Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

I'm confused about all these numbers. Dollar getting stronger, Euro getting weaker - so that's ... bad? Good? And US unemployment falling, but real, invisible unemployment ... rising? Steady? Also, Russia - still collapsing? How's China? I assume we're all in the shitbin (save Germany?), but how shitty, for real?

Krugman doesn't seem too worried

Krugman probably envisions the European Central Bank pulling a Bernanke out of its hat, which it may not be able to encompass. As Keynes pointed out, the selfishness that drives expansion in a capitalistic economy is also what drives recessions. It all hinges on whether the broad sum of selfish actions are motivated by optimism or fear. That still applies. As for confusion, there is plenty of room for it atm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/opinion/thomas-edsall-has-american-business-lost-its-mojo.html?emc=edit_ty_20150401&nl=opinion&nlid=34427133&_r=0

I dunno. That article has a graph with actual facts in it regarding the number of businesses closing vs. new businesses opening, but it also has statements like this:

"The forces driving this trend include the increasing regulation of small businesses, corporate consolidation, more occupational licensing requirements and too few immigrants with high-tech skills."

For which statement it gives absolutely no evidence, including such weak-assed stuff as anecdotal evidence, which any half-assed journalist could gin up, whether or not the statement is actually true. I guess we are supposed to find it self-evident.

these are unrelated, more or less, but i've been thinking about these two series of tweets a lot

matt stoller, from a few months ago, on the global dominance of banks and its history:

https://storify.com/keiteay/matthew-stollar

"billmon" on the paucity of good antipoverty policy and the need for direct, WPA-style job programs

https://twitter.com/billmon1/status/595278407304286208

https://twitter.com/billmon1/status/595286441283833856

^ this is kind of what my research is about

i'm not sure how wpa-style jobs programs are fundamentally different from the obama jobs bills, which krugman supported very vocally

problem with "employ everyone in huge public works programs" is it only works every once in a while. once we have the "equilibrium" amount of parks & schools you're either talking about expanding the state or the keynesian joke about "digging holes to fill them back up." so his argument implicitly requires that there's a large amount of non-NAIRU accelerating work out there to be done. which there might be? def lots of infrastructure spending to do on the cheap that is (infuriatingly) not getting done. but again, all the mainstream neoliberals he's deriding support that.

it's kind of like the flip of alesina, the economist who claims reducing government spending would lead to a surge in output as private investment rushes in to replace public spending. it's like, ok, even if we accept that this works (which no one really does) it's only a trick you can pull off once

Well, if you're strapped for ideas of public works that don't require specialized skills, out here in the western USA we have forests full of trails that need maintaining, but which are neglected for lack of money. That work right there could easily absorb a couple hundred thousand laborers in about ten western states for several years. Then there's decommissioning thousands of miles of unused, unneeded logging roads.

i suppose the grimmer future-robot-overlord argument is that we will have (or have already had, for a long time!) whole populations of people who are totally beneath the use of capital, and the state's job is to keep them busy, keep them from turning into, well, what? communists? jihadis? charming hobos?

it's the inherent flaw in capitalism. without consumers, the whole house of cards collapses. but capital monopolizes capital, destroying jobs, undermining consumerism. you can always blame it on benghazi

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XAlxd1AjL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

reading the post-recession postscript added to this in its new edition, it runs from the 80s up to almost today and just plain lays out, here this happened, here congress did that, here this dude stole that, here X percent of all these transactions in the US went through them, etc. etc., facts facts facts and cold and furious as hell

talk about total powerlessness : (

in a perhaps counterproductive gesture i have added that book to my amazon wishlist

same

it's amazing, you'll love it goole

although it will probably make you cringe at your corpo worklife

Nothing can possibly go wrong with this: China to Flood Economy With Cash as Global Markets Lose Faith

Updated Aug. 24, 2015 8:12 a.m. ET
BEIJING—The selloff in Chinese stocks accelerated Monday, adding pressure on Beijing, which is planning to flood its banking system with new liquidity to offset effects of its recent surprise currency devaluation, according to Chinese officials and advisers to the central bank.

turn the bubble machine back on!

free itunes gift card economy

Doesn't seem like the bubble machine is working yet.

"they fly so 'igh, they reach the sky, then like my 'opes they fade and die"

it's like all interconnected, maaaan

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/08/foreign-smart-money-frets-about-turmoil-at-home-flees-plows-into-us-housing-bubble-2-thinks-its-a-safe-haven.html

here's a similarly tendentious chinese-blaming article from last year's guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/oct/26/low-interest-rates-high-house-prices-blame-chinese-wedding-planners

Didn't miss this thread and all of the rolling we did (and may have yet to do), but I do miss tombot's images at the top.

panicked george washington had to get retired once the market went up 10,000 points after plummeting in 2008

well this is something to look forward to

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/14/the_world_will_come_crashing_down_again_inside_the_global_debt_crisis_that_america_is_about_to_import/

that article is kind of garbled and all over the place, but some of the concerns it raises strike me as real.

frustratingly sparse information on how $5B will be cut from social security in this very long article which spends more time talking about the ceremonial aspects of the formal leadership of the House

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/us/politics/congress-and-white-house-near-deal-on-budget.html

It's hard to tell from the article but it seems like the proposed deal is a two-year deal. So maybe.... $5B is not actually a lot? In 2013 total SS expenditures were $1.3T. So $5B would represent.... .38% of the total cost of the program. (A third of one percent).

U.S. Economy Added 292,000 Jobs in December; Unemployment Rate at 5%

employment to population ratio still in the shitbin:

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

U6 number is 9-13% depending on the source. Not as bad as it was but not great. Wages obviously are still in the shitter.

compensation looking up

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/good-news-labor-compensation-finally-starting-rise

one thing i would like to see broken down (and that i hope my intuition is wrong about): if employee health care plans are included in measures of compensation, and health care costs keep rising, won't the value of compensation rise even though paying more for the same insurance isn't good?

I've got a bad feeling

O took semi-victory lap on economy last night in SOTU, though he acknowledged concern and work to be done. Republican response was of course cut taxes and help small business

oil dropped below $30 yesterday :O

^ that would seem to signal a worldwide economy that is being rolled into the shitbin, but the financial sector either reads something else in that fact or else it hasn't got the news, yet, because they don't seem to be reacting very strongly to it.

oil is dropping bc there is so much of it the market is oversaturated. for countries that depend on oil revenues for survival that means they're being rolled into the shitbin but countries that are now (or soon to be) energy independent are obv making out well from the same circumstances like the US (or recently, Israel, whose future oil exports are probably the reason Turkey is willing to reconcile).

there is also the small problem of a global drop in demand. europe and the us are moribund and the brics are headed that way. copper is very low. it's not as if there's this pent-up appetite just waiting to be unleashed.

copper is very low partially bc of the low oil

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-09/cheap-oil-also-means-cheaper-commodities-amid-surpluses

cool chart here:

http://quantumtechnology.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/copper-oil.jpg

that's very interesting, thanks

low oil prices are a good thing

good for the Western world mostly. not so good for the KSA or Putin.

what niggles at me is that this huge drop in oil prices has not stimulated demand. I guess I'll just accept that as good news for reducing fossil fuel burning, but i'll reserve judgment on what that means for the global economy.

low oil is shitting on my country's exchange rate atm, which is quite painful in some industries incl the one i work in. but adjusting to a macro price change doesn't exactly = into the shitbin

what niggles at me is that this huge drop in oil prices has not stimulated demand. I guess I'll just accept that as good news for reducing fossil fuel burning, but i'll reserve judgment on what that means for the global economy.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, January 13, 2016 1:12 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you may be reasoning from a price change. low demand -> drop in oil, not the other way around. it's like when people say, "why aren't more people investing given that interest rates are so low?" but re:oil i think there's also other complications, like a lot of companies that buy oil hedge against price changes so they aren't feeling the benefit yet

yes my impression is not that low demand is the primary driver behind oil price drops (though that is true in China where the economy has slowed down) but technology that has made oil production much more efficient and opened up new reserves that were inaccessible in the past.

just thought it was a sign of a 'not very robust economy' and low demand etc

xpost

it might be a local thing too, as the last administration in this state really doubled down on natural gas and a lot of those businesses are closing down due to oil being low

xp mordy - yeah but it's the combo, demand (europe & china) slows more than anticipated and supply continues to shoot up

saudi arabia etc. are going to keeping pumping until US producers either collapse or call uncle