Where is the US economy headed?

So small I'm surprised you even remember the name of the town.

New jobless claims drop more than expected

Don't' know if this any indication of where the economy is headed but nevertheless relatively good news for today anyway. Tomorrow may be another story.

Good bank, bad bank...

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Anyone?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32309615/ns/business-washington_post/

Maybe the bad bank don't hand out suckers at the drive through..

But anyway, I don't know it seems like they are creating a bank to store bad loans to try and collect as much money as they can. It is beyond my understanding how that helps or hurts anything.

That's right; it's going to be a jobless recovery. Unemployment rates will remain high for many years, because new jobs will not sustain the growth of high school and college graduates. Those who have jobs will hang onto their jobs much longer. It was not that long ago when we were losing some 20,000 jobs every day. The slow-down in the loss of jobs is good news, because it tells us the bleeding of jobs is slowing, and those who have jobs are more stable.

According to the WSJ, even the wealthy have cut back on their spending. One bright side to the clunker trade-in deal is that with this added demand, the auto industry will increase production to meet demand and lower inventory levels. Although it's temporary, it will have a positive effect on our overall economy, because of the multiplying effect on the circulation of money.

We'll have to watch the longer term trends of our unemployment rates to really understand whether our economy is on the mends or not.

I'm pretty sure you are talking to the Possum.

Cycloptichorn

The latest is the breakup of AIG, and how the banks and money houses are going to get hefty fees from the feds - like $1 billion dollars.

What's up with that. You would be at the front of the queue if you got the chance,

spendi, I'm retired, and going back to work is not even remotely possible - no matter how much the pay.

OK. You would have been at the front of the queue if you had had the chance.

Are you as pedantic as that all the time?

Funny you would use the word pedantic.

I gave an example. Can you?

No need; my statements are self-explanatory.

Ridiculous more like.

And your opinion is worth....like all your opinions.

What anybody thinks it's worth.

The Good Bank-Bad Bank logic works like this:
A bank may have $2M in loans. 1/2 of that is in loans of dubious repayment possibility (principal and interest). These are the so called toxic loans. They would go to the Bad Bank. They may end up collecting 60 cents of the $, or 10 cents. Folks with a tolerance for a high level for risk (and perhaps a cousin named Vinnie who is from Chicago and is really good at collecting money) could invest in the Bad Bank.
The Good Bank would hold the loans to people like us, A2Kers (except R-head) who always pay on time. The Good Bank would be profitable and could attract new investors so the Good Bank could make new loans to good people and could grow.
To recap, the Existing Bank is in a bit of a limbo. By splitting it into Bad Bank (attracting speculators/gamblers) and Good Bank (looking for more conservative investors), the banking system might start to function better.

Sorry. CI and Spendius were having a thoughtful discussion here about...um...something. Let's get back to that.

Sorry for what? I'd rather read stories you post on a2k over any discussion I might have with spendi which I value as something worthless.