Showing posts with label Obamanomics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obamanomics. Show all posts

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Obamanomics


The economy turned in another disappointing quarterly performance, surprising even the most pessimistic observers as growth in the first three months of 2014 slowed to a near-standstill. In their initial estimate for growth in the months of January, February and March, government statisticians said output expanded at an annual rate of just 0.1 percent.

NYT 

And yet...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has been slowly climbing for several days, closed unofficially 45 points higher at 16,580.84, eclipsing its record high close of 16,576.66, last Dec. 31.  Who would imagine we would get a first-quarter GDP print so disappointing and yet we're closing the stock market at a high.

NBC

And in that Democratic Paradise of NYC...

New York City’s share of poor people appears to have plateaued since the recession, at 21.4 percent. 46 percent, or nearly half of New Yorkers, were making less than 150 percent of the poverty threshold, a figure that describes people who are struggling to get by.  

“After years of trying to nibble around the edges with pilot programs that were well-intentioned, but that were not moving the needle,” he said, the de Blasio administration would confront “this stubborn undercurrent” full throttle through paid sick leave, expansion of the so-called living wage law, municipal identification cards, universal prekindergarten and after-school programs."

NYT

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

American Nightmare



Imagine shivering in the cold, homeless, hungry, your children crying because they are scared and starving...

Next, imagine a kindly man and a group of his helpers ushering you in to a warm home with food and beds, but it's all a trick.  He ends up chaining you to his basement wall...

Sure, it's damp and chilly, but it's warmer than being outside...  He feeds you stale, unhealthy scraps, but it's better than starving...  After a few years of this, it doesn't seem so bad...

You could escape, but it's so scary outside on your own...


OK.  Maybe that's not the best analogy for government assistance.

I'd say government more resembles a crack dealer who gives you the first rock free, knowing you'll be back with money in your hand.  Having permanently hooked and ruined the poor, Uncle Sam began peddling to the middle class...


A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.
Almost half of all Americans lived in households that received government benefits in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The share climbed from 37.7 percent in 1998 to 44.5 percent in 2006, before the recession, to 48.5 percent in 2010. (NY Times)
Read this and weep...
* The average individual who relies on Washington could receive benefits valued at $32,748, more than the nation’s average disposable personal income ($32,446).

* Nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes

* As of now, 70 percent of the federal government’s budget goes to individual assistance programs
Source:  Dependence on Government Highest in History
Here's more...
The federal government sent a record $2 trillion to individuals in fiscal 2010, up nearly 75% from 10 years earlier. (Government Assistance Expands)
That last one comes from CNN's ironically-named series, The New American Dream

See also Our Budget Quagmire

Thursday, February 9, 2012

An Ebbing Tide Lifts Obama’s Boat


Giving up is the key to Obama’s reelection. Giving up on looking for a job, that is...

4 million Americans are so disgusted with Obamanomics that they have permanently abandoned the nation’s tattered workforce since the president took office, helping to keep the unemployment rate out of scary double-digit territory where it more properly belongs.




The simple calculation for unemployment before all the seasonal adjustments and so forth, is:

Unemployment Rate = Number of Unemployed / Total Labor Force

So the easy way to get unemployment down is to reduce the numerator in proportion to the denominator, and the easiest way to do that is to declare that the greatest number of unemployed workers are no longer looking for work, and therefore no longer “unemployed.” This shrinks the numerator relative to the denominator, making unemployment go down.

Obama is on track to be the only president to lose jobs during his term

This impressive feat beats even Herbert Hoover. He produced this horrible historic milestone by stopping drilling, shutting down pipelines and plane factories, and liberally slinging shovel-ready bureaucratic manure all over the place.  His economic record is abysmal.



There’s a right way and a wrong way to talk about just how catastrophic Obama’s job destruction record is. Here’s the wrong way:

Looking at the U-6 unemployment rate, which includes the discouraged and part-time workers, really doesn't tell us anything, because the ratio stays pretty much the same in good times and bad, so it’s a comparative wash to point out that “real” unemployment is closer to 16%. 

The same goes for trying to point to statistical tricks like seasonal adjustments, which explain how the economy could shed 1.5 million jobs between December and January yet still claim that unemployment fell from 8.5 to 8.3 and added 234,000 jobs. All administrations have played by these rules, so it’s not really a good point of criticism.

Here’s why Obama is a horrible president...

The absolute number of total jobs in the US has shrunk since President Obama was inaugurated; a catastrophe considering our population continues to grow. The shrinking participation (taking frustrated job-seekers out of the equation) is the key to masking Obama’s jobs destruction. Just this past month Obama's regime sliced off 88,000 job-seekers, sending them to statistical oblivion and improving his bottom line.
If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7 percent then vs. 63.7 percent today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 11.0 percent.
As an analysis from Hamilton Place Strategies concludes, “Most of the shift of the past year is due not to the improvement in the labor market, but the continued drop in participation in the labor force.” (8.3 Unemployment Rate is a Phony Number)
Here’s the bad news for Obama:
If the participation rate does level off at its current rate, according to HPS, the economy would need to generate 231,000 jobs per month to get below 8 percent unemployment by Election Day (8.3 Unemployment Rate is a Phony Number)
Now for the good news for the hopium smokers:
If the participation rate continues its downward slide, however, that number would be much lower—perhaps as low as 131,000 jobs a month (8.3 Unemployment Rate is a Phony Number)
So as long as the overall number of jobs continue to shrink and the government continues to kick more and more workers out of the statistical labor force, the jobs picture will continue to look up for Obama, even as the economy sags and the number of Americans out of work increases.

And they say the GOP field is unelectable?

See also:  O-Man the Destroyer

Monday, July 11, 2011

USA: An Economic Obamanation

I love it when lefty columnists write headlines like this:

GOP Out to Sabotage Economy!

It gives me a chance to say,

"Too Late, Obama Beat Them To It!"

You can always count on lefty loon Michael Tomasky to give us a good hearty laugh at his expense.  His naked psychological projection is stunning:
It’s about time the Democrats started saying openly what has been clear for months or even years now—that as long as economic recovery would work to the political benefit of Barack Obama, the Republicans have been, are, and will be in favor of sabotaging the economy.
Tomasky must have been on the moon during the Bush years, when democrats and their toadies in the press spent 6 whole years talking down the economy until finally they got their wish and it crashed.

What's Obama's economic plan?  Mine involves hoarding ammo, water and MREs...  It could get ugly out there.

It's not getting a lot of press here in the US, but the European streets are simmering with anger, and this time it's not the Muslims, but the natives who are violently restless.  Could anger spill over to violence in this country against those running the joint?  Hell yea, concludes eternal skeptic and unabashed liberal Paul Farrell.

He calls Reaganomics evil, but is silent at the progressive evil that has racked up northwards of $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities, all in the name of “progress” and prosperity, while actually driving us to retrograde penury.

That street violence, in Athens, Madrid, and someday here, was brought to us by the bankrupt promises of progressivism.
The European Union, like the 19th-century Congress of Vienna, can point to one achievement: a general absence of war in Western Europe for more than 60 years. Otherwise, almost all the socialist promises of an equality of result are imploding before Europeans’ eyes. (VDH - Europe is Warning Us)
Income inequality is at an all time high, unemployment is rampant and we are trapped in an Obamanomics stagflation death spiral.  People have a right to be angry.

If the people at the top got there by the sweat of their brow battling it out in the free market arena, good for them.  I begrudge them nothing.  But that’s not always the case in the United States of Crony Crapitalists.

The Big Banks are still to big to fail, despite what Chris Dodd and Barney Frank told us.  The sweaty pornographic embrace (with the taxpayer as the pivot man) between DC and Wall Street is simply too lucrative to abandon.
Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, and other giant U.S. banks have been profiting at your expense through an implicit taxpayer guarantee of their debt above and beyond the bailout funds they have already received, a recent report from credit agency Moody's shows.
We are in for a painful deleveragingWalter Russell Mead writes that we will pass through a profound societal change as well.  There’s no way around it.  We are out of easy answers.  We bought our prosperity with borrowed money, and it must be paid back, but the Obama administration is blissfully ignorant of this reality.

Victor Davis Hanson asks...
If dispirited Europeans are conceding that something is terribly wrong with their half-century-long experiment with socialism, unassimilated immigrants, cultural apologies, defense cuts, and post-nationalism, why in the world is the Obama administration intent on adopting what Europeans are rejecting?
Liberals love to preach about environmental sustainability, but they ignore the fact that the social model they have built is financially unsustainable.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Coercion is the Cornerstone of Progressivism



Obama Orders Regulatory Reform

When I saw this news item, my immediate question was, "what are they up to?"  The President can't be serious.  He and his statist minions love regulations!  The bigger and more complex, the better!

Leftists love regulating the lives of others.  They get a perverse pleasure from it.  Go try to comment on your average lefty blog.  You will quickly meet up with a giddy little potentate who has her twitchy finger on the delete button, ready to scold you for your offensive rightwing hatred.

Statism and Coercion Go Hand in Hand

Progressivism is not statism, but statism is the vehicle progressives have chosen to advance their agenda.  Friedrich Hayek rightly observed that governmental grand schemes logically lead the government to become increasingly dictatorial.  It must if it is to enforce the order.   The people have got to cooperate for the schemes to work.  The grander and more numerous the government projects, the more dictatorial coercion is required...
  • Obama bars Boeing barred from expanding manufacturing to North Carolina
  • The Federal Government forces you to buy into their healthcare scheme
  • Taxpayer money is handed to Ethanol millionaires
  • Congress bans the incandescent bulb
  • In times of austerity in states, cities and private homes, a tentacular federal government stubbornly refuses to rein in programs, and instead recklessly increases spending and regulation
  • The federal government responds to acts of terrorism by treating its own citizens as criminals 
Meanwhile, the clanking, soulless federal monster has set about destroying the value of our currency and now talks of government-private sector partnerships to "get the economy working."   It didn't work in the Soviet Union and it wont work here.

Here is what will work, for indeed it has always worked since time immemorial:
Remove the roadblocks to economic activity which are taxes, regulation, barriers to trade, and cheap, unstable money.  (John Tamney - An Entirely Predictable Economic Dip)
Our Economic Emperors Have No Clothes
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke admits he doesn't "have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting." He is only our latest economic emperor revealed as having no clothes.
It apparently takes a tenured Princeton economics department chairman not to understand what the average Joe knows only too well - that an $800 billion-plus stimulus that didn't stimulate on top of Washington turning the mortgage industry into a welfare program isn't something the jobs market can easily recover from.  (IBD - Fall of Economic High Priests)

So, What Would Fix It?
As economic historian Thomas Woods points out in his book on the financial crisis, "Meltdown," a few bankruptcies of too-big-to-fail firms would do more to jolt the financial sector "into being sensible and cautious instead of reckless and irresponsible than all the regulatory tinkering in the world."

A free economy doesn't need an elite of government high priests named Bernanke or Greenspan or Rubin or Summers to reach and maintain the greatness that has marked most of U.S. economic history. It needs protection from such arrogant figures.  (IBD - Fall of Economic High Priests)