mouse

Despite Big Fast Panic, It's Still a Normal Bear

How anyone can call what is happening now just another "normal" bear market is beyond me....I suppose people who don't study history (I mean the last several hundred years, not the last couple of decades) can't see the forest for the trees.....the coming economic collapse is eventually going to create plenty of fear that is absent now.

Supply Side Economics Contradictions Live on in Washington

Wow! The neo-cons have not discovered this posting yet! Don't worry, they'll soon be here telling us all how much better off we all are, and how much better things are now than before they took over control of government policy......the facts to the contrary be damned. They are not about rational discourse, just propaganda.

Job Numbers: Deteriorating, and Understated

jstratt, your optimism is refreshing, but I fear that it is based on incomplete information about our current situation. The federal government has 10 times as much debt as it had then, and most American households also have far more debt......this spending binge, which has created unprecedented levels of public and private debt, is coming to and end, and there is no easy way to fix what is happening in the economy. The bromide that this has all happened before, and that things will straighten themselves out in a few months, is based on the premise that we can go on doing what we've been doing for the past two decades, and I don't think that's true. The deflationary side of the cycle has begun, and it's not going to be fun.

Economic Facts: U.S. Economy Is Doing Quite Well

The first thing one has to do to accept the assertions of the WSJ piece is to take the government figures on the economy as unbiased, accurate reports.....and if you believe that, you still think there are weapons of mass destruction somewhere in Iraq.

Be It Resolved: No One Has a Clue

There were plenty of "experts" that correctly told us what was coming, but there were many more "experts" who said that we had nothing to worry about......how do you figure out who is going to be correct beforehand?

Another Look at Preliminary Q2 GDP

The Bush administration's economic statistics are as reliable as their intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. They say what they want them to say. As long as they can claim any ridulously low inflation number to be accurate, they can say the GDP is positive. Yeah, right.

Pulp Fiction: The Latest GDP Revisions

milkchaser, what planet do you live on?

Q2's GDP Revised to 3.3%, A Hefty Increase

Don't forget the ridiculous inflation number they used to get the 3.3% growth number. If you don't subtract the real inflation number, growth looks great!

Grab Your Shorts, the Tide Has Turned

Dear iThinkBig, I enjoy your commentary, I just wish I could be as hopeful as you seem to be that good things can be accomplished by the Washington government if just the right people are elected. I have come to believe after many years of watching our national government that it is too late----big money rules this country now, and whoever is elected will do what they want, no matter how destructive to our national economic health the actions may be. I have been watching that process for years, with no end in sight.

What Do Alternate Measures Say About Consumer Inflation, and Why?

Menzie, I enjoyed reading the post on econbrowser above, but I still think you're too willing to attribute the inacurrate numbers in the CPI to incompetence or lack of resources. When it is politically helpful to the current administration (of either party) to have lower CPI and thus higher GDP numbers reported to show what a good job they're doing managing the economy, it is downright naive to assume that schemes to "tweak" the numbers will not be undertaken. It's more than a little bit suspicious that all the changes have resulted in lower CPI rates. If it waddles like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a.............

What Do Alternate Measures Say About Consumer Inflation, and Why?

Either this guy doesn't know about the ridiculous changes that have been done to the CPI since 1980 to make the same raw numbers produce a lower number, or he thinks it's ok to take out housing costs, use "substitution" (dog food will be next instead of pork chops or hamburger), and subtract for "hedonics" (it has more features, so the cost really didn't go up). Hogwash is hogwash.

What Do Alternate Measures Say About Consumer Inflation, and Why?

Sorry, it is always perfectly acceptable to call hogwash what it really is. If you can't stand to see or hear such things, go watch Fox News. They will keep you happy and complacent.

The New CPI Is Better, More Precise Than the Old CPI

This article is so full of bull it would make great hamburgers. The published CPI numbers are so far off that they don't even begin to match reality. PLEASE go look at the REAL CPI numbers on shadowstats.com by John Williams--and read Kevin Phillips' great article about the origins of the deceptions in HARPERS' magazine a couple of months ago. And there is no such thing as "core" inflation in the real world---everybody needs to eat and use energy every month, no matter what the government says. It's just another "adjustment" to make embarrasing numbers look better. Reality will eventually have its way, and the American people may someday finally realize that they've been had by the self-serving crooks in Washington.

The Economy: Walking on the Supply Side

alajac, I like your ideas, but I am confused about the tax idea---isn't an income tax the only fair way to raise revenue, since any tax we pay has to come out of our income anyway? And shouldn't it be proportional to how much one makes? It seems to me that any other way of doing it would unfairly favor the higher (or lower) income taxpayers. Please help me understand this better.

GDP Trends Signal Q2 Growth

As long as you keep accepting the government's phony CPI and GDP numbers, you will continue to think that we're doing fine---the reality of which nobody wants to know about is much worse. The CPI numbers are so far off because of all the phony tweaks that it's laughable.