Why is it a recession rather than the second Great Depression?

[maxx]

How are we protecting ourselves from future crisis and disasters. It seems that we're putting all our eggs into one basket, in that we're already spending too much of our current resources on one problem [[thank God BP is cleaning up after itself).

BP is planning on tax credits in both the U.S. and the U.K.. And it looks like they've limited the payouts to $20 B. Still they could have declared bankruptcy, I guess, and just walked away.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bp-...k=MW_news_stmp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...clean-up-costs

[Jimaz]

The Geography of a Recession

[Papasito]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38768775...on_the_economy

The number of people applying for unemployment benefits reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November.
It was the third straight week that first-time jobless claims rose. The upward trend suggests the private sector may report a net loss of jobs in August for the first time this year.
Initial claims rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Homebuilders and other construction firms are laying off more workers as the housing sector slumps after the expiration of a popular homebuyers' tax credit. State and local governments are also cutting jobs to close large budget gaps.
"The rise in initial jobless claims over the past three weeks makes it difficult to maintain confidence in the recovery and suggests the labor market is backtracking more than we first expected," Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody's Analytics, wrote in a note to clients.

Bush's fault?
Obama's recovery is failing, and this time, it's going to be hard to blame it on a man who's been out of office for a year and a half.
Maybe it's time to make fixing the economy important again, Mr. Obama, because the double-dip recession is looking more and more like a reality.

[maxx]

video: Obama says "Job Loss" "keeps him up at night"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540...&snid=18424776
Maybe that happens somewhere after the parties at night and the golfing in the morning?

Cut the crap.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politic...bama18.article
"President Obama has spent all or part of 65 days on vacation, including days at Camp David. At this point in his tenure, George W. Bush had logged 120 days. That included 13 trips to his Texas ranch..."

I know, I know. W was a moron and his absence from Washington was not noticed, certainly not by the real people in charge.

[Zacha341]

I never voted for "W" but the 'Blame Bush' thing is starting to get old as time goes on. Some businesses are sluggish to borrow [[banks aren't lending) and hire [[and I am not talking about the giant mega 'evil' corporate empires). I'm speaking of smaller business of less then 100 employees... perhaps they know more federal punishment is coming... so they are choosing to do more with less employees.......

Some hope:
http://www.mlive.com/michigan-job-se...bill_to_p.html

Michigan jobless rate falls for fourth consecutive month
Even with gradual decline, weakness in job growth persists

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...secutive-month

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38768775...on_the_economy

Bush's fault?
Obama's recovery is failing, and this time, it's going to be hard to blame it on a man who's been out of office for a year and a half.
Maybe it's time to make fixing the economy important again, Mr. Obama, because the double-dip recession is looking more and more like a reality.

[maxx]

Zacha: I never voted for "W" but the 'Blame Bush' thing is starting to get old as time goes on.

maxx: The Reaganites give Reagan credit for the economy that followed his admin. But the Republicans have been trying to fob off the present economy on Obama since he entered office.
The praise Reagan thing is old. This celebration is close to a canonization.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/62471

[Papasito]

Is another market crash coming?

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...aspx?GT1=33002

I've noticed the Media pounding hard to create doom and gloom for an impending double dip recession slash stock market collapse. I guess that would make fun news for them to report on.

However, for the rest of us, it means disaster.
It would be nice if the Media did something positive for once, and help stabilize people's fears rather than thrive on swelling them..

[mjs]

Their job is to report the news as it it, not cheerlead or doom and gloom. Watch a little Closing Bell on CNBC where they let both sides argue it out. Argument is the only true path to the truth.

[DetroitDad]

"Look at these two graphs because they tell you the fundamental problem in America today:

We have very low capacity utilization [[75%) and very high unemployment [[10%).

That is, we have factories sitting idle for lack of workers – low capacity utilization. At the same time we have workers sitting idle for lack of factories – high unemployment.

There are machines waiting to be worked and people waiting to work them but they are not getting together. The labor market is failing to clear.

This is a fucking disaster.

Excuse my language, but you have to get that this is a big deal. This is not a big deal like the GOP doesn’t appreciate public goods. Or, Democrats don’t understand incentives. Or some other such second order debate that could reasonably concern us in different times.

This is a failure of our basic institutions of production..."

More at: http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/09/07/rome-is-burning/

[firstandten]

Once people realize supply-side economics is flawed and tax cuts doesn't fix everything then the real problem of lack of demand can be addressed in such a way that jobs can be created.

I say again it took a long time for this to happen, things aren't going to change overnight or in a year, five years maybe.

[maxx]

This is a failure of our basic institutions of production...

We don't have much production going on. A lot has been outsourced. That's a structural change in our economy.

[DetroitDad]

Why the next twenty years will be very different from the past twenty years

I recently went through Chris Martenson's Crash Course. The video series has really helped me convey my theories and observations. My wife and family now agrees with me [[I usually just try to take a look from the opposing side, so this is rare). I recommend these very interesting and informative videos, the first of which is posted below. The rest of the videos can be found by clicking here.

I strongly recommend them if you are interested in our economy.

[wolverine]

Well, looks like the unemployment rate here in the Chicagoland area dropped over a percent this fall between September and November and 2% total since 2009 with 6 consecutive months of job growth and continuing decline in unemployment. If the trend keeps up we could reach pre-recession levels by maybe the end of 2011. In 2005, the unemployment rate was around 2-2.5% I imagine reaching that number is going to take some more time. In the building and construction industry we are starting to see all the pent-up demand beginning to break. Let's hope it continues. Some contractors are even declining bid invitations for work.

[Jimaz]

The other day I noticed two new help wanted signs for the first time in years. One was at an auto mechanic the other was for security guards.

Hang in there!

[maxx]

Thanks for the link to Chris Martenson's Crash Course, Detroit Dad. The fun begins around Chapter 10, but the real info starts with the chapter on fuzzy numbers.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashc...-fuzzy-numbers

"...
Under Kennedy, who disliked high unemployment numbers, a new classification was developed that scrubbed so-called ‘discouraged workers’ from the headline data, causing unemployment figures to drop.
Johnson created the “unified budget” that we currently enjoy, which rolls surplus Social Security funds into the general budget, where they are spent but then not reported as part of the deficit you read about.
Richard Nixon bequeathed us the so-called “core inflation” measure, which strips out food and fuel, which, as Barry Ritholtz says, is like reporting inflation ex-inflation, while it was Bill Clinton who left us with the current tangled statistical morass that is now our official method of inflation measurement.
At every turn, a new way of measuring and reporting was derived that invariably served to make things seem a bit rosier than they actually were...

If you were to measure inflation, you’d probably track the cost of a basket of goods from one year to the next, subtract the two, and measure the difference. And your method would, in fact, be the way inflation was officially measured right on up through the early 1980s. But in 1996, Clinton implemented the Boskin Commission findings, which now have us measuring inflation using three oddities: substitution, weighting, and hedonics. To begin with this list, we no longer simply measure the cost of goods and services from one year to the next, because of something called the 'substitution effect.' Thanks to the Boskin Commission, it is now assumed that when the price of something rises, people will switch to something cheaper. So any time, say, that the price of salmon goes up too much, it is removed from the basket of goods and substituted with something cheaper, like hot dogs. By this methodology, the BLS says that food costs rose 4.1% from 2007 to 2008.
However according to the Farm Bureau, which does not do this and simply tracks the exact same shopping basket of thirty goods from one year to the next, food prices rose 11.3% over the past year, compared to the BLS which says they only rose 4.1%. That’s a huge difference. In my household, our experience is better matched by the Farm Bureau.
One impact of using substitution is that our measure of inflation no longer measures the cost of living, but the cost of survival..."

[Detroitej72]

Why is it a recession rather than the second Great Depression?

Because Republican's have better spin doctors, and AM radio!

Instead of admitting the Republican Recession began around 2005, they have mastered the art of deception, and have fooled the public sheep to think this climate began at the same time that President Obama was sworn into office.

P.S. Ignorance indoctrinates ignorance...

[maxx]

All the Devils Are Here
http://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are...9748738&sr=1-1

"...Among the devils you'll meet in vivid detail:

• Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, who dreamed of spreading homeownership to the masses, only to succumb to the peer pressure-and the outsized profits-of the sleaziest subprime lending.

• Roland Arnall, a respected philanthropist and diplomat, who made his fortune building Ameriquest, a subprime lending empire that relied on blatantly deceptive lending practices.

• Hank Greenberg, who built AIG into a Rube Goldberg contraption with an undeserved triple-A rating, and who ran it so tightly that he was the only one who knew where all the bodies were buried.

• Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, aloof and suspicious, who suffered from "Goldman envy" and drove a proud old firm into the ground by promoting cronies and pushing out his smartest lieutenants.

• Lloyd Blankfein, who helped turn Goldman Sachs from a culture that famously put clients first to one that made clients secondary to its own bottom line.

• Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who [[like his predecessors) bullied regulators into submission and let his firm drift away from its original, noble mission.

• Brian Clarkson of Moody's, who aggressively pushed to increase his rating agency's market share and stock price, at the cost of its integrity.

• Alan Greenspan, the legendary maestro of the Federal Reserve, who ignored the evidence of a growing housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the lending practices that ultimately brought down Wall Street-and inflicted enormous pain on the country..."

[DetroitDad]

Toyota tells U.S. plants 'prepare to shut down'

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/23/auto...ex.htm?iid=RNM

Highlights:

-All 13 of Toyota's factories in the United States, Canada and Mexico should be prepared for shutdowns.

-Toyota employs 25,000 manufacturing and R&D workers in North America, and tends to continue to pay workers during shutdowns.

-Toyota's plans signal that this parts issue could be just the beginning of an industry-wide problem.

-Suppliers in other countries could face problems if they have suppliers in Japan.

[firstandten]

In an interesting Newsweek article about American Ignorance, it was stated that the current conflict over government spending illustrates this countries growing ignorance.

" Every economist knows how to deal with the debt: Cost saving reforms to big ticket entitlement programs; cuts to our bloated defense budget; and [[if growth remains slows) tax reforms designed to refill our depleted revenue coffers. Even though 71 percent of voters want smaller government , vast majorities oppose cuts to Medicare [[81%) and Medicaid [[70%)"

It goes on to say that Americans want to cut foreign aid from 27 percent of the budget to 13 percent however the real number is under 1 percent [[ must have got those numbers from right wing talk radio).

Americans want to slash waste but they don't know what constitutes waste or how much of the budget is really waste.

The point is that as a people we have gotten so ignorant of how government works it actually threathens our democratic way of life.

[Bigb23]

I hate to pick on the small guy - but I'm one too.

I'm just a guy trying to survive in this screwed economy. But where did "replace" trump "repair" ? Why does every contractor want to replace a whole furnace ?
I've contacted half a dozen contractors to rebuild a small blower unit and motor. Just one hour on a benchtop. The one person to reply say's it will cost me $100 an hour. I drop it off with all the parts, and pick it up again. Let's see, parts,[[done), legwork,[[done), calls,[[done), explaination on what has to be done, from me, free. Cost - $ 100 / dollars an hour. For an estimate, not only the repair. You are not a lawyer, you are a screwdriver with an extra pair of hands. I had to sell all my tools and boxes to make rent, a few months ago, $3000 for $300. More ammo for you.
We all have to make a buck, I just want to find an honest guy to do a simple repair.
I'll do it myself. You said, you've been doing this for fifteen years - I wanted, [[to shout), I've been doing it for forty years. Just not certified like you. Thanks for nothing - and quit calling yourself a REPAIR man.

There is NO repair anymore. That passed with your grandfather. Only a complete furnace replacement needed. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. AAAARRRRRGGGGGGG.



Automatically parse links in text - thank god, I haven't parsed in ages. Any parsers out there?

I'm trying to contact all parsers, I'm pretty sure I parsed around 1970 in Caseville one night on the beach, but I'm not sure. Great when it happened, Blackfoot woman,went to Cal. with you, Hazy time. Brian the Dwarf, you were a great friend, along with Ray. Bay City Ya'll.

[firstandten]

I hate to pick on the small guy - but I'm one too.

I'm just a guy trying to survive in this screwed economy. But where did "replace" trump "repair" ? Why does every contractor want to replace a whole furnace ?

I know how you feel.

one of the issues with manufacturing in this economy has been the concept of planned obsolescence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

While this concept can be irritating to consumers it serves an important function in our economy. We are making and competing worldwide with products that have a long product life.
As much as we want to have repairs we need to do more replacing.

However with no jobs this puts us into a classic catch-22.