[evilgenius]

I think that long term trend is interesting. Automation, in all forms, is a possible answer. These days we like to poke our fingers at AI, but automation is far older than that, and has been not only putting people out of work, but increasing productivity per worker all the while. There is also foreign competition to consider, such as the Japanese when they seemed to reign supreme. Off-shoring is not a recent phenomenon, and is probably a trend that cannot be turned about by twists and turns. Capital will go where it can find a profit. Beyond that it is up to policy whether those situations return big, or little, but the world has been globalizing since the end of WWII.

Also, if you want to blame Obama for the more rapid rate of decline, which given the history we are all too familiar with is a hard sell seeing as how the Great Recession began under Bush, then you also have to credit him for what looks like another plateau over the last few years. Look, I know there is a huge debate over whether he has done what he could to the fullest extent. And also over whether he didn't simply adopt the other party's economic policies in response. People are afraid about the debt load the measures adopted have placed the country under. We've always had so much growth that whatever the participation chart has looked like there was enough wealth about to cover it and the debt up.

That kind of historical growth is absent now. Right now, the prices of food store stocks like Kroger and Whole Foods are in the tank because food price increases are not able to gain traction. For that matter, corporate profits in general have been declining for several quarters. Back to adopting the other party's policies in order to combat the recession: the other party has only allowed those kinds of measures. As much as Paul Krugman has begged for it, a true deficit spending war on the recession has not taken place. And, I think, that gets harder and harder to do, as money in people's pockets may not necessarily be spent at local businesses as it would with Amazon. Those local people are the ones who have to borrow in order to increase the money supply, and pay it off from success in their local markets such that the supply does not contract, as it did when sub-prime went down so heavily in '07-'08, which is the real cause of that much steeper decline. The system favors mid to large size businesses more and more. They enjoy both a structural information and financial benefit. Neither of those current waves of revolution have reached into the local sphere as far as they need to for things like Fed policy to matter as much as they should, or have historically. Thus the debate is out on whether government spending would do any better. Welfare has never had a high multiplier effect, and we are no longer in the Cold War, when we could always spend more on defense, which did.

[Plantagenet]

Off-shoring is not a recent phenomenon, and is probably a trend that cannot be turned about by twists and turns. Capital will go where it can find a profit.

Of course "Off-shoring " can be reversed. Just get rid of neoliberal free trade treaties like Clinton's NAFTA and Obama's TPP and impose moderate import tariffs and capital will find it profitable to manufacture in the USA again.

if you want to blame Obama for the more rapid rate of decline …....

The most rapid decline in worker participation rates in the last 50 years occurred in Obama's first term. Its not the part of his legacy Obama will point to with pride when he looks back at his time in office. Yes, the Great Recession began under Bush, but the Great Recession ended in June 2009. Look at Copie's chart----the drop in worker participation rate occurs almost all on Obama's watch

Obama made policy changes that that encouraged people not to work. He extended unemployment benefits so they went on for years, he lowered the bar to go on disability, and the disability rolls jumped to record levels, and he liberalized food stamp and housing voucher programs that people can only get below certain income cut-offs. Even the CBO has shown that Obamacare can let people drop out of the labour force and still receive health care. These policy changes have consequences, i.e. fewer people in the workforce.

Cheers!

[ennui2]

Geez, did anyone even read the article I just posted? You're still running around in circles about Obama?

The OP (now 4 parts removed) claims "Reports of US Economic Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated"

Well, the answer is yes, reports of US Economic Demise WERE greatly exaggerated.

No matter how much the economy heals and grows there will be someone who stomps and feet and complains that it isn't good enough. Considering where we started in the fall of 2008 I'd say nobody has reason to complain. It could be a hell of a lot worse, and the rhetoric here indicated it would be that much worse, rhetoric which has simply mutated over to ETP doom.

It's funny how Planty can fight the ETP nuts by agreeing to the obvious, that it's a glut, but when he pokes himself in here all he wants to do is find a way to spin the economy as doing worse for the sake of taking a few Obama potshots on his way out of office.

Un-feaking believable.

We were all supposed to be holed up in our bunkers peering through gunslights by now, folks!

We're NOT because a) doomers made a really bad call, and b) Obama handled the recession about as well as anyone with the intention of propping up BAU and kicking the can down the road.

Be grateful.

[copious.abundance]

he accused me of not being able to read a chart, because ...

Actually, there have been periods of stability, and periods when it declined.

... if he actually had looked at the chart, he would have noticed yet another one of those periods of stability in the last year or so.

Again you are showing you don't how to read a graph. You can't read too much into a single data point, i.e. a single year does not constitute a "period of stability." The graph shows several obvious plateaus---you can tell how long they last by referring to the timeline shown along the abscissa of the graph. Got it? Now measure the duration of the obvious periods of stability----note that they all last at least 5 years---some of them more.

Good lord ... ... There are 3, maybe 4 "plateaus" on that chart, not including the one for the past year or two. ALL of them lasted 2-3 years, except maybe 5 or so for the one in the 1950's. The rest of the chart is sloping downhill, just to varying degrees. Is he so blind that I have to annotate the chart just to show him the obvious?



And in case it's not clear, red=down and green="plateau."

[copious.abundance]

Hot of the presses!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... recession/

Whither ETP Doom????????????????????????????????????????????

I am pretty sure some people here aren't going to bother clicking on the link to see what it's about, so here we go:

Middle class incomes had their fastest growth on record last year

The incomes of typical Americans rose in 2015 by 5.2 percent, the first significant boost to middle-class pay since the end of the Great Recession and the fastest increase ever recorded by the federal government, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday.

In addition, the poverty rate fell by 1.2 percentage points, the steepest decline since 1968. There were 43.1 million Americans in poverty on the year, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014.

The share of Americans who lack health insurance continued a years-long decline, falling 1.3 percentage points, to 9.1 percent.



[...]

Incomes increased for men and for women and across racial and ethnic groups. They grew most for the lowest-earning workers and least for the highest-earning ones, though all income groups saw improvement.

“The highest income growth was in the bottom fifth" of workers, said Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute think tank, "which is very welcome news.”

[...]

[ennui2]

That blurb about health insurance also counters rhetoric in the other thread about how tyrranical Obamacare has supposedly been. Ideology comes before neurons, obviously.

The share of Americans who lack health insurance continued a years-long decline, falling 1.3 percentage points, to 9.1 percent.

[ennui2]

Back on-topic.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/mar ... /90400896/

[ennui2]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-s ... SKCN11S16F

[onlooker]

Pstarr, that is what is called funny money. The world is awash in it. From stock market valuation (derivative market) , to dot.com, to quantitative easing, to deposits in banks, retirement 401 Ks, etc. , social security trust fund etc etc. No real value, backed by nothing. Just digits and made up fantasy valuations. But the optimists just say, oh well I come we can still buy food and go on vacation and so forth. You can for now because the fantasy world money has created STILL functions but soon it will stop once people get wind that those "assessments" of value are devoid from any reality and that the reality and the real world ie. the world of resources, of true hope or lack thereof for a livable adequate future based on those resources and the well being of Earth impinges forcefully on the mind of some especially some strategically positioned people. Then the ULTIMATE POP GOES THE BUBBLE WILL BE HEARD.

[Tanada]

Worth half an hour of your time.

https://youtu.be/IAiQTcmc_Hg

[onlooker]

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/ ... r-21-2016/
• Unlike in 1986, This Time US Might Not Dodge a Recession: Deutsche Bank (BBG)
• Get Ready For The Mother Of All Stock Market Corrections (Tel.)
• Japan Exports Fall 11th Straight Month, 9.6% YoY, Imports Plunge 17.3% (R.)
• Bank of Japan Overhauls Policy Framework, Sets Yield Curve Target (R.)
• Bank of Japan Introduces Rate Target for 10-Year Government Bonds (WSJ)
• Could Germany Allow Deutsche Bank To Go Under? (Golem XIV)
• Keynesian Deflation Humbug (Mish)
• Nobody Has Ever Shut Down The World’s Best Drilling Rigs – Until Now (BBG)
• Crude Slips As Venezuela Says Market Is 10% Oversupplied (Dow Jones)
• SEC Probes Exxon Over Asset Valuation, Climate Change Accounting (WSJ)
• Court Says Hanjin Shipping Rehab Plan ‘Realistically Impossible’ (R.)
• Elizabeth Warren to Wells Fargo CEO: Resign, Return Earnings, Face Inquiry (G.)
• Mexico Police Raid Sawmills To Rescue Monarch Butterfly Refuge (AFP)
• Italy PM Renzi: Merkel Is ‘Lying To The Public’, Europe Is a ‘GHOST’ (Exp.)
• EU: Refugees Must Stay On Greek Islands Despite Lesbos Fire (AP)

[ennui2]

Keep stomping your feet pronouncing impending doom all you want, but this is a thread about where things stand now, NOT in the future.

[copious.abundance]

Consumers the most confident since 2007

Americans in September expressed the most optimism about the economy since the summer of 2007, reflecting a sunnier view about the U.S. labor market.

The index of consumer confidence climbed to 104.1 this month from 101.8 in August, the privately run Conference Board said Tuesday. That’s well above the 99.3 forecast of economists polled by MarketWatch and it marks the highest level since August 2007, just a few months before the onset of the Great Recession.



Consumers were more upbeat about employment conditions. The nation’s unemployment rate has fallen below 5% and millions of people have found jobs in the past several years. Companies have also had to raise wages amid what they call a shortage of skilled labor.

[...]

[onlooker]

So news that we are consuming more earth should not be applauded with happy faced BS. ---Good economic news is bad news for Earth and posterity. Have fun posting your GOOD economic news. Yes especially our very own Forbes impersonator Copious

[onlooker]

lets see if the cornies have a positive spin for this: In 2015, the U.S. Federal Government paid $402 billion just to service the interest on its debt. This figure can be found at TreasuryDirect.gov. According to the Federal Reserve Q1 2016 Statistical Release, the U.S. Federal Government spent a total of $4.02 trillion in 2015. Thus, the interest on U.S. debt consumed 10% of the total budget.