been for taxpayers and the auto industry. We can understand why the president wants to portray himself as making a lonely and tough decision. But the debate was not either/or, bur rather what was the best policy to bring the automakers back to financial health.

The Pinocchio Test

The president is straining too hard. If the auto industry bailout is really a success, there should be no need to resort to trumped-up rhetoric and phony accounting to make your case. Let the facts speak for themselves."

[David]

Small businesses, crucial to growth, face challenges
By Scott Patterson, USA TODAY



Entrepreneurs have started up the fewest new U.S. businesses in more than a decade, according to government figures that could spell more bad news for job creation.

SOURCE

[David]

More bad news.

WASHINGTON — Consumers spent less on cars in May, sending retail sales down for the first time in nearly a year.


The Commerce Department says retail sales dropped 0.2% last month. It was the first decline after 10 straight increases.

A cutback on incentives and supply disruptions stemming from the crises in Japan pushed auto sales down 2.9%. It was the biggest setback for the industry in three years. Excluding autos, retail sales rose 0.3%.

The slump in retail sales was the latest report to signal that the economy lost momentum in May. Consumers are struggling to deal with high gasoline prices and a slowdown in hiring. While the surge in gas prices is easing, pump prices are still significantly higher than a year ago.

SOURCE

[FastEddy]

Originally Posted by David

More bad news.

WASHINGTON — Consumers spent less on cars in May, sending retail sales down for the first time in nearly a year.

The Commerce Department says retail sales dropped 0.2% last month. It was the first decline after 10 straight increases.

A cutback on incentives and supply disruptions stemming from the crises in Japan pushed auto sales down 2.9%. It was the biggest setback for the industry in three years. Excluding autos, retail sales rose 0.3%.

The slump in retail sales was the latest report to signal that the economy lost momentum in May. Consumers are struggling to deal with high gasoline prices and a slowdown in hiring. While the surge in gas prices is easing, pump prices are still significantly higher than a year ago.

SOURCE

This is yet another administration lie. GM is having a world of trouble selling their dumbed down econo-boxes here, there and everywhere. The Japanese equake & wave hickup in the auto supply chain is just an excuse. There is actually demand for cars, big and small, but GM is not making them or making good ones.

Overall, retail sales increased modestly, except for this GM screwup.

[David]

In an updated forecast, the Fed estimated Wednesday that the economy will grow 2.7% to 2.9% this year. That's down from its April estimate of 3.1% to 3.3%. The downgraded revision is an acknowledgement that the economy has slowed, in part because consumers have been squeezed by higher gasoline prices.

SOURCE

[FastEddy]

Originally Posted by David

In an updated forecast, the Fed estimated Wednesday that the economy will grow 2.7% to 2.9% this year. That's down from its April estimate of 3.1% to 3.3%. The downgraded revision is an acknowledgement that the economy has slowed, in part because consumers have been squeezed by higher gasoline prices ... and higher taxes ... and healthcare questions ... and fed uncertainty ... and g'ment takeovers ... and g'ment incompetence ... and ...

SOURCE

USA Yesterday is the last place for economic advise ... bunch of clueless morons feeding at the teat of government handout snoozespeak ...

Today's 200+ point market dip is entirely g'ment driven. Fed announcements of nothing in particular demonstrates that the administration is totally unable to enable anything without screwing it up.