@H2O MAN,
Proof that the economy is growing? How dare the economy grow? It completely destroys your narrative.
But then facts don't matter much in your world Spurt.
@H2O MAN,
What's new? Anything going on where you are?
Has George missed being in the news?
@parados,
Balloons keep growing para if you keep blowing into them.
@parados,
Except that the growth rate is unusually low - too low even to match the growth in our population or to significantly reduce the number of long-term unemployed, and by far the slowst recovery from a recession that we have seen in decades.
A few more years of "growth" like this, coupled with the accelerating deficits and accumulating total national debt, accumulated by this administration, and we'll be in a league with Italy or even Greece.
@georgeob1,
With the No Party handicapping this administration, you want more progress?
@cicerone imposter,
The Administration enjoyed the Presidential power plus majority power in both houses of Congress for its first two years and has lacked only a majority in the House for the past year.
Hardly a credible excuse, but perhaps good enough for those with closed minds.
@georgeob1,
Credible excuse if you are able to accept the fact that GW Bush was responsible for the Great Recession before Obama took over, and the unemployment trend was increasing at an alarming rate.
If you expect anyone to reverse such a world economic calamity in a year or two, you're not being fair.
@georgeob1,
Quote:Except that the growth rate is unusually low
Hmm.. Obama's GDP growth average is 2.4 according to H2OMan recently.
Are you comparing it to Bush's average rate over 8 years?
Obama has a "horrible" economic record until you compare him to Bush. So tell us again, why should we go back to the Bush policies?
@parados,
I guess it's okay for the republican presidents to destroy our economy, then expect the democrats to repair what they destroy. FACTS: GW Bush = Great Recession, worst job creation since the Great Depression, GDP growth at 2.8%, started two wars that were never paid for, and gave tax cuts to the rich - with promise of job creation. Never happened.
Quote:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aeS...
_____
One year after U.S stocks hit their post-financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen more than 68 percent, and it’s up more than 41 percent since Obama took office. Credit spreads have narrowed. Commodity prices have surged. Housing prices have stabilized.
“We’ve had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Co. in New York. “If he was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the president.”
The economy has also strengthened beyond expectations at the time Obama took office.
The gross domestic product grew at a 5.9 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter, compared with a median forecast of 2.0 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economists a week before Obama’s Jan. 20, 2009, inauguration. The median forecast for GDP growth this year is 3.0 percent, according to Bloomberg’s February survey of economists, versus 2.1 percent for 2010 in the survey taken 13 months earlier.
@H2O MAN,
Simply proves you are ignorant of economics - and almost everything else!
If The Economy Is Improving….
Everywhere you turn these days, someone is proclaiming that the economy is improving. Barack Obama is endlessly touting the "improvement" in the economy, the mainstream media is constantly talking about "the economic recovery" and an increasing number of Americans seem to be buying into this line of thinking. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe that the economy will improve over the next year, while only 17 percent of Americans believe that it will get worse. But is the economy actually improving? Not really. At the moment things are relatively stable. Some economic statistics are improving slightly and some continue to get even worse. However, it is very important to keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons why things have stabilized is because the federal government is pumping more than a trillion dollars a year into the economy that it does not have. The Obama administration is engaging in a debt binge unlike anything America has ever seen before, and yet many economic indicators are still in decline. So what is going to happen when the federal government stops injecting gigantic waves of borrowed money into the economy? That is a frightening thing to think about. The best efforts of our "leaders" in Washington D.C. are not accomplishing a whole lot. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates as low as they can go and the federal government is spending unprecedented amounts of money. But even with the federal government and the Federal Reserve pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor, the economy is still not improving much at all. Millions upon millions of Americans out there are anticipating some sort of a "great economic recovery", and they are going to be bitterly disappointed.
But right now there are some "bright spots" in the economy, and you are bound to run into family and friends that will repeat to you the nonsense that they are hearing on the television about how the economy is recovering.
When they try to convince you that the economy is getting better, ask them these questions....
If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?
If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?
If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?
If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?
If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of "long-term unemployed workers" stay so high? When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.
But there is some good news.
When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today, the price of an ounce of gold is over $1700.
The era of great prosperity that America has enjoyed for so long is coming to an end.
In fact, our long-term economic decline is about to accelerate.
So enjoy this "bubble of hope" while you can, because it won't last long.
As I have written about previously, many are warning that Europe is on the verge of a nightmarish financial crisis that could potentially plunge us into a global recession even worse than 2008.
So let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
Just because the economy is about to go through hard times does not mean that you have to go through hard times personally.
Right now, you can decide to make an investment or start a business that will thrive in a tough economic environment.
Victory often goes to the most prepared. So don't just sit there while the storm clouds gather. Instead, this should be a time when you are gathering resources and developing a gameplan for the coming economic chaos.
Those that choose to have blind faith in "the system" are going to be tremendously disappointed in the years ahead. Just because you have a job right now does not mean that it is always going to be there. Just because your stock portfolio is doing well right now does not mean that will always be the case.
Hopefully we all learned some important lessons from 2008. The global financial situation can turn on a dime. When markets fall apart, they tend to do so very rapidly.
Ultimately, the debate about whether the economy is improving or not is going to be ended very emphatically. When the next wave of the financial crisis hits, there will be no doubt about what direction things are going.
Don't let the next wave catch you by surprise.
Now is the time to prepare.
Quote:Friday's jobs report showed a gain of 243,000 jobs. But a separate survey of households used to determine the unemployment rate shows much, much stronger job gains.
The number of people saying they were employed increased by 631,000 in January alone. That's the biggest one-month gain since just before the Great Recession started in late 2007.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/03/news/economy/january_jobs_report/index.htm?source=cnn_bin
I think that the proper response to this set of data is " give us a call when you figure it out".
@hawkeye10,
Quote:It’s even been true over the past few months. Today’s jobs report revised November’s 100,000 jobs upward to 157,000 jobs, and December’s 200,000 jobs to 203,000 jobs.
Why are the initial payroll estimates off? Many businesses are a little sluggish in sending in their responses to the government surveys — and once these stragglers report in, the numbers tend to nudge upward. But why should this happen so consistently? It’s a mystery. One possibility is that the government’s models assume that the future will be just like the past — causes them to underestimate the pace of job growth during recessions.
In any case, it’s one thing to keep in mind when these jobs reports come out — the revisions might seem dry and technical, but they can often make a huge difference.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/could-januarys-jobs-report-be-too-pessimistic/2012/02/03/gIQALt1pmQ_blog.html?hpid=z2
I have certainly wondered aloud why it is that a government which does such a piss poor job of doing its day job has demanded to expand its authority into micro-managing our private lives.
@georgeob1,
That is such a favorite line which is complete bull crap. Democrats didn't have a super majority to avoid filibusters until after Specter switched sides and Franklin was sworn in. Then Kennedy died and a replacement was put until the special election. The super majority ended when Paul Kirk was sworn in.
Quote:Specter, a long time moderate, said that he was switching back to the Democratic party because of concerns over the direction of the Republican party but conventional speculation is that he was losing in the polls for the Republican Primary to Pat Toomey for not being conservative enough. Specter wound up losing the Democratic primary anyway to Joe Sestak in 2011. But for a while, Specter was the 59th Democratic Senator.
The 60th Senator, Al Franken of Minnesota, was locked up for months in recounts and legal challenges from a very close race with incumbent Norm Coleman. Finally, on July 8, 2009 after eight months of delays, Franken was sworn in as the 60th Democratic Senator (this includes the two independents who caucused with the Democrats). This was the first time Democrats had a filibuster proof majority since 1958.
But six weeks later on August 25, 2009, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy passed away. Technically, it could be argued that the Democrats still had a filibuster proof majority since cloture involves 3/5 of sitting Senators (59 out of 99 is roughly 3/5). But the Senate was in summer recess at the time so it may not have mattered.
One month later on September 25, 2009 Paul Kirk was appointed to fill Kennedy’s vacancy while the special election was going on. Even then this was only because Kennedy himself had requested that the Governor of Massachusetts change the law a week before he died to allow an appointment so the seat wouldn’t be vacant for the remainder of the year. Had he not done so it could’ve been argued that the 60 seat Democratic supermajority would have lasted about six weeks.
In November of 2009 Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, in a poorly run campaign, lost Ted Kennedy’s seat to Scott Brown effectively ensuring the end of the filibuster proof Senate.
On Christmas Eve of 2009, the Senate voted to move forward with the Health Care Reform bill by 60 to 39 votes. As Vice-President Biden noted, it was a big deal.
On February 4, 2010 Scott Brown was sworn in signaling the end of the super-majority.
Depending upon which metric is used, Democrats had a super majority for roughly six months which includes the seven weeks between Franken’s swearing-in on July 8 to Ted Kennedy’s death on August 25 and the four months and nine days between Paul Kirk’s swearing-in on September 25, 2009 to his replacement by Scott Brown on February 4, 2010. This was just barely enough time to pass the biggest and most difficult health care legislation in generations; an event that would likely never have happened under any other circumstances. This also happened under the onslaught of every procedural obstruction the Republicans could put in its path.
President Obama, against advice from many of his advisors, gambled his political capital on this bill and won. And it was a significant battle in what is sure to be a series of battles to come in order to keep the foothold on this particular beachhead. He put the brief super majority to good use and any argument that he squandered it will need to stand next to the impressive accomplishment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
source
@revelette,
Quote:He put the brief super majority to good use and any argument that he squandered it will need to stand next to the impressive accomplishment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
Adding more cost to an already unaffordable health care system is not an accomplishment, it is a threat to the health of the nation. History will absolutely judge Obama harshly, for that and for doing alleged Health Care Reform that failed to do more than take a scratch at any of the many glaring deficiencies of American Health Care. .
@H2O MAN,
Quote:
If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?
Because we had a recession.
How stupid are you Spurt?
Anyone that is going to ask me those questions is going to get pretty much the same answer to all of them and then is going to look like an ignorant fool for not understanding what a recession is or even simple math.
Recessions cause job loss, lower home sales, longer unemployment, poverty etc.
All those things exist even after the recession ends because coming out of a recession doesn't magically create 6 million jobs in one month. It takes years to right an economy that has tanked like the U.S. did.
@hawkeye10,
Quote:Adding more cost to an already unaffordable health care system is not an accomplishment, it is a threat to the health of the nation. History will absolutely judge Obama harshly
Strange that the countries with single payer government systems pay around half what we do to cover an individual.
Obama backing down on a single payer system is the problem.
Only the stupid think the US economy has gotten 'better' under Obama's rule.
@H2O MAN,
Is the definition of stupid to think the opposite of you?
