Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

we are gonna find out now what the effect of Bill Clinton shredding the safety net really is, right?

yep

but why bother with an ounce of prevention when you can lard on a few pounds of cure

Incorrect, and misleading. The green line is the RATE of job losses per month. What the graph shows is that we are shedding jobs much faster than we did during the other recessions and that the rate is still accelerating.

no, it's total job losses. the y-axis is job losses in thousands. what's somewhat misleading is that it's raw numbers instead of as a percentage of the workforce, which was smaller in 1990, and a bit smaller in 2001. something showing the rate would look really alarming, since something like half the total has been since october.

so anyway, how 'bout that geithner plan huh? my dad called me this morning yelling about what a bankers' tool geithner is...

and for the record, I am not tipsy's dad.

hahaha

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/11/henrietta.hughes/index.html

Median housing prices in the Fort Myers metropolitan area have plummeted from $322,000 in December 2005 to less than $107,000 in December 2008, the Obama administration notes.

holy shit

yeah, holy shit is right

yeh, there was a news story in one of the seattle papers yesterday, about a real estate insider/agent who's apparently snagged a few ears by claiming that housing prices must have bottomed out locally, cuz stats show that when prices hit 20% below 2008 valuation, buyers sweep in and houses get snapped up. so, since there's a bargain-hunter contingent waiting for the magical 80% price point, seattle prices can't ever fall any lower than that. QED.

assumption that there will always be a supply of people waiting and able to buy at the same price point went unconsidered. some fucking crazy wishful thinking going on these days....

well, wishful thinking going on in places that aren't florida. right about now, i think everyone there pretty much knows how fucked they are

Is Maxine Waters retarded?

http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/10/copy/caproos.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

U.S. Rep. Steve Austria said he supports a scaled-down federal economic-stimulus proposal, but the Beavercreek Republican told The Dispatch editorial board that the huge influx of money into the economy could have a negative effect.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

Up Beavercreek without etc.

Between him and that 'war of northern aggression' guy in Missouri, it's been another great week for the GOP.

Steve Austria

and w/out America's Funniest Legislators gotcha gaffes, the uncomprehending Dems (xp)

I love the fact that Sports Illustrated swimsuit models rang the closing bell on Wall Street yesterday.

So Bar Rafael (?) was one of'em I assume or am I rong?

Do these people even know how to read?

Republicans, not swimsuit models.

The latter are probably more literate.

but Dems are better at covering their asses.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

http://www.hollywoodlostandfound.net/pictures/props/timemachine.jpg

That's just history.

it's just like the way will ferrell delivers "that's just science" in anchorman when he's just said that women's brains are smaller than men's.

srsly, swimsuit models are more qualified to run the government.

Oh that wacky Dan Lungren:

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) waved a copy of Newsweek magazine with the cover headline "We Are All Socialists Now." He declared in a morning floor speech, "We will soon become even more French."

Ugh I just read that Newsweek article. I really hope that is one of the first magazines that is killed by the internet.

Haven't you heard? It's going 'upscale':

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/business/media/09newsweek.html?em

a copy of Newsweek magazine with the cover headline "We Are All Socialists Now."

yeah i saw this on my friend's coffee table the other night and straight roffled for 10 minutes

am I the only one who thinks articles like that are quite possibly a good thing? 'socialist' becoming an acceptable word again in american politics would be a big step forward.

Among the upper USA quintile "socialist" has never been an acceptable word. Even USA trade unionists have shied from the word, generally speaking. Even in the 1930s.

what's the point of the Newsweek cover?? Socialism for Wall St is all I'm seein'.

2nd part of that Lungren quote comes from the subhead.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/183663

Among the upper USA quintile "socialist" has never been an acceptable word. Even USA trade unionists have shied from the word, generally speaking. Even in the 1930s.

yeah but it's all part of the same country-wide self-denial, the "we're all self-made amerikuns, we don't need no big government here" idea - which has for all of our lives (maybe not Morbius') not been true yet it still is the way the average american thinks our economy works - from the upper quintile to the bottom quintile. so social security, wall street bailout etc. = not socialist, cause it's americans doing it, and we're not socialists goddarnit.

Didn't we all become socialists once Lehman Brothers exploded?

Apparently no. That was a Republican administration trying to save our economy. This is some a bunch of Democrats trying to fulfill their lifelong dream of turning us into Soviet Russia. [/sarcasm]

It's funny to hear how far more vehemently opposed Republicans are to this package than the one that went through last fall. I understand the critiques about no-bid contracts and wasteful spending but didn't they just write a huge TARP check made out to 'Cash' with nearly this amount?

i had an argument with a theoretically well-educated, politically middle-of-the-road guy a few years ago about whether or not the u.s. was a "mixed economy." the argument was me saying yes and him saying "what is a mixed economy?" he'd never even heard the phrase. in his mind we were either "capitalist" or "socialist." and, you know, i remember being taught very matter of factly in 10th grade or something that the u.s. was a mixed economy, it wasn't a big point of controversy. but it's like the brainwashing of the post-reagan years has been so successful that a lot of people don't even understand what kind of country they live in. the fact that their mythological ideas about the united states are directly contradicted by their own everyday experiences just bounces off them.

(and, somewhat hilariously, this was a guy who was at the time seeking government contracts in a public-private development deal.)

The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment).

Unemployment rates:

US 7.6%
Austria 3.9%
Netherlands 3.9%
Denmark 2.1%
Norway 2.9%
Sweden 6.4%
Switzerland 2.9%

Well-researched article ...

I mean, it's half right, in that the US has had an extraordinarily dynamic economy, but the end of that sentence is just RONG.

(This is the Newsweek article above, btw)

I don't think it's crazy to say that in an average year an average large EU country has a higher unemployment rate - the numbers (doctored as they may be) usually do reflect this.

But yeah, "more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth" - that's a great line to put in an 2003 editorial by a Chicago economist but wtf, the fact that shit like this is still considered objective truth in FEBRUARY 2009 just goes to show how deeply rooted these beliefs were.

Meantime, roffles:

Hotel chains, jet makers and corporate travel managers say they are fearful that efforts to curb excesses by firms receiving government aid will only add more pain to an industry hit hard by the economic downturn.

"We've got to get away from the symbolism of corporate fat cats smoking a big cigar on a golf course and instead think about the symbolism of people meeting and thinking together and creating ideas and building their cultures," Marriott chief financial officer Arne Sorenson said yesterday in a conference call to discuss the company's weak earnings report.

Because that was always what was driving them beforehand.

7,591.87
–258.54
–3.29%

some months ago, an investor newsletter my dad subscribes to -- which he says has had a good track record these past few years in sizing things up -- set two parameters as signs of what's to come: if/when the dow goes back over 9,500, we'll probably be at a sustainable recovery; if/when it goes under 7,500, we're probably looking at a loooooooong trough. arbitrary numbers, obviously, but...

"what kind of trough provides less food as it gets bigger?"

If/when the dow goes back over 9,500, we'll probably be at a sustainable recovery; if/when it goes under 7,500, we're probably looking at a loooooooong trough. arbitrary numbers, obviously, but...

The Groundhog Industrial Average

The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Treasury has not yet decided whether to write down the debt principal for the estimated 15 million families with negative equity (and perhaps 30 million by this time next year as property prices continue to plunge). No doubt a similar deal will be made: For every $100,000 of write-down in debt owed by over-mortgaged homeowners, the bank will receive $100,000 from the Treasury. Government debt will rise by $100,000, and the process will continue until the Treasury has transferred $50,000,000 to the banks that made the reckless loans.

There is enough for just 500,000 of these renegotiations of $100,000 each. It may seem like a big amount, but it’s only about 1/30th of the properties underwater. Hardly enough to make much of a dent, but the principle has been put in place for many further bailouts. It will take almost an infinity of them, as long as the Treasury tries to support the fiction that “the miracle of compound interest” can be sustained for long. The economy may be dead by the time saner economic understanding penetrates the public consciousness.

In the meantime, bad private-sector debt will be shifted onto the government’s balance sheet. Interest and amortization currently owed to the banks will be replaced by obligations to the U.S. Treasury. Taxes will be levied to make up the bad debts with which the government is stuck. The “real” economy will pay Wall Street – and will be paying for decades!

...Today it is easier to see that the Western economies cannot go on the way they have been. They have reached the point where the debts exceed the ability to pay. Instead of recognizing this fact and scaling debts back into line with the ability to pay, the Obama-Geithner plan is to bail out the big banks and hedge funds, keeping the volume of debt in place and indeed, growing once again through the “magic of compound interest.” The result can only be an increasingly extractive economy, until households, real estate and industrial companies, states and cities, and the national government itself is driven into debt peonage.

...Today’s neoliberalism paints a false picture of what the classical economists envisioned as free markets. They were markets free of economic rent and interest (and taxes to support an aristocracy or oligarchy). Socialism was to free economies from these overhead charges. Today’s Obama-Geithner rescue plan is just the reverse.

http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson02172009.html

It's funny to hear how far more vehemently opposed Republicans are to this package than the one that went through last fall. I understand the critiques about no-bid contracts and wasteful spending but didn't they just write a huge TARP check made out to 'Cash' with nearly this amount?

― Adam Bruneau, Friday, 13 February 2009 00:05 (5 days ago)

This. The only damn difference is who the fat check is going to. Investment banks? Great! Too big to fail! (Try to get a loan from a bank now, though.) GM or Chrysler/Cerberus? Of COURSE! Why didn't you ask sooner? States, municipalities, and the rest of the country? Well, um, no.

Well not exactly - remember that the car companies had been way too nice to the evil, decadent unions and so didn't deserve to get bailed out.

ayo tracer going way back to re: banks did you read steve lohr's analysis in the times??

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/economy/13insolvent.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper

lays out some of the +/- pretty well i think