The Cynical Economist

Jobless rate at 3-year low as payrolls surge - Really? LOL. The report is a bad joke. I just cannot believe that such a spinning and twisting of the truth are done by the government and the media that once were hold as world wide example of freedom and democracy. We are really witnessing the fall of our great nation.   

More pistons in the economic engine have begun to fire, pointing to accelerating economic growth. One of the happiest persons reading this job report is President Obama…

Jobs Preview 2012: The Year of the Missing Worker - 

• There are over 3 million “missing” workers who should be in the labor force, but are not.
• If labor force participation were in line with demographic projections, the unemployment rate would be above 10 percent.
• The possibility of large numbers of people reentering the labor force makes it very difficult for the unemployment rate to fall below 8 percent by Election Day.

Top five regrets of the dying - On the other hand…

A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

The ‘Financial Recession’ Excuse - Happy days are here again heh? Nope! All “good” economic news are lies 

Never before in postwar America has either real per capita GDP or employment still been lower four years after a recession began. If in this “recovery” our economy had grown and generated jobs at the average rate achieved following the 10 previous postwar recessions, GDP per person would be $4,528 higher and 13.7 million more Americans would be working today.

Earning Less – Why The Poor Get Poorer - Do they have a choice?

Working longer hours but earning less — the plight of the average American continues.

Getting Nowhere, Very Fast - 

California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.

Someone once said that government is the illusion that we can all live off somebody else…

Streetcar work begins, total cost rises - 

The city of Atlanta launched work on a new, 12-stop downtown streetcar line Wednesday — and officials disclosed that the project’s estimated price tag has risen by more than $12 million. Much of that increase is paid for by outside grants.

Local and federal leaders at a kickoff event said the money will be well-spent, despite critics’ doubts that ridership will justify the costs.

“This is about jobs,” said Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation. “This is about creating an economic corridor. … This will be a magnet for tourism.”

Critics, however, say the project will not draw enough traffic to justify its cost.

Reid: Senate will not pass a budget this year - Ha! Who needs a budget, if they have control over all of the other people’s money?

“We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it,” Reid said, according to The Hill.

“We Are Blessed To Have Someone Of Barack’s Intellectual Caliber”… - 

“Since the day that I’ve met my husband, I’ve watched him work tirelessly to try make a difference in other people’s lives. He does that because for him, all of this is all very personal. You know Barack’s story,” the first lady said. “Barack and I both watched our families work hard to make ends meet.”

“That has been the direction of his choices through out his life,” Obama said. “How can he use his blessings and his gifts to help as many people as possible.”

“We are blessed to have someone not just of his intellectual caliber but with such a strong grounding of values that all of us identify with — these basic American values that have made our country great and will continue to make us the strongest country in the world,” the first lady said.

 What If Barack Obama And Paul Krugman Ran A Business? - 

This winter has brought a useful tutorial on capitalism courtesy of the media, the Democratic party and President Obama. They have illustrated for us how the depredations of profit-seekers crush American aspirations.

Parents Snared in $100 Billion College Debt Trap Risk Retirement - 

Terry Williams borrowed about $7,000 to earn a degree from Spelman College 38 years ago. For her youngest child, a sophomore at Belmont University in Nashville, she will take on almost $40,000 in parental loans.

Bloomberg warns of budget deficits in coming years - Another one realizes that you cannot spend indefinitely more than you take in…

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says his budget plan for the coming fiscal year has closed a $2 billion budget gap. But he says the city is facing deficits in following years.

Ontario faces decade of deficits - Time to implement Obama-care in Canada. According to our White House, Obama-care will reduce the cost of healthcare …

And the Ottawa-based economic think-tank says the province will need to rein in health-care cost increases if it wants to balance the books by 2022.

Wall Street Baffled by Slowing Economy, Low Yields: Trader - “Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.

Prepare for More Money Printing: Analyst – “That cash injection will have the normal inflationary knock-on impact, driving back up commodities, supporting industrial stocks, dragging the financials up with them… I think it’s all about the monetary injection trade,” Maughn told CNBC. Yeah, driving inflation up is the new normal. But can the FEDs control it? I doubt it. Or maybe the goal is to collapse the whole system?

Horror for US Economy as Data Falls off Cliff – “It seems that almost every bit of data about the health of the US economy has disappointed expectations recently…”. Who in their right mind expected different results from the negatives we got lately?

150 Economists Back US Republicans in Debt Fight – More than 150 economists back U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner’s call to match any increase in the debt limit with spending cuts of equal size, according to a letter released by the Republican leader’s office Wednesday.

How housing could rebound — in 2025 – Ready to be Depressed?

Why the bulls are set up for a fall in June – Commentary: The end of quantitative easing matters a lot

‘Sugar High That Has Buoyed US Economy Is Wearing Out’ - The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it

77,000 federal workers paid more than governors – Government salaries put under scrutiny

$100,000 pension club of public retirees in California is booming – Almost 9,000 retirees in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System receive at least $100,000 in annual benefits, more than quadruple the number getting that much during 2005, according to a Bee review of CalPERS data.

Obama’s Cloud Economy

Obama Administration Throws Support Behind World Tax Organization - Guided by a radical theory know as Capital Export Neutrality, the OECD wants to impose global tax rules that would prevent taxpayers from ever having the ability to benefit from better tax law in other jurisdictions. This is why, for instance, the international bureaucrats are anxious to undermine national tax laws – such as America’s favorable treatment of bank deposits from overseas – that enable people to escape onerous tax regimes.

Do We Deserve Our Fate? – The combined unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare has reached nearly $107 trillion in today’s dollars. That is about seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the national debt. Those entitlement programs, along with others, account for nearly 60 percent of federal spending.

Obama Recovery Still Feeble After Two Years - Without a lot of fanfare, the Obama economic recovery officially turned 2 this month. Anyone think we’re better off than we were two years ago?

Obama’s Commerce Nominee: Cap and Trade Good for ‘Hiding’ Carbon Taxes – John Bryson, President Obama’s nominee to head the Commerce Department, told a University of California Berkeley audience in 2010 that a cap and trade system was a good way to hide a carbon tax from the public.

New York Times Pushes Tornadoes As Economic Stimulus – Are deadly tornadoes really the best “stimulus” to be hoped for from the Obama White House, or is the New York Times just desperately looking for economics green shoots as the 2012 presidential elections approach? Crisis are good? Ask Japan….

Japan nuclear crisis may cost up to 20 trillion yen - Japan will have to spend up to 20 trillion yen (245 billion dollars) over the next decade coping with the aftermath of the ongoing nuclear crisis at a damaged nuclear power station, a private think tank said Tuesday.

Is the Slow Economic Data Due to Japan or Something Deeper? - Within the investment community there is a debate over whether the slowdown is a temporary side-effect from the massive earthquake in Japan back in March, or part of a broader global economic slowdown.

Inflation Won’t Wait For The Banks -It is the existence of newly created money that hastens the dollar’s decline.

Insider Trading Rules That Don’t Apply To Congress - You want strict ethics rules? Start at the top — with the shining example of the noble knights of the House of Representatives, which bans all gifts from lobbyists and imposes a $50 limit on gifts from anyone else

Labor Secretary: ‘There are jobs out there’ – I am not an economist. I believe that numbers only tell you part of the story. I deal with real people, and I know that the only true replacement for a job lost, is a new job that pays good wages. I’m committed to making that a reality for anyone who wants a job. Here is the problem she is not an economist – she is another career politician, another community organizer. Mrs Solis, if you are so committed to find people jobs, e-mail me, I am looking for a job!

Recession Concerns Ease on August Jobs Data – There are so many asinine comments in this  article made by economists..LOL

White House considering emergency economic stimuli – Administration officials have been huddling almost continuously during the past week, brainstorming for ideas that would boost employment without hiking the massive federal deficit. Wait! I thought we were doing better than expected, there are jobs out there and recession concerns are easing…No?

Food Stamps Went to Record 41.3 Million in June, USDA Says – The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 41.3 million in June as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government said. If there are jobs out there, why so many people need food stamps?

Commercial Real Estate Continued to Struggle in 2nd Quarter – Although there was some improvement in residential mortgage delinquencies during the second quarter, commercial mortgages continued to have trouble. If there are jobs out there, why the commercial buildings are empty and struggle to pay their bills?

Heavy in dollars, China warns of depreciation – “Once a reserve currency’s value becomes unstable, there will be quite large depreciation risks for assets” . It could  not happen to the dollar…could it? LOL

Obama adviser Summers to visit China September 4 – Many U.S. lawmakers say China holds the yuan at unfairly low levels against the dollar, costing American jobs by making Chinese exports to the United States cheaper and U.S. sales to China more expensive. What we are going to do about it? There is no political will to punish China. You think the corporations want the yuan to float free against the other currencies? No! The corporations are making billions of dollars because the yuan is unfairly low…

…So someone criticized me for my post System Meltdown

I do not know why, but I am guessing, because of my lack of faith in the system and my statement:

“It has started  - the  repeat of 2008 crash, but this time bigger and worst…the international financial system collapse has began…”

I want to make clear, that what I write here is just my opinion and you should not take it as a news.

I encourage you to go and do research and analysis for yourselves.

And here are the news…

Britain rejects Eurozone bailout fund

May 9 (ABC News) –European Union finance ministers meeting to consider ways to prevent the Greek debt crisis from spreading across Europe have hit a roadblock, with Britain announcing they will refuse to underwrite a bailout fund worth some $60 billion.

EU Preps $645 Billion Fund to Fight ‘Wolfpack,’ Debt Crisis

May 10 (Bloomberg) –European Union finance ministers moved toward agreement on an unprecedented loan package worth at least $645 billion to prevent Greece’s fiscal woes from triggering a broader sovereign-debt crisis and shattering confidence in the euro

Bank Funding Crunch Deepens as Swap Rates Soar: Credit Markets

May 10 (Bloomberg) – Europe’s government debt crisis is starting to infect the bank funding system, driving borrowing costs higher from Asia to the U.S. and threatening to slow the global economic recovery.

Now since you have read the news I will just add that I posted System Meltdown on May 6

Oh yeah, here is one more news….Conservatives in Germany Suffer Defeat at Polls

May 9 (The New York Post) –A wide majority of Germans had opposed bailing out the heavily indebted Greek government, but Mrs. Merkel pushed Germany’s part of the $140 billion rescue package through Parliament last week.

And my prediction in January 2009 – Is EU going to break up, and repost in February 2010 with link to my comments at “Econompicdata” so you can verify that I actually talked about the  coming  EU turmoil on January 2009 ( econompicdata is not my blog so I cannot control the  post dates and comments)

From MineWeb

ShadowStats’ John Williams explains why the U.S. is in a depression and predicts a “Hyper-Inflationary Great Depression”. Interview with The Gold Report

VANCOUVER, BC -

The Gold Report: John, last December you stated, “The U.S. economic and systemic crisis of the past of the past two years are just precursors to a great collapse,” or what you call a “hyper-inflationary great depression.” Is this prediction unique to the U.S., or do you feel that other economies face the same fate?

John Williams: The hyper-inflationary portion largely will be unique to the U.S. If the U.S. falls into a great depression, there’s no way the rest of the world cannot have some negative economic impact.

TGR: How will the United States’ decreased economic power impact global economies? Will the rest of the world survive?

JW: People will find to their happy surprise that they’ll be able to survive. Most businesses are pretty creative. The thing is, the U.S. economic activity accounts for roughly half that of the globe. There’s no way that the U.S. economy can turn down severely without there being an equivalent, at least a parallel downturn outside the U.S. with its major trading partners.

When I talk about a great depression in the United States, it is coincident with a hyper-inflation. We’re already in the deepest and longest economic contraction seen since the Great Depression. If you look at the timing as set by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is the arbiter of U.S. recessions, as to whether or not we have one, they’ve refused to call an end to this one, so far. But assuming you called an end to it back in the middle of 2009, it would still be the longest recession seen since the first down-leg of the Great Depression.

In terms of depth, year-to-year decline in the gross domestic product, or GDP, as reported in the third quarter of 2009, was the steepest annual decline ever reported in that series, which goes back to the late ’40s on a quarterly basis. Other than for the shutdown of war production at the end of World War II, which usually is not counted as a normal business cycle, the full annual decline in 2009 GDP was the deepest since the Great Depression. There’s strong evidence that we’re going to see an intensified downturn ahead, but it won’t become a great depression until a hyper-inflation kicks in. That is because hyper-inflation will be very disruptive to the normal flow of commerce and will take you to really low levels of activity that we haven’t seen probably in the history of the Republic.

Let me define what I mean by depression and great depression, because there’s no formal definition out there that matches the common expectation. Before World War II, economic downturns commonly were referred to as depressions. If you drew a graph of the level of activity in a depression over time, it would show a dip in the economy, and you’d go down and then up. The down part was referred to as recession and the up part as recovery. The Great Depression was one that was so severe that in the post-World War II era, those looking at economic cycles tried to come up with a euphemism for “depression.” They didn’t want to create the image of or remind people of the 1930s. Basically, they called economic downturns recessions, and most people think of a depression now as a severe recession.

I’ve talked with people in the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Bureau of Economic Research in terms of developing a formal depression definition. The traditional definition of recession-that of two consecutive quarters of inflation-adjusted contraction in GDP-still is a solid one, despite recent refinements. Although there’s no official consensus on this, generally, a depression would be considered a recession where peak-to-trough contraction in the economy was more than 10%; a great depression would be a recession where the peak-to-trough contraction was more than 25%.

We’re borderline depression in terms of where we’re going to be here before I think the hyper-inflation kicks in. You’ve certainly seen depression-like numbers in things such as retail sales, industrial production and new orders for durable goods, where you’re down more than 10% from peak-to-trough. In terms of housing, you’re down more than 75%, and that certainly would be in the great depression category. With hyper-inflation, you have disruption to the normal flow of commerce and that will slow things down very remarkably from where we are now.

TGR: After a period of recession, isn’t inflation considered a good sign?

Read the rest of this entry »

Administration to Tea Parties: We’re on Your Side – Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in an interview Sunday, when asked about the Tea Party protests, that the Obama administration is paying more attention to the deficit than the Bush administration did.

Goldman Sachs set to pay £3.5bn in bonuses - GOLDMAN SACHS, the world’s biggest investment bank that is now assailed by accusations of fraud, is poised to reignite controversy over bankers’ bonuses by paying its staff more than £3.5 billion for just three months’ work.

Next bubble: $600 trillion? – Cities, states, universities could sink from monster derivatives meltdown (I don’t know about this one)

Obama-Dodd financial bill would further enrich Goldman Sachs – “That act—paying off the creditors when the government takes over a failing firm—is a bailout. It doesn’t matter that the management lose their jobs, or that the shareholders get nothing. When the creditors are aware that they will get a better deal with the failure of a large company than they will get with a small one that goes the ordinary route to bankruptcy, that is a bailout.”

Airlines Seek Bailout From EU For Ash Crisis, British Airways Losing $30 Million Per Day - British Airways said airlines have asked the EU for financial compensation for the closure of airspace

White House Caught Altering Stimulus Baseline Projection by 7 Million Jobs – The number of jobs in the U.S. is currently 129.7 million.  So to justify the Administration’s current claimof 2.8 million jobs “created or saved” by stimulus, they need to also claim that without that stimulus there would be only 126.9 million jobs.  That’s exactly what they do…

First, define the problem – On financial reform, no one really agrees about anything

The Discount Rate Mismatch – . . . or, how finance is like quantum mechanics.

Doctors pursue House, Senate seats – Thanks to the health care reform….Forty-seven physicians — 41 Republicans and six Democrats— are running for the House or Senate this year, three times the number of doctors serving in Congress today

‘Basically an Optimist’—Still – The Nobel economist says the health-care bill will cause serious damage, but that the American people can be trusted to vote for limited government in November.

The Mother of All Jobless Recoveries – This post is about something sad, but it makes its point with a numbered list. Easy enough, right? Right. So keep reading

Universities encourage students to enroll in food stamp program – About 20,000 people sign up for food stamps every day, and college students across the country are the newest demographic being encouraged to enlist. TCE was wondering why so many Americans are feeling, they are entitled to so many things. Here lays the answer…They are taught to think that way, that they can get something for nothing…from the government, their fair share…

DANA PERINO: Where’s the Outrage Over What Just Happened to Student Loans? – Competition and choice have been taken away in the student loan market. If the tables were turned, Democrats would be crying foul and demanding an ethics investigation. The American people deserve to know what happened.

Capping Insurance Rates: Engineered Chaos - Governmental price controls never work.

Did the Federal Government Make Money Bailing Out Citigroup? – The Washington Post is anxious to tell its readers that the government made a profit on its bailout of Citigroup. This claim gives a whole new meaning to the notion of “profit.” The government gave enormous amounts of money to Citigroup through various direct and indirect channels. It is only getting a portion of this money back in its “profits,” the rest is going to Citigroup’s shareholders (e.g. Robert Rubin) and its millionaire executives who are highly skilled at getting the government to hand them money.

Trade to expand by 9.5% in 2010 after a dismal 2009, WTO reports – After the sharpest decline in more than 70 years, world trade is set to rebound in 2010 by growing at 9.5%, according to WTO economists. Yeah? LOL. Probably they meant to say: “China’s export to expand by 9.5% in 2010″

‘Even War Is Good for Economic Growth’ - Economist and globalization critic Noreena Hertz was already warning about overpowerful banks, unfettered greed and unregulated markets way back in 2001. Speaking to SPIEGEL ONLINE, she explains the limits of focusing on GDP and why capitalism is at a turning point. Interesting article

The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates – By popular demand, a comprehensive list of expired Obama statements…

Young and healthy may see premiums rise 17 percent under Obamacare – What could go wrong? Young people already foot the bill for Social Security and Medicare and that’s working out fine, right?

VAT: Fuel For The Full-Entitlement State – As the night follows the day, the VAT cometh. With the passage of ObamaCare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.

Aetna’s Ron Williams on Health Care: What to Expect – Nixon couldn’t do it. Clinton couldn’t do it. But on Mar. 23, after decades of debate, lobbying, and political wrangling, Barack Obama signed health reform into law. What does this new mandate mean for individuals, companies, and the health-care industry? On Mar. 24, I talked with one of the executives on the firing line, Chairman and CEO Ron Williams of Aetna, which provides health-insurance benefits to more than 36 million Americans.

Prelude to a Media Victory Lap: Santelli Warns Not to Buy Hype of Upcoming Jobs Data - With March unemployment data to be released April 2, some are anticipating what potentially lower jobless numbers will all mean for the financial markets and the economy as a whole. However, that data will come with the caveat that it will be misleading because it will include temporary jobs driven by hiring for the 2010 census.

Virginia’s ‘Tax Me More Fund’ is a big flop – Those complaining the most loudly about spending “cuts” in Richmond could put their own money where their mouth was and make a voluntary contribution to the state. Total collected: $1,500…

Funny clip of the day