That's Incredible!
|
By Gegner
|
January 29th, 2010
|
Greetings good citizen,
Most of you know what’s on tap for tonight… What fresh Orwellian hell is this?
Earlier this week I cautioned you to read the offering with that catchy little tune that pops into our heads with most MSM reports, “Listen to the bull shit fly,” apparently they can’t get enough of it, or they really do think you’re so stupid that you’ll swallow anything!
Anyway, the markets have closed for the week and it appears that it was Europe’s turn to be ‘out of synch’ with the rest of the world. After spending most of the day in positive territory, US markets ended in negative territory. Which only adds to the ‘conundrum’ of such an, er, ‘optimistic’ GDP report.
U.S. Economy Grew at Fastest Pace in 6 Years Last Quarter
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: January 29, 2010The United States economy grew at its fastest pace in over six years at the end of 2009, but a sluggish job market is still souring economists on the sustainability of the recovery. [What smacks you in the eye here is the total absence of proof of an uptick in economic activity. It appears GDP reporting has gone the way of consumer price inflation measurements and unemployment statistics…they ‘are’ whatever they say they ‘are’ and have no discernable basis in reality.]
Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, well above analysts’
and any sane persons’expectations. It had grown at an annualized rate of 2.2 percent in the previous quarter. [Revised down from the originally reported 3.5%] Analysts had forecast annualized growth of 4.8 percent in the fourth quarter, and the better-than-expected result sent stocks higher when trading opened on Wall Street. [So we return to yesterday’s statement that the market ‘responds’ to influences that are not necessarily ‘fact based’…making the nature of money itself ‘questionable’…]“It was an excellent report, but it’s not clear how sustainable this pace of growth is,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. [ John who?] “We need numbers like this for the next two years, and I just don’t think we can achieve that.” [And we should care what he thinks, why?]
The biggest lift to economic activity came because businesses ran down their stockrooms at a much slower rate than they had earlier in the year. The change in inventories added 3.39 percentage points to the fourth-quarter change. [Oh, that clears up the whole thing! Which is to say are you fucking jerking me? How the fuck does slower inventory turnover create higher GDP unless the morons are measuring it wrong? Anyone want to take a stab at that? Bueller? anyone? Bueller?]
Slower inventory liquidation is not the most promising way to guarantee growth going forward, [Can we get a no shit!] but economists are hoping that once companies become more confident about the recovery, they may ramp up production to refill stockroom shelves. [WTF! Talk about ‘wing and a prayer’!]
“What goes down wildly has to go up at a pretty good clip,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG. [Again with ‘the who’ and ‘the why’?]
Still, many economists worry more about trends in final sales to consumers and businesses.
Consumer spending grew at an annualized pace of 2 percent in the fourth quarter, after an increase of 2.8 percent in the third quarter. That is better than many had feared when the quarter began, considering that the cash-for-clunkers program was no longer around to help stimulate spending.
But consumer spending has still been disappointing to many economists, given the trends in previous recoveries. In the past, housing and consumption often helped drive growth in the wake of a recession. [Yeah…but that was then and this is now. Until the fucktards stop shipping jobs overseas the economy won’t have a prayer of righting itself, not now, not ever!]
Without the benefit of similarly bombastic inventory changes, many economists are expecting tepid growth in the quarters ahead. Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, expects output to expand by a mere 1 or 2 percent, at an annualized rate, this quarter and next. [So what the fuck is this 5.7% bullshit all about? I’m still baffled as to how this was achieved via ‘slower’ inventory reduction rates…sounds more like an accounting problem!]
The biggest challenge going forward is the job market.
“Our focus must remain on getting Americans back to work,” Christina Romer, chairwoman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement. “That G.D.P. rose strongly in the fourth quarter of last year while employment fell and the workweek increased only slightly emphasizes the need for policy actions designed to help spur private-sector job creation.”
Also on Friday, the Obama administration released details of a proposed tax cut for businesses that hire workers or raise wages, a policy intended to encourage companies to start investing more in their workers.On net, the economy lost 208,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last quarter, and the unemployment rate rose to 10 percent. As long as the labor market remains weak, consumers — whose purchases make up the bulk of economic output each quarter — will be reluctant to spend money. That means businesses will need to look for other sources of demand, like exports.
Perhaps the most promising trend, at least for job growth, to come out of Friday’s report was the pickup in equipment and software spending.
Businesses increased their investment in these areas at an annualized rate of 13.3 percent last quarter, compared with an increase of 1.5 percent in the third quarter.
“Businesses that are spending more on equipment and software probably going to be hiring more as well,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist for IHS Global Insight. “If we see more hiring, that means we may see more consumer spending, too.” [This asshole we’ve heard of, but it seems he’s ignorant of the concept of replacing outdated technology…which doesn’t add a single US job…in fact it usually eliminates a couple.]
Total government spending fell slightly, by an annualized rate of 0.1 percent, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, largely thanks to declines in military spending and state and local government spending.
Federal nonmilitary spending rose at an annual rate of 8.1 percent last quarter, after rising 7 percent the previous quarter.
International trade over all increased last quarter, and exports grew nearly twice as fast as imports, helped along by a relatively weak dollar. [Too bad our main exports are food and raw materials that we no longer process here. The drop in imports isn’t necessarily ‘good news’ either as it is due to our being unable to pay for more useless dreck, thanks to weakness in the overall economy.]
The G.D.P. number is a broad measure of the economy’s total output of goods and services. While it is, by definition, a backward-looking figure, analysts watch it to get a sense of where the country may be headed.
The number can be subject to major revisions, especially when the economy is at a turning point. The annual growth rate initially reported by the government for the third quarter of 2009 was 3.5 percent, but was later revised to less-impressive 2.2 percent.
The government’s final figure for last quarter’s G.D.P. will be released in March.
What can you say good citizen, when they ‘cook the books’ they don’t do it halfway, do they? Guess this brings us to the hallmark of neo-conservative philosophy, ‘if you’re going to lie, lie big!’
Which brings us to another chilling reality: After a certain point it is no longer possible to discern the truth, regardless of the source.
When trust breaks down to the point you can only moderately trust the people you have intimate interactions with (you know them quite well) and you don’t dare trust anyone else, the world becomes one huge armed camp.
The establishment of the ‘rule of law’ was supposed to put these fears to rest, but now the criminals have taken over the machinery of the law. It can no longer be trusted.
Now there’s a ‘pendulum’ that literally ‘snaps’ back and forth between extremes, a ‘squeaky clean’ legal apparatus prosecutes everyone for everything until the message is clear that one had best not even appear to step out of line for fear of some very real consequences.
That’s the ‘trouble’ with the law, either it works too well or it doesn’t work at all.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
The most comfortable way to buy an essay leads to essay writer
, where you can order any essay paper you need.
I don't think they cooked the books Gegner. This was just the preliminary report that will be adjusted later. The previous month's growth was adjusted down 1.3% once the data was all crunched.
The only real scam here is presenting half crunched numbers in the first place and revising them for actual accuracy later. That is a head scratcher.
But as the article pointed out one month's data can be an aberration.
WTH does the Dow have to do with the economy anyway?
LOTS of really interesting stuff in store next week: Obama's new $3.8 trillion budget, a new report out on the failures of the TARP initiative and lots of cautionary warnings being issued by the Fed, not to mention Team Obama suddenly finds Volcker worthy of leading the banking reform mission.
You just have to puke when it is asserted that you will cut discretionary spending and you follow that immediately with gestures to add $300 billion to the useless health reform packages and add $400 billion in deficits to the budget the following week.
They are still spending like drunks......
Lots of meaty stuff to talk about beyond the meaningless grind of today's stock indexes.
Am I driving you crazy with my daily references to the stock markets? I too wish we had a better 'yardstick' with which to measure economic performance.
Sadly, the three main indexes that make up the NYSE are all we have.
I do endeavor to shift the focus around but I also try to stay away from Joe's area, I leave the politics to him (although tonight's offering is peppered with my own decidedly 'socialist' point of view.)
Um, interestingly enough, tonight's topic lies in YOUR area of expertise. I might be enlightening to see what you have to add to the conversation...
Well, I'LL say it: you don't drive me crazy with all this stockmarket uselessness - you just drive me to boredom and to skipping reading your stuff anymore. I think it's a huge mistake to go on and on about the FIRE economy. I think you only help distract from paying attention to the REAL economy. The REAL economy, the goods and services economy - how it works - is what people need to get clarity about.
You could be digging up and repeating useful stuff like this from CG in the past:
"Adam Smith said that once a small elite had monopolized ownership of land and materials, they would drive wages down to the level of subsistence. It is the "appropriation of land and stock" -- Smith's terminology -- that creates the "market force" that reduces the market value of labor.
Now, that doesn't mean that certain derivative functions -- management, distribution, and even investment -- don't exist, and that labor cannot contract for the delivery of those derivative functions. If you are the labor producing automobiles, or any other good or service, a sales force selling those goods and services is probably necessary. Likewise, certain organizational functions -- we call it "management" -- might be useful. Even "investment" has a place, since the goods and services needed to build and equip a shop must be paid for.
But notice that those derivative functions serve the labor that produces the value. It is distribution, management and investment that are "costs of doing business." Productive labor is the business that has these costs. Our contemporary business model has stood this on its head. The "cost" is productive labor in an arrangement where "ownership" trumps "production," and where the owner of materials and facilities is seen as the central player. Owners have a "natural right" to reduce their "costs" and maximize their profits. Productive labor is not perceived as having any such right.
I say that productive labor has the same, and indeed a superior right to maximize its profit, and that the laws and government have an entirely legitimate function in protecting these fundamental rights of labor -- fundamental rights that have not hitherto been recognized.
As a final observation, notice that recognition and protection of the fundamental rights of labor is entirely consistent with a "market economy," where "market forces" are understood to be shaped by certain legal and governmental constructs. The government has an absolute right, if not an obligation, to shape the fundamental rules of the market in such as way as to guarantee labor its fundamental rights."
Now, THAT is useful stuff!
Gegner, do you read Michael Hudson? As far as I'm concerned, he's the ONLY economist that has got it goin' on bigtime. And what a historian!
What if people all got exposed to, say, THIS:
http://www.michael-hudson.com/
at the top of his homepage, click on debt cancellation. Did you know the first known legal proclamation was a debt cancellation in 2400 BC?
Michael Hudson = one helluva brawny brain! How about giving us LOTS and LOTS of Michael Hudson??
Survey says: nope...never heard of him. I'll go check it out, if he has something to offer(and you've already provided your 'vote of confidence') maybe you'll see it here.
As time goes on I'm finding more and more 'dead links'; bloggers who have given up because there's nothing new to add.
Me, I don't think we have a lot of time left between climate change, peak oil and unresponsive government.
Open for debate is whether or not there is anything to be gained by continuing to beat a dead horse?
'A Simple Plan' works (because everybody works, it doesn't need to get much simpler than that.)
Survey says: nope...never heard of him. I'll go check it out, if he has something to offer(and you've already provided your 'vote of confidence') maybe you'll see it here.
As time goes on I'm finding more and more 'dead links'; bloggers who have given up because there's nothing new to add.
Me, I don't think we have a lot of time left between climate change, peak oil and unresponsive government.
Open for debate is whether or not there is anything to be gained by continuing to beat a dead horse?
'A Simple Plan' works (because everybody works, it doesn't need to get much simpler than that.)
Here, Gegner. see this video!
http://renegadeeconomist.com/video/minutes-renegade-economist-michael-hudson-special.html
lots of Hudson (and other good stuff) at Renegade Economist:
http://renegadeeconomist.com/
woo hoo!! look what else i just found:
http://renegadeeconomist.com/headline/silver-bullet-film-special-part-ii.html
(it's just 9 minutes long. ps, i shouldn't have said M Hudson was the ONLY economist who has it going on. i left out Fred Harrison)
by the way, are you all signed up and getting Sam Pizzigati's monday Too Much emails?? you're missing out if yr not! Sam always has great links to the best new inequality research and stats.
we build statues to honor all the wrong people, methinks. these guys i've mentioned are some of humanity's best-ever heroes!
and then, there's also Dr. Flowers - bless her and Dr. Paris and all those trying to get that wonderful healthcare letter to that RATFINK Obama. That's right, i said RATFINK, Joe. i know we disagree on this, but i have zero use for him: zero. i'm happy every day that i voted for Cynthia McKinney!
there is no such thing as global warming and climate change has always been normal. The earth's climate hasn't warmed since 1998. And most of the UN's "science" was crap posing as science.
And peak oil is an exaggerated threat. There are enough cheap fossil fuels to support our lifestyles for at least 100 more years. Prolly twice that.
Not crazy, it just bores me into not reading your daily diatribes.
Truth is the vast majority of hits on a site like this are from web crawlers. Bots that gather info to feed the search engines. I don't know if 20 actual people read this site each day. I doubt it is much more. It may be less.
It isn't my business but the need to post a new entry every single day kind of defeats the purpose. Content and substance over volume imo.
And it IS just my opinion.
But I know that I read perhaps 2% of your daily posts specifically because they are not your best work, but the efforts of somebody who feels they must produce something, anything, every day.
Give that man a cigar! You hit the nail right on the head, it's damn difficult to hit home runs every time you get up to bat. I'm sure after a couple of years this stuff is getting mighty stale.
But yes, this is what it looks like when you post 'every damn day'. I have noticed that some of the 'popular' bloggers are down to a couple of posts a week, if that.
I don't expect you guys to read everything I write, I'd be amazed if you did!
I think some of the 'traffic' is driven by the fact that I'm pretty 'consistent', if you drop in tomorrow chances are good you'll find a fresh post.
I wish I were all things to all readers but that's never going to happen, not in this lifetime anyway.