Where is the US economy headed?

We all know that all conservatives never cheat on their income tax returns, because okie implies it. Only liberals cheat; but wait; who caused this financial chaos in the first place? ummm....all those wealthy bankers who should not have to pay more taxes, because it's okay to transfer our debt to our children and grandchildren.

You get out of a depression by borrowing and spending more yet? Thats what got us here, fm. I look forward to Bush's book, it will probably be very informative, and probably better than Obama's books, which I read one of, and found little of substance in it.

I still cannot for the life of me figure out how a professional as yourself in the energy business cannot see the folly of Obama's programs, especially his energy policy?

I will not address your last post, as it was a totally uncalled for cheap shot.

The Drudge Report caption for this photo: They saved the world today:


World leaders on Thursday heralded the G20 summit as the day the world “fought back against the recession” as they put on a show of unity that lifted global markets and mapped out a new future for financial regulation.

The political cartoon:



I guess we'll eventually find out which one is right.

Yes, spending more yet to save our economy. The big difference is that the current budget actually helps Americans and the world economy vs Iraqis or others around the world who still think this financial debacle is self-correcting. They can't see the bigger loss from not doing anything. We're still losing some 600,000 jobs every month. This has to be worked on by government, and the private sector is unable to do anything this big.

I don't agree with everything Obama is doing, but he's doing more right stuff than wrong. Can't expect perfection in an entirely new kind of financial crisis.

The sky is falling on all those millions who have already lost their jobs and homes, and many more will follow until the stimulus plan beings to show some effect. Some good news is that more homes and cars were sold in the most recent month, but we need something more long-term to feel we are headed in the right direction.

So you are suggesting we raise taxes okie?

I don't imagine Okie thinks we should raise more than very specially targeted taxes.

But if we cut taxes across the board, reduced spending to bare bones necessity, and provided incentive for business to invest and expand, I imagine the economy would bounce back and be thriving in no time while the US treasury would take a manageable hit, if any, and not pile up trillions in additional debt.

Foxy dear-- the US Treasury is a symbolic representation of the US taxpayer.

Good evening. I didn't feel like doing much today. It was another dreary day with light rain punctuated by brief downpours. It tried to clear up but then got windy.
So I suspect you have heard about the 663,000 in job losses in March and the jump in unemployment from 8.1% to 8.5%. I spent an hour or so plowing through Labor Dept statistics. And Googling. I finally realized I was barking up the wrong tree. The lost jobs number is derived by subtracting the number of people who have jobs at the end of a given month from the number of people who had jobs at the end of the previous month! I printed out a ten year chart of that data, and the numbers here now totally match the news reports. So here is the "official" tally of job losses by month since things really started to deterioriate (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics):
9/2008: -321,000
10/2008: -380,000
11/2008: -597,000
12/2008: -681,000
1/2009: -741,000 (revised upward 4/3 by something like 60,000)
2/2009: -651,000 (preliminary)
3/2009: -663,000 (preliminary)

The number of people who had jobs at the end of March is listed as 133,019,000. The largest number was 138,032,000 at the end of 1/2009. So we are down just over 5,000,000, or down 3.6%.
I found some links in my quest to articles, and then to comments on articles and then to blogs and comments on blogs. A spirited but amazingly civil discussion (imagine that, A2Kers). The consensus was that the mass media is being a bit sloppy with their reporting in comparing job losses in this recession to earlier ones when you do things on a % of workforce basis vs raw numbers. But everyone I have run into nods about that but concedes that "Pain Hurts."
The number of people working at the end of March was, again, 133,019,000.
At the end of January, 1999, the total work force was 127,480,000. That is an increase of some 5,540,000, or an increase of about 4.3% in 10 years. I don't know how that stacks up with what I would call the "working age population."
Finally, Foxfyre made a comment, or perhaps it was a question, on A2K a few days ago. It had to do with the educational level of immigrants. Since I don't remember the question I can't answer based on my review of 30 pages of BLS data. But I did find that in compiling the numbers cited above, the BLS does not (cannot) distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. The chart of job losses by "native" and "non-native" people by education is heavily skewed towards "non-native" with less than a HS diploma.

Did I put everyone to sleep yet?

138,080,000 at the end Jan 2008.

No.

Has it ever entered your mind that the possibility of curtailing government spending is a better possibility? Raising taxes dampens the economy, even the Democrats seem to recognize that right now, so they are postponing the bulk of their tax raising plans until they hope the economy recovers.

I am not suggesting we can balance the budget immediately, but increasing spending by trillions as Obama plans to do is certainly not the answer, especially when alot of it is not going to stimulate businesses. Alot of it only grows government, which will continue to drag down the economy. Government does not produce much wealth, so all the money is very inefficiently spent in regard to producing a standard of living that has been achieved.

rjb, You'll probably have some interest in this article:

The energy industry has nothing to do with partisanship. It is clearly capitalism in action. All the different sources of energy (even importing excessive amounts of foreign LNG) are new sources. Combining new sources (green and not so green) combined with new technology that conserves, does not seem to be a bad ideal to achieve.

If you hang your energy position on your politics than I feel sorry for you, youre missing what America is all about.
"Drill nany drill" may be a satisfying simplistic directive for you, I believe the world is waay more complicated than that.

That statement is clearly in error. The energy industry depends upon political policy, in terms of how companies do and how the country prospers. That is abundantly clear. And political partisanship or policy, whatever you prefer to call it, directly influences the energy industry.

Yes, it is capitalism in action, but capitalism thrives to varying degrees depending upon which party is in control. And different business sectors are affected in different ways, and the energy industry will be one of the most directly affected. that seems pretty clear to most people that are informed. I know people in the industry and most of them do not at all believe as you do in the Democratic policies, no way. That is clear to most of us, fm.


I feel sorry for you if you can't see the difference in policies, and you cannot see that some policies are not realistic or economical, or good for America. And you can scorn the idea of drilling, but it is drilling that has brought us prosperity in the energy industry. It was actually a good portion of American ingenuity, American geologists and engineers that opened up alot of the foreign fields, such as in the Middle East, Venezuela and other places around the world in the last century. America led the world in the development of oil and gas. We have also been at the forefront of new field stimulation and drilling and completion techniques. You should know all of this. And make no mistake, a party that is hostile to coal, oil and gas, and the nuclear sectors of energy does not bode well for America. That has been the bread and butter of the foundation of our economy, and penalizing it is not going to make any of us better off. The travesty in all of this is that our education system and the mainstream media have failed us, by demonizing the industry and teaching the kids some unrealistic view of the world.

One last clarification, I am not hanging my hat on oil, gas, and nuclear, I am all in favor of solar and wind, but make no mistake, hanging your hat on solar and wind is infinitely more foolish than the other way around, it is simply not realistic or practical at this particular point in our history. I am in favor of all of the above, but let the market be the principle arbitor of what happens, not some politician sitting in Washington.

You are absolutely right that the free market should drive it rather than the politicians excercising politically correct gobbeldy goop trying to micromanage it. The politician can certainly provide incentives through tax credits or whatever to encourage R & D of clean, efficient, economical energy and then let the people get it done. Sufficiently reward R&D to find a way to utilize our vast coal reserves in an environmentally friendly way, for instance, and I just bet somebody will come up with a way to do that.

That kind of initiative would be a far more justifiable use of the taxpayer's dollar and would promote the general welfare to a far greater extent than most of the mega-trillion dollar expenses they are foisting upon us.

effemm can barely manage anything else okie. He is error personified.

He's a Darwinist and then, at the same time, turns on his compassion in the face of the famous saying--" He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord".

He thinks the geology department, from which he screws his living and putative dignity, grew upon a thornless bush.

But Foxy- you are engaged in "micro-management" your very self there. And you have not been, as far as I am aware, elected to any office.

One can hardy base a policy of that magnitude upon what your wandering fancy might be prepared to bet on. One might bet on "Rambling Ministers" though.

The only thing I would like to micromanage, at least a little bit, is common sense as I think our elected leaders are demonstrating little or none of it.

Spendius, you have a way with words that far surpasses most of us. Have you written any books, such as on philosophy? On maybe the "ultimate destination of man" or something like that? Use the words, "Hope," or maybe "Audacity" in the title, and perhaps you could go far?

Fine with me, as long as energy and other production companies are forced to pay the full price of producing their energy; and that means they must pay for their emissions. See, the environment is a shared resource; it doesn't belong to those companies and they have no right to dump the byproducts of their production process into the environment without paying to clean up or mitigate the effects of that.

Once the costs are properly accounted for, Solar and Wind get downright affordable. Coal, oil and gas only look affordable if you completely ignore the free pass they get on environmental damage it causes to produce energy using fossil fuels.

Cycloptichorn