Slowly but surely, the economy is improving

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Originally posted by HARLEY FLSTS:
Stores slashed the prices on items so much that people bought things. That's not an upturn in the economy when you buy something at 75
5 off it's regular price.

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Originally posted by O No!:
Harley, you sound as if you don't WANT the economy to improve! Stores ALWAYS slash prices in January to get rid of Christmas inventory. (And the article says Christmas shopping was the best in five years.) Whether or not the stores reduced their prices, people spent money. People spending money means stores are busy. Being busy means they will start hiring.It means manufacturers will increase their output.

"Other data out Thursday were encouraging. The service sector, which employs nine of every 10 American workers, expanded in January at the fastest pace in five years. The Institute for Supply Management, a private trade group, said its index of service-sector activity grew for the 14th month in a row, to the highest level since 2005.

The manufacturing and service sectors are growing at pre-recession rates, and economists expect that will translate into more hiring. Another positive sign: Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits, reversing a spike from the previous week largely caused by bad weather."

This is good news no matter how you slice it, unless you were hoping the economy would NOT improve so that Obama would look bad. To me, the welfare of the American people is a lot more important than politics.

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Originally posted by seeweed:

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Originally posted by O No!:
Harley, you sound as if you don't WANT the economy to improve! Stores ALWAYS slash prices in January to get rid of Christmas inventory. (And the article says Christmas shopping was the best in five years.) Whether or not the stores reduced their prices, people spent money. People spending money means stores are busy. Being busy means they will start hiring.It means manufacturers will increase their output.

"Other data out Thursday were encouraging. The service sector, which employs nine of every 10 American workers, expanded in January at the fastest pace in five years. The Institute for Supply Management, a private trade group, said its index of service-sector activity grew for the 14th month in a row, to the highest level since 2005.

The manufacturing and service sectors are growing at pre-recession rates, and economists expect that will translate into more hiring. Another positive sign: Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits, reversing a spike from the previous week largely caused by bad weather."

This is good news no matter how you slice it, unless you were hoping the economy would NOT improve so that Obama would look bad. To me, the welfare of the American people is a lot more important than politics.

These Republicans don't want our economy to improve. That would interfere with the narrative of Fox and Rush.
But yes, the economy is much much better than it was when Obama took over 2 years ago. My 401k has more than rebounded and some bank stock I have announced it will be paying dividends again starting this quarter. It quit paying almost 3 years ago.
Don't tell the Repubs tho, they won't believe it.

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Try to convince all the people still looking for work. In the manufacturing sector that I work in we haven't seen any increases in orders yet.

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Originally posted by b50m:
Unemployment claims are dropping slowly, but adding back jobs is even slower.
So I would say at least it's holding steady for now.

As for that 401K Seeweed, that's the evil stock market doing that. You better give the money back. LOL

It's goes back to the basics, if you have a job, it's good. If you don't , it's bad.

If you drive by the mall in Florence on any day, you would think it was Black Friday.
There are a lot of people, they may be spending less than they used too, but they are spending.

With the GOP in the house to slow down the spending, I think things will start to have a perceived image of improvement, and sometimes image is all you have.

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Posted at 1:00 PM ET, 02/ 3/2011
Getting specific about discretionary cuts
By Ezra Klein Washington post

Paul Ryan is beginning to show some leg on the budget he plans to propose for the rest of 2011. But I'm actually a lot less interested in 2011 than I am in 2012. Both the Obama administration and congressional Republicans appear to agree that non-security discretionary funding should be frozen for the next few years. So the level it's at in 2012 matters, as that's likely to be the level it's at for awhile.

The Republican leadership has proposed freezing non-security discretionary spending at its 2008 level. According to the fine folks at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that's about 20 percent less than we'd expect to be spending in 2012. It's a big cut. But among Republicans, it's actually the moderate position. The Republican Study Group has proposed a 10-year freeze at 2006 levels. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, that amounts to "a 42 percent reduction below last year’s funding level (adjusted only for inflation), and leaves [non-defense discretionary] spending in 2021 at 44 percent below its lowest level in the last thirty years as a percentage of the economy." That's a huge cut, and it requires a lot more than ending subsidies for NPR.

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Originally posted by Jennifer:
Depending on which report you see UE is either holding, dropping a bit, or rising. I still ask how they figure UE statistics. Do they count people that have lost their UE benefits and still don't have jobs? Do they count people that have given up and stopped looking for jobs? If the economy is rebounding it seems there would be more jobs available. What I see with the businesses we deal with are even more cuts being taken. I'm talking about businesses that I would have called "strong", and I'm not talking about construction/seasonal businesses. These are well established businesses that have kept their employees gainfully employed for years. One thing all the struggling businesses say to us is that everyone they deal with is in the same boat. I know we are. And whether anyone believes it or not we are all worried about our employees. The last thing I want to do is lay off people that depend on us but we may not have a choice in the matter.

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Originally posted by HARLEY FLSTS:
Sure I'd like to see the economy come back but with real facts and not numbers that are changed to look better. Such as unemployment. That percentage is not real. They only count those who are on unemployment benefits. Not those who have used up theirs and no longer get any at all. So what percentage of unemployed is that? Those not counted?

And since I am on this bandwagon. I have a useless POS brother in law who has been on unemployment now for 2 1/2 years. He doesn't look for a job and could care less. My wife's work slowed down and laid her off. She can't even get unemployment. That's how this stupid govenment is being run.

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Originally posted by seeweed:

quote:

Originally posted by HARLEY FLSTS:
Sure I'd like to see the economy come back but with real facts and not numbers that are changed to look better. Such as unemployment. That percentage is not real. They only count those who are on unemployment benefits. Not those who have used up theirs and no longer get any at all. So what percentage of unemployed is that? Those not counted?

And since I am on this bandwagon. I have a useless POS brother in law who has been on unemployment now for 2 1/2 years. He doesn't look for a job and could care less. My wife's work slowed down and laid her off. She can't even get unemployment. That's how this stupid govenment is being run.

I'm wondering how someone stays on UI for 2 1/2 years. It last for 6 months and there have been 2 (as I remember ) 3 month extensions.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/0...ne_mystery/index.htm

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Originally posted by HARLEY FLSTS:
Sure I'd like to see the economy come back but with real facts and not numbers that are changed to look better. Such as unemployment. That percentage is not real. They only count those who are on unemployment benefits. Not those who have used up theirs and no longer get any at all. So what percentage of unemployed is that? Those not counted?

And since I am on this bandwagon. I have a useless POS brother in law who has been on unemployment now for 2 1/2 years. He doesn't look for a job and could care less. My wife's work slowed down and laid her off. She can't even get unemployment. That's how this stupid govenment is being run.

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The rate is falling now in part because some people without jobs have stopped looking. The number who have given up looking rose to 2.8 million last month, from 2.6 million in December.

About 1 million of those workers said they were discouraged. The others stopped looking because they returned to school or for other reasons.

There are still nearly 14 million people unemployed in the United States. That's about twice as in December 2007, when the recession began.

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Be honest. You HATE to admit there is any improvement because you're afraid that if the economy improves enough by 2012, Obama will be re-elected. And that is the ONLY reason you deny what the numbers are saying.

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Originally posted by BFred07:
The economy is actually getting better, after so many of the libs were voted out the people have started to gain confidence and started to let go of a little money.

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The economy has continued improvement since after Obama turned it around in the first 2 or 3 months in office.

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Originally posted by seeweed:
""Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why'? I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not'?" " Robert Kennedy

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Originally posted by Mr.Dittohead:
Dreaming and doing points out the difference between scientists and engineers. Idealism is certainly not frivolous as idealists provide the impetus to get things done by inventing solutions to problems. Reality is merely a frame of reference.

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Originally posted by O No!:
Mark, scientists would only come up with ideas if there were no engineers to implement them, but without the ideas of the scientists, engineers would have nothing TO implement. So you see, both are needed. It kind of works out well, don't you think? Each does their part, and each needs the other to get anything done. They aren't enemies you know. They are partners.

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Originally posted by seeweed:

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Originally posted by BFred07:
The economy is actually getting better, after so many of the libs were voted out the people have started to gain confidence and started to let go of a little money.

What a stupid statement !
The economy has continued improvement since after Obama turned it around in the first 2 or 3 months in office.
"The People" ? Do you pretend to speak for 'the people', Boehner and McConald both claim to speak for 'the people' and I assure you, they hardly speak for MOST of the people.
Kinda reminds me of all the people who claim to speak for God. I wonder how many of those actually know Him ?

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Originally posted by BFred07:

quote:

Originally posted by seeweed:

quote:

Originally posted by BFred07:
The economy is actually getting better, after so many of the libs were voted out the people have started to gain confidence and started to let go of a little money.

What a stupid statement !
The economy has continued improvement since after Obama turned it around in the first 2 or 3 months in office.
"The People" ? Do you pretend to speak for 'the people', Boehner and McConald both claim to speak for 'the people' and I assure you, they hardly speak for MOST of the people.
Kinda reminds me of all the people who claim to speak for God. I wonder how many of those actually know Him ?

I didn't imply that I was speaking for the people, I was just stating a fact based on real evidence. The economy has not started into any type of recovery until the past few months and we still have a long way to go.
Why are you blaming the previous administration for the economy hitting the crapper? One of the big catalysts that kicked us into a recession was the housing bubble bursting. Is George Bush the one who was spending more than he could afford and got his house foreclosed on? I have said it before and will again, the economy going into the tank is the fault of so many people refusing to live within their means.

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And just who do you think encouraged and promoted what you just stated ?

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Fannie and Freddie are "government-sponsored enterprises" (GSEs), chartered by Congress. As such, they had an implicit promise of taxpayer backing and could borrow money at rates well below competitors.

Because of this, the Bush administration warned in the budget it issued in April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged. Their failure "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity" well beyond housing.

Mr. Bush wanted to limit systemic risk by raising the GSEs' capital requirements, compelling preapproval of new activities, and limiting the size of their portfolios. Why should government regulate banks, credit unions and savings and loans, but not GSEs? Mr. Bush wanted the GSEs to be treated just like their private-sector competitors.

But the GSEs fought back. They didn't want to see the Bush reforms enacted, because that would level the playing field for their competitors. Congress finally did pass the Bush reforms, but in 2008, after Fannie and Freddie collapsed.

The largely unreported story is that to fend off regulation, the GSEs engaged in a lobbying frenzy. They hired high-profile Democrats and Republicans and spent $170 million on lobbying over the past decade. They also constructed an elaborate network of state and local lobbyists to pressure members of Congress.

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Originally posted by Flatus the Ancient:

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And just who do you think encouraged and promoted what you just stated ?

Clinton mostly is to blame for most of the regulations that helped people buy homes they couldn't afford. Bush is to blame for not throwing a tantrum when Bawney Fwank and company brow beat the Bush administration and the Republican Congress into subjugation with the "R"-word (racism). When the stupid laws and regulations aren't replaced by Congress, the stupid laws must be executed by the President.

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Fannie and Freddie are "government-sponsored enterprises" (GSEs), chartered by Congress. As such, they had an implicit promise of taxpayer backing and could borrow money at rates well below competitors.

Because of this, the Bush administration warned in the budget it issued in April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged. Their failure "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity" well beyond housing.

Mr. Bush wanted to limit systemic risk by raising the GSEs' capital requirements, compelling preapproval of new activities, and limiting the size of their portfolios. Why should government regulate banks, credit unions and savings and loans, but not GSEs? Mr. Bush wanted the GSEs to be treated just like their private-sector competitors.

But the GSEs fought back. They didn't want to see the Bush reforms enacted, because that would level the playing field for their competitors. Congress finally did pass the Bush reforms, but in 2008, after Fannie and Freddie collapsed.

The largely unreported story is that to fend off regulation, the GSEs engaged in a lobbying frenzy. They hired high-profile Democrats and Republicans and spent $170 million on lobbying over the past decade. They also constructed an elaborate network of state and local lobbyists to pressure members of Congress.

http://online.wsj.com/article/...137220550562585.html

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The current mortgage crisis came about in large part because of Clinton-era government pressure on lenders to make risky loans in order to “make homeownership more affordable for lower-income Americans and those with a poor credit history,” the DC Examiner notes today. “Those steps encouraged riskier mortgage lending by minimizing the role of credit histories in lending decisions, loosening required debt-to-equity ratios to allow borrowers to make small or even no down payments at all, and encouraging lenders the use of floating or adjustable interest-rate mortgages, including those with low ‘teasers.’”

The liberal Village Voice previously chronicled how Clinton Administration housing secretary Andrew Cuomo helped spawn the mortgage crisis through his pressure on lenders to promote affordable housing and diversity. “Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments.

He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded ‘kickbacks’ to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.” (See Wayne Barrett, “Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie: How the Youngest Housing and Urban Development Secretary in History Gave Birth to the Mortgage Crisis,” Village Voice, August 5, 2008).

Investors Business Daily had an editorial yesterday about how another federal “law designed to encourage minority homeownership” also contributed to the mortgage crisis by pressuring lenders to make risky loans.

The Bush Administration also deserves criticism: although some Bush Administration officials “meekly advocated reforms” of the risky practices engaged in by the government-backed mortgage giants (the “Government-Sponsored Enterprises” Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, which received $10 billion annually in taxpayer subsidies even before their current bailout), Fannie’s well-paid lobbyists easily defeated those reform proposals by paying off liberal lawmakers and bullying critics. And the Administration did nothing to end federal obsessions with “affordable housing” and “diversity” that encouraged lenders to make risky loans to borrowers with little savings.

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The MoveOn.org Political Action ad blames a banking deregulation bill sponsored by former Sen. Phil Gramm, a friend and one-time adviser to McCain's campaign. It claims the bill "stripped safeguards that would have protected us."

That claim is bunk. When we contacted MoveOn.org spokesman Trevor Fitzgibbons to ask just what "safeguards" the ad was talking about, he came up with not one single example. The only support offered for the ad's claim is one line in one newspaper article that reported the bill "is now being blamed" for the crisis, without saying who is doing the blaming or on what grounds.

The bill in question is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which was passed in 1999 and repealed portions of the Glass-Steagall Act, a piece of legislation from the era of the Great Depression that imposed a number of regulations on financial institutions. It's true that Gramm authored the act, but what became law was a widely accepted bipartisan compromise. The measure passed the House 362 - 57, with 155 Democrats voting for the bill. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 90 - 8. Among the Democrats voting for the bill: Obama's running mate, Joe Biden. The bill was signed into law by President Clinton, a Democrat. If this bill really had "stripped the safeguards that would have protected us," then both parties share the blame, not just "John McCain's friend."

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So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

* The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

* Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

* Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

* Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

* The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

* Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

* Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

* Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

* The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

* An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

* Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

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Originally posted by marksw59:

The scientist versus engineer straw man argument was initiated by he who was formerly known as 'Juan Hunt' to try to imbue credence and gravitas to professional dreamers and idealists beyond their due.

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Originally posted by Mr.Dittohead:

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Originally posted by marksw59:

The scientist versus engineer straw man argument was initiated by he who was formerly known as 'Juan Hunt' to try to imbue credence and gravitas to professional dreamers and idealists beyond their due.

I pity you Mark. Perhaps one day you will have an opportunity to spend time with some professional dreamers too, and grow to appreciate how different they think, and how they have been the ones that have shaped the future into what we call today.