Where is the US economy headed?

winter in New England. It is going to get cold there.
End of rant.

I presume that the whole world will freeze because of the criminal system

it seems that americans (and canadians , too) have started to cut back on their driving (our city buses have never had a higher load factor) .


see :
OIL FUTURES FALL !

The median home price here has dropped to $225,000 from $400,000-plus in just two years. "$300,000 row houses are selling for less than half that," Mr Khan says. "Amazingly there are properties here, 30 miles from Washington, for under $100,000." The new trend does not mean the end of the US housing crisis, or even the beginning of the end. But it's a sign that bad times, like good times, do not last for ever.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-ominous-sound-of-jingle-mail-the-death-of-the-american-suburbs-884251.html

The feds held the interest rates "steady," but what for? Interest rates isn't the influence of our economy, past. present or future. It's the cost of fuel and food, dummy! Credit is so tight, many with good credit do not qualify to buy a home, and those who didn't have good credit bought homes in the subprime market. What has interest rates done to fix that?

Millions are losing their homes, and the best guesstimate for this year is 2.5 million.

Many are still paying 20 percent on their credit cards; what has interest rates done for them?

The feds are bailing out all those banks with cash problems. What has interest rates done for them?

It's all a shell game.

life is a game in general.


some people cheat, and some people hold all the good cards, and some people are just lucky.

The so-called stimulus package was a boondoggle with a longer lasting negative effect than if they refrained from this give-away program. Our government doesn't understand good financial management or are making the right decisions to help our economy. Their bailout of banks and mortgage companies are the wrong thing to do; all they've done is rewarded incompetence.

The only long-term benefit for our country is a public works program that begins to maintain and upgrade our roads, bridges, communication system, and schools. It's called "jobs."
******************
July retail sales struggle as tax rebate cash ends

By Nicole Maestri 29 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp, posted disappointing July sales results on Thursday as shoppers ran out of extra tax rebate cash, damping hopes for the current back-to-school shopping season.

The sales results, along with cautious outlooks for August, left little hope for any lasting boost from tax rebate checks to prop up consumers headed into the back half of the year and an all-important December holiday season.

"The stimulus (checks) really had a marginal effect at best and it has run its course and there's no carry-through," said Retail Metrics President Ken Perkins. "It's difficult to see where some sort of boost in spending is going to come from."

Then why are the dems proposing another round of stimulus checks?

The following is more about where we have been economically. It is a solid argument why we must keep McSame out of the big job.


ECONOMY
Bushonomics

A new Center for American Progress report released today -- Understanding Bushonomics: How We Got Into This Mess In the First Place -- documents "the extraordinary transfer of wealth that took place between ordinary households and the extremely well-to-do and the effort by this administration to address the consequences of that problem without addressing the root cause." Senior Fellow Scott Lilly argues that while the "economy did in fact grow at a reasonably strong pace through most of the Bush presidency" and "the hourly productivity of American workers" increased by "more than 19 percent," average Americans did not reap the benefits of economic expansion. Instead, President Bush's economic policies redistributed wealth to the richest Americans and left the majority with stagnating wages and declining household incomes. The transfer "drained the American consumer of the resources needed to keep the economy humming" and led the administration to stimulate the economy by expanding credit -- an action that only weakened "our long term capacity for growth," he concludes.

WEALTH GOES TO THE RICH: The Bush administration directed its economic policies and the benefits of economic growth towards a narrow segment of the population, the wealthiest Americans. Looking at the effects of the first three Bush tax cuts, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that "the percentage by which the effective tax rate was cut for high-income families was nearly twice the rate cut for those in the middle of the income spectrum." Meanwhile, the administration's failure to raise the minimum wage coupled with its poor enforcement of federal wage and hour laws, trade agreements, and union rights further undermined the economic security of middle and lower-income Americans. Consequently, between 2000 and 2006, "those among the top 10 percent of all households on average increased their income by about 2 percent, while those in the bottom 90 percent lost more than 4 percent." The "biggest beneficiaries of U.S. economic growth that occurred between 2000 and 2006 were U.S. corporations," the report concludes. While corporate profits grew "at a little less than two-thirds the growth rate of the gross domestic product" during the second half of the 20th century, between 2000 and 2006, "corporate profits grew nearly four times as fast as GDP," increasing by an estimated 66 percent.

NO TRICKLE DOWN: The newfound prosperity of the top 10 percent of families, "which accounted for 95.3 percent of the nation's income growth between 2002 and 2006," did not trickle down the economic spectrum, and left most Americans incapable of absorbing the rising output of consumer products. Recognizing the precarious condition of the U.S. consumer, corporations retained their extra profits, invested little in new commercial structures such as factories and office buildings, bought back their own stock, and "increased dividends rather than expand capacity." High-income individuals absorbed some of the extra output by consuming luxury items, but most of their "increased income went to savings rather than consumption," Lilly writes.

A POOR FIX FOR DEMAND: With families unable to absorb the extra production, the Bush administration tried to keep the economy growing by ordering the Federal Reserve to drastically lower the Reserve's Discount Rate, "the interest rate charged by the Federal Reserve to member institutions for short-term lending." By 2002, the Fed Reserve Discount Rate dropped to 0.75 percent and "the dramatic reduction in the cost of money to member banks began a frenzy of economic activity." The biggest effect was in-home mortgage refinancing. "Extremely low interest rates...made it possible for hard-pressed consumers to maintain and even improve their living standards by taking equity out of their homes," Lilly notes. But "the dramatic expansion of credit created excessive debt and distorted the price of housing. It also weakened the dollar, pushing up oil prices."

--americanprogressaction.org

Advocate, Good summary on Bushonomics, but the conservatives will continue to blame Clinton for the mess we're now in. They never learned to take responsibility for anything. Oh, and BTW, they also blame the last two years of the "democratic" congress. They still don't know that Bush has been the spend and no tax president that created the largest deficit this country has ever seen.

Here are my views but in perfect English so that some of you can understand.


"The United States won't survive for long with negative savings rates. The United States is poised to lose a possession for which there's no German translation: "exorbitant privilege," the privilege of being allowed to live permanently above its means while the rest of the world is stuck in the role of financing this privilege.

http://watchingamerica.com/News/3360/socialism-for-the-rich/

Rama, You got that spot on! Our country has been living on credit for too long, but especially during Bush's regime took over the white house. Most people still don't realize it, but our economy "was" made up by consumer spending with money that wasn't even earned - or with future earnings, and from the equity in their homes - through more credit. Since our economy is primarily based on consumer spending (about 75%), the future economic outlook is already a far gone conclusion; no more money to borrow and spend; BROKE/BANKRUPT.

so our economy is like a pus filled tumor, and it needs cleansing?

But a clean decent economy.

" .
The United States won't survive for long with negative savings rates. The United States is poised to lose a possession for which there's no German translation: "exorbitant privilege," the privilege of being allowed to live permanently above its means while the rest of the world is stuck in the role of financing this privilege.

This privilege has influenced economic thinking in the U.S.A. Only those who enjoy such privilege come quickly to the conclusion that deficits of all kinds are unimportant or that bubbles are of no concern. U.S. economic policy and its creators are now confronted with a world of finite resources in which one can't spend the same dollar twice. In this world, the dollar is no longer so almighty that the U.S.A. can do and act as it pleases.

In other words, as far as economic policy goes, America will soon start looking noticeably more German.

http://watchingamerica.com/News/3360/socialism-for-the-rich/

i think that when our economy , downsizes? or a better word, "condesnes" and gets rid of the useless garbage most of us spend money on is going to be a good thing.

people might die, medical care might become unobtainable for some, but in the end i think we will be more self sufficient and even more importantly, efficient.

That is very frank, and very true. I think there is a chance that Obama could be the right doctor to operate on it.

My humble request to the American citizens.
Let us all make the bitter butter( world) a better one.
Consume according to your needs.
Spend not too much because of the pressure of the advertisers.

Help the neighbour and share the joy.
It is too late to recover decency.

same her, i hate when people complain about himflip flopping, id hate it even more if he didnt listen to what we wanted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080803415.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008080900527&pos=

hawkeye, Good find; it spells out the current crisis like it is, but the unfortunate fact is that most Americans are immune from understanding the consequences of our money system.

Will we get that "cleansing" from a Black House?