The US Economy

If this link shows "employment" rates, my ability to read English has just gone down the drain.

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

0 Replies

CI, it appears that A2K is having a problem with redirecting to links with very long URLs. The link works if you copy&paste it to the address window, then hit "return". As for CI's link, you have to check the first box on the list his link points to. The BLS homepage makes it difficult to link to its actual data for some reason.

Hope that helped.

0 Replies

I've always understood the following quote to be factual, "So what has happened? What has happened is that, for a number of different reasons, a lot of people have given up looking for work."

0 Replies

Actually, the BLS is more specific than "a lot of people". From Timber's link, you can find (pretty far down the list) a dataset on "discouraged workers". The absolute number is 287000 people for February 2001, the first full month of the Bush presidency. The latest value, May 2004, is 476000 people.

0 Replies

Personal Bankruptcy Filings Doubled In Last Decade As Consumer Debt Reached Record Levels

From the Press Release: "There was one bankruptcy filed for every 73 U.S. households during calendar year 2003, up 49 percent from the 144 U.S. households per bankruptcy filing in 1993, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Personal bankruptcies peaked in 2003, when a record 1,625,208 cases were filed, nearly double the 812,898 filings in 1993."

0 Replies

Quote:

August 4, 2004
OP-CHART
A Record of Recovery
By GEORGE P. SHULTZ

Over the course of last week, we heard a lot from the Democrats about their record of economic achievement. So let's take the advice of a Democrat of yesteryear, Al Smith, the former governor of New York. His trademark phrase was, "Let's look at the record."

These charts show the rate of change in real gross domestic product and in employment from 1990 to last June. The shaded areas show recessions. The vertical lines show when President Bill Clinton took office and when he left. Because the economy has momentum, it's useful to look carefully at the trends in evidence at the time of presidential transitions. When you look at the record, a quick summary is this: President Clinton inherited prosperity; President Clinton bequeathed recession.

The 2001 recession was short and shallow, with employment - always a lagging indicator - the last part of the economy to rebound. The employment picture has been a little puzzling since the two main surveys - one asks existing establishments how many people are on their payrolls, and the other asks people in a large sample of households whether they have jobs - show slightly different patterns. In any case, by now a third piece of the record appears clear: the recession President Clinton left behind has turned into prosperity under George W. Bush.

Thanks, Al Smith, for your good advice.

George P. Shultz, secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974 and secretary of state from 1982 to 1989, is a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

I'd say that's pretty clear. The Previous Administration inherited a robust, expanding economy, more or less capped it off, levelled it out, then drove it under; in the past 4 years, The Current Administration has more than made up the ground lost over the preceeding 8, re-establishing robust upward momentum.

Mebbe even clear enough a Democrat could understand it.

Well, prolly not. Ain't all that much all that clear to them folks most times, seems like. Look what they did to The Economy.

0 Replies

Thanks, Timber.

I saw the graph on the news today, and was hoping it would make it's way here.

The decline began in earnest during Clinton's watch, and GWB *took action* to improve it.

Greenspan said the tax cuts DID spur growth.

0 Replies

Its all Bush's fault Mr. Green

0 Replies

Timber --

For someone who has repeatedly claimed to know something about economics in general and reading graohs in particular, you are surprisingly quick to confuse levels and rates of change. What your graph shows is the change of GDP. America's GDP contracted, then grew under the both presidents Bush. It consistently grew -- for the longest time in history by the way -- under president Clinton. This is what the graph actually shows. But Mr. Shultz and you then read the graph as if it recorded the level of GDP, which it doesn't, and confidently arrive at a predictably false conclusion:

timberlandko wrote:

I'd say that's pretty clear. The Previous Administration inherited a robust, expanding economy, more or less capped it off, levelled it out, then drove it under; in the past 4 years, The Current Administration has more than made up the ground lost over the preceeding 8, re-establishing robust upward momentum.

To end on a high note, you finish by adding insult for your opponents to the injury of your fuzzy math:

timberlandko wrote:

Mebbe even clear enough a Democrat could understand it. Well, prolly not. Ain't all that much all that clear to them folks most times, seems like.

My impression from your post is that there are two possibilities. 1) You honestly can't tell a level from a rate of change, in which case your earlier claims of expertise in economics become hard to believe. 2) You do know the difference between levels and rates of change, in which case you knowingly and dishonestly sold your numbers as something they're not -- as I believe Mr. Shultz did.

Can you suggest a third possibility, and perhaps a reason to believe it?

0 Replies

No. Thomas, the point is rate of change ... growth, or lack thereof. That precisely is what defines economic expansion or contraction, after all. Mow the "Change in Employment" graph really is little more than a "pretty picture", complimentary to and congruent with the Rate of GDP Change graph becuase the indicator largely is a function of GDP performance. The previous Administration was handed an economy undergoing all but unparallelled rate-of-expansion. Under the Previous administration, rate-of-expansion fluctuated over a relatively broad range from Q4 '92 through Q2 '96, at which point rate-of-expansion levelled off, tracking in a more narrowly defined range slightly above 4% through Q1 '00, at which time rate-of-growth entered a precipitous decline, estanlishing a momentum which over the succeeding 3 quarters halved growth. The Current Administration received an economy structured, by the policies of its immediate predecessor, to decline. Decline it did into Q2 '00, through which and into Q4 of that year, despite 9/11, it troughed at very slightly negative growth, it first stabilzed, then, beginning in the latter part of that Quarter, began tracking sharply upward, regaining the rate-of-expansion that had been characteristic of the mid-through-latter '90's.

Now, I don't argue that a skyrocketing of rate-of-growth change is sustainable, but clearly, range of growth in the 4% neighborhood is sustainable, robust, and all-in-all healthy. The Current Administration restored the health of the ailing economy bequeathed to it, and has set that economy, despite 9/11 and two major military undertakings, one yet ongoing and divisive, back on the path of robust, sustainable, all-in-all healthy expansion. I would say an accomplishment of that nature reflects responsible, proactive stewardship. That is my point.

0 Replies

timberlandko wrote:

No. Thomas, the point is rate of change ... growth, or lack thereof.

Fine.

timberlandko wrote:

The previous Administration was handed an economy undergoing all but unparallelled rate-of-expansion.

... which was just recovering from a moderate recession. It's always easier to grow when you start low.

timberlandko wrote:

Under the Previous administration, rate-of-expansion fluctuated over a relatively broad range from Q4 '92 through Q2 '96, at which point rate-of-expansion levelled off, tracking in a more narrowly defined range slightly above 4% through Q1 '00,

In other words, the economy grew at decent rates during Clinton's first for years, and continued to grow strongly in the second 4 years, even though the slack from the first Bush recession had been picked up, so the level it grew from was high.

timberlandko wrote:

at which time rate-of-growth entered a precipitous decline, estanlishing a momentum which over the succeeding 3 quarters halved growth.

I'm not arguing with this. I agree the 2001 recession wasn't Bush's fault, and that it would have happened under a president Gore as well.

timberlandko wrote:

The Current Administration received an economy structured, by the policies of its immediate predecessor, to decline.

No. It received an economy that was headed towards a through in the business cycle. The structural parts were fine: Potential GDP growth at an unprecedented high (not really a Clinton accomplishment, but still a good thing.) The budget was in surplus. What "policies of its immediate predecessor" are you talking about, and what do you think was wrong with the structure of the economy, as opposed to the business cycle on January 20, 2001?

timberlandko wrote:

Decline it did into Q2 '00, through which and into Q4 of that year, despite 9/11, it troughed at very slightly negative growth, it first stabilzed, then, beginning in the latter part of that Quarter, began tracking sharply upward, regaining the rate-of-expansion that had been characteristic of the mid-through-latter '90's.

What you don't mention is that potential GDP continued to grow at a rapid rate, so even though actual GDP barely shrunk in 2001, there was a lot of slack for the economy to pick up in 2002, 2003, 2004. Same story as with the first president Bush: High growth rates are easy if you're starting from a low level compared to potential GDP.

timberlandko wrote:

I would say an accomplishment of that nature reflects responsible, proactive stewardship. That is my point.

No, it really just reflects the low level the economy was starting from. The administration has stayed persistently behind even its own expectations, as you can see by comparing the actual level of employment with the projections in the Economic Report to the president. (The image below was first published by the New York Times)

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/03/08/opinion/09KRUG.583.gif

0 Replies

Adjusted jobs added in June: 78,000

July's report: 32,000

Not nearly as good as projected but better than negative or zero.

0 Replies

Yes,
it's always a good thing when you find out that,
even though you are sinking,

you're not sinking as fast as you were a couple of minutes ago.

Confused

0 Replies

Still it's the eleventh consecutive month of job growth and the unemployment rate fell to 5.5%.

I'd rather see a steady gain than some unrealistic phenom that has to correct itself later.

0 Replies

The best thing that can be said about the July jobs report is that it could have been worse.

The question now is whether the employment situation will get worse as a result of the shock that the numbers will have on the financial markets.

Friday the markets hit new lows for the year at the same time oil kept tracking swiftly (no pun intended) toward $50 a barrel.

Can Tom Ridge try to bail out the President by crying 'wolf' again so soon? (And won't that actually be bad for our consuming economy?)

Boy, the Bushites aren't only dumb, but they're proving to be real unlucky too.

This election continues to shape up like a 1992 redux.

0 Replies

Quote:

Friday the markets hit new lows for the year at the same time oil kept tracking swiftly (no pun intended) toward $50 a barrel.

Of course, that price is directly due to oil production in Iraq being halted by the threat of terrorism. If the new government in Iraq takes out Sadr and his followers--which they need to do decisively and soon--you'll see that price drop again shortly after the Sadr threat has been eliminated. If, however, the government of Iraq lacks the conviction to do what needs to be done, we are all--globally speaking--in for a very rough ride.

0 Replies

Scrat old boy where ya been and how ya doin?

0 Replies

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

Scrat old boy where ya been and how ya doin?

Just out on work release. Doing well thanks. :wink:

0 Replies

How much per cent is the Iraq oil delivery of the total oil delivery?

(I know that Iraq was producing 1.75 million barrels a day before the South Oil Co. curtailed production, and that Iraq has enough oil available in storage tanks to continue exporting crude until production in its vast southern oil fields returns to normal.)

0 Replies

Found: OPEC produces 30 barrels daily (including the 1.5 million from Iraq).
The Russian Oil Company Yukos provides 2% of world production.

The current world production (OPEC and the rest of the world) is currently only 1,5 million barrels per day over hydrocarbons absolute demand.

0 Replies

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know