Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

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

my pov: with a commodity as basic as oil the low demand that preceded this price drop doesn't indicate low demand only for oil, but for all commodities (see mordy's chart). low demand for industrial commodities indicates overproduction, which certainly hints at possible global recession. if demand doesn't pick up, there will certainly be liquidations in capital markets.

saudi arabia are not pumping to hurt the US and afaik it is not hurting US producers. it's hurting countries who rely heavily on oil exports for economic stability such as (surprise) Iran and Russia.

^ 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.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, January 13, 2016 12:42 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

U sure? S&P down 2.5% today.

saudi arabia are not pumping to hurt the US and afaik it is not hurting US producers

It's definitely hurting US shale oil companies. Just for fun I looked at the 14 shale oil stocks mentioned in this article from 2013:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-14-best-stocks-for-playing-the-us-shale-boom-2013-9?op=1

It looks like on average they've dropped by about half since their 2014 highs. A few are in the single-digits and courting bankruptcy.

interesting. still i don't think the US economy depends on oil to nearly the degree as some other states.

Definitely. I believe that with the shale boom the big pitch was the US was finally becoming oil independent - meaning on net it was neither an importer or exporter. So on net, one would think the impact on the US economy should be mostly a wash, since we produce about as much as we consume. However that ignores the cost of production. Below a certain price, shale production is no longer economic. We seem to be below that price now. Also the pain in shale is concentrated, whereas the benefits of low oil prices are diffuse. The concentrated pain may have a destabilizing effect on investment and credit, which could outweigh the diffuse benefits. Krugman did a blog post roughly to that effect a while back.

The shale boom was a key driver of the US economic recovery. If you mean we're not Saudi Arabia, ok, no one says we're Saudi Arabia.

There are articles like this, which say this is an explicit Saudi-led strategy to drive out high-cost non-OPEC producers, ie., US shale producers:

<i>"There is evidence the Saudi-led strategy is starting to work," the IEA said. "Oil below $50 is clearly driving out non-OPEC supply."</i>
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-11/iea-sees-oil-glut-lasting-until-late-2016-as-opec-keeps-pumping

Seems a bit crazy to me. I wonder if it's partly out of spite at a perceived Obama administration shift away from Saudi Arabia and towards Iran.

I have believed that pretty much since oil prices started to drop.

I mean I don't know if it's out of spite over Iran, but I think they are deliberately trying to kill the boom.

with oil down so low it looks like auto auto execs are pushing big trucks and suv's again. ugh. i'd feel worse about that if the manufacturing sector wasn't already on shaky ground

As much as I hate SUVs and the mentality behind them, their share of the climate change problem is vastly overestimated by the average liberal. Our driving culture in general (and the fact that our infrastructure is designed for it) is a bigger problem, and so are our big houses and overall consumption patterns. The difference between almost any American and people in many other countries is far bigger than the gap between an SUV owner and a Prius owner.

very difficult as an individual to positively interact with those bigger structural problems, very straightforward to make an impact on the suv/prius axis

otm. i don't think 'big houses' and 'driving culture' can change fast enough (and if they do it'll be because people moving to cities where they live in smaller houses closer to work for other reasons). prob the only hope at this point is for the energy heating houses and powering car engines to change.

also i think it's just generally misguided to look to the market price for oil to be high for environmental reasons. that's what a carbon tax is for. maybe it's a good side effect of high prices, but there are also other bad side effects, like most of the money stuffing the pockets of shitty regimes, encouraging development and exploration, etc

xp-RS. true, but there was definitely many years where a lot of political good will on climate was "wasted" on those kinds of weak impact feel-good individual solutions. if everyone had been campaigning for a carbon tax instead everyone who would have made those choices would have, and those who wouldn't have would be incentivized to do so

like i remember r'ing mde at the al gore movie ending with, "change your lightbulbs"

it felt like such a wasted opportunity. you've emotionally manipulated thousands of theatres full of well-meaning people, they're all just waiting at the end for you to tell them what to do... and you tell em to change their lightbulbs

i remember that. i almost wonder if thats just gore's DLC style mindset of "we'll never be able to get congress to act on this in any meaningful way, but we can sure as shit make people change their bulbs"

curious when the rising tide is going to life all boats. it's been about 35 years now. tide sure is taking its sweet time coming in!

otm. i don't think 'big houses' and 'driving culture' can change fast enough

it certainly won't with enough people enabling it

what do you think is a realistic window of time for say, 50% of people in america to move into smaller houses? 100 years?

i mean, if we had a tonne of uninhabited smaller houses it wouldn't be that bad. but we probably don't, and the ones that exist are probably further from where people work, so then people have to drive further. and even if they drive smaller cars, driving further kind of cuts your losses

we just need to hold on a little longer for rubio's tax cuts qualmsley

third straight month to show a decline in U.S. industrial production

http://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/g17/current/g17.pdf

we used to make more things in this country, three months ago