The US and World Economies

worsen because the defecet is out of control.
Clinton had it in control now it is amuck.
there are few good paying jobs out there.
healthcare is getting harder to pay for.
more americans don't have any health care.
i can't believe bush is going to take benefits away form vetrans.
if this is the way thing wiil be inflations will get out of control.
if you have money better buy realestate. that won't lose value.

if you are poor well the poor always get poorer.

I think it will get better. And i do not think the war is going to be an easy pick as the reason. The cycle has a lot to do with it and the uncertainty of te situation having been aleviated are more responsible IMO.

I don't credit Clinton exclusively for the economic prospertity he enjoyed nor do I blme Bush exclusively for the difficulties.

And if there is an improvement the same still stands.

Absolutely agree. We had been in a high flying bull market for a long time. It inevitably dropped like a rock, because it had been becoming totally out of control. It had been more than due for an adjustment.

We are now slowly digging ourselves out of a hole that we got into in the 1990s.


Gingy- Welcome to Able2Know!

interesting results: nobody - so far - thinks it will stay the same(right now i'd say it's 50:50). sars may turn out to be as much of an economic as a medical problem. i think if international trade suffers there is a good chance that there will be a general economic downturn. having just retuned from germany, things don't look too hot there: excessive unemployment in the former east-germany seems to be a real economic (and political) problem there. (c.i. - i am sure you like to be frugal, but do you really only want to contribute .02 Cents - go splurge, give us a full TWO cents of your opinion, PLEASE.... don't take my foolishness seriously!) hbg

Well, the DOW reached and stayed at over 9,000 today; a new high for how many months? Even with the SARS scare, it seems the investors are confident that our economy is in a positive recovery stage. We're getting so rich, I'm afraid to tell my wife! LOL. Have any of you changed you mind about the economy of the US and the world? Before you give an answer, let me provide some general good and bad news. First of all, the price of oil is dropping; good for the world economy as a whole. Secondly, the value of the US dollar to the Euro has taken a significant drop during the past few months. Good for the US, because it makes our products more competitive in the world. Unemployment is still on the high side, but many companies are talking about expanding their capital during the rest of this year and next. Dividend payments are improving, although the p/e ratios are still double the 'good' range of about 15. The housing market is still pretty active, because of the low interest rates. Most of the financial pundits are saying it's the perfect time to be heavy in equities, because most of the fat in the market have been removed during the past three years, and the future looks pretty good. Agree or disagree? c.i.

I don't pretend to know what the stock market will do next. I'm taking profits right now. I certainly may be wrong; I freely admit to being wrong many times before in the last, um, 40 years.
I'm pretty concerned right now. Europe's economy looks pretty fragile to me. I've got the BBC ticker scrolling across the bottom of my screen right now: 1500 jobs lost @C&W; another 1000 @ some other company.
I run a small chain of retail stores. We're doing okay, with sales flat to a couple of percent down. Our costs, though, keep rising.
Health insurance for my staff up 25%; City services (for things like water and trash hauling) up 30%; Real Estate taxes up 20% as towns struggle to keep functioning.

I'm not complaining. Sure, there is fat in governments' budgets that I'd like to see eliminated. I've been in business since 1975 and, cicerone, here is what scares the s*it out of me:
---I'm receiving an incredible number of job applications each week, many from people over-qualified for the jobs that we typically might have available; and worse,
---The average American is up to his/her eyeballs in debt. I won't go into a great deal about the ramifications of that. Perhaps I'll see if anyone responds first. -rjb-

rjb: You are wise to take profits where you can.

The market is definitely in for some significant swings, not for the faint of heart or those with less than a 10 year investment time frame.

realjohnboy, I think you made a smart move to take the profit and run. I've seen our paper profits go up and down so much during the past three years, I'm too dizzy to see the trees for the forest. But, the dang truth is, we're not doing too badly. When I look at how much I've withdrawn for my living expenses since 12/31/2001, we're ahead about 11 percent. To think that both the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 lost over 35 percent for 2002, I'm feeling pretty smug. ** You're going to see health premiums go up double digits for quite some time in the future. I hope you've figured that into your cost basis. It's not only Europe that's suffering from a fragile economy. Them stupid Europeans don't know how fragile; they're on strike in France, because they want to reduce their workweek from 38 hours to 35 hours. With the increased value of the Euro, their products become more and more expensive in the world markets. Good for us, but I also believe in comparative advantage. As for the average American being in debt up to their eyeballs, we just have to hope that the unemployment rate doesn't worsen. The next six months will be a bell-whether period for our economy; with the reduced cost of energy, the lost value of the dollar, and consumer confidence up in the eighties agian, maybe we can hope that this uptick in the market is a precursor to better times. c.i.

It seems Greenspan is reading the same tea leaves as the rest of the pundits.
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Economy Set for Vigorous Growth-Greenspan
2 hours, 47 minutes ago Add Business - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites) on Wednesday said the U.S. economy has turned the corner toward vigorous growth but policy-makers can be patient about interest-rate rises, though not forever.

****
IMHO, they are all wrong! Bush made the claim that new jobs will increase by 2.6 million this year. They all forget, or don't bother to balance, that past history is no guarantee of the future economic performance. Most of the job increases in this country will be in the service industry like WalMart and Starbucks. That's hardly the kind of jobs that'll support any family - especially in high cost areas like New York, Boston, and Silicon Valley. None of the administration people are telling us anything significant; they're afraid to tell the truth, because November is approaching very quickly.

Hi, ci. I'm glad that you have kept this thread in your memory. I keep the BBC news-ticker scrolling across the bottom of my screen and can read stories. Unfortunately I don't know how to post them. Today they reported that the US dollar fell again vs the pound and the euro, hitting an eleven year low against the pound before recovering a bit.
Much of the blame is put on our budget deficit in the US, which few in DC seem to be concerned about, It's an election year, after all.
The danger of inflation-perhaps even rampant inflation- seems to me to be growing. If China delinks its currency from the dollar (as suggested in today's WSJ) and/or OPEC decides to limit exports (and can enforce the cut-backs), we could end up being hurt pretty badly.
I'm not an economist so I'm sure I'm guilty of flawed thinking, but I do enjoy thinking about the subject. Thanks. -johnboy-

THE U.S. AND WORLD ECONOMICS
i see that mr. greenspan himself is getting a bit concerned about the u.s. deficit. i understand he has a handy fix or two to offer : cut medical spending and make people work longer before they are entitled to benefits ! i would not want to suggest that as a canadian i am able to give advice to our american neighbours and friends. seems to me letting everyone work 'til age 75 (for starters) might help ! in canada there is a similar movement underway; it is somewhat disguised by saying that "people should not be forced out of work because of age" ! that's a nice way of saying : "work a few more years , buster ! and hope you'll drop dead before you start collecting your pension". members of the canadian parliament have , OF COURSE (!), their own generous pension plan funded by the taxpayers ! hbg ... article from washington post >>>MR. GREENSPAN'S CURE-ALL

hbg, That's what used to happen to blacks in this country, and I'm not so sure things have improved all that much for them, because I haven't seen the latest longivity stats by race in this country. The life expectancy for blacks used to be below 65 years of age, so although most paid into social security, very few reaped the benefits. Since the life expectancy for all Americans have increased during the past half century, we must assume the life expectancy for blacks are now closer to the general population. This was another "hidden" form of discrimination that most people are not aware of. c.i.

Here's an interesting graph on life expectancy, but it only goes to 1980. My assumption was correct that non-black life expectancy also improved. http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Animation/expectancy.html

Here's another graph that has more current stats. It seems it took until 1980 for blacks to reach the life expectancy of 65, the age of retirment, to begin collecting social security benefits.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2003/03hus027.pdf

I don't know or understand the technicalities of economics but I watch the BBC News most evenings & I find it truly amazing that the UK economy is growing, unemployment here is falling & £1.00 is buying $1.90. The opposite trends seems to be happening in the USA. How can that be ????

The UK is a small country & has the forth largest economy in the world.
The USA has vast resources. people, land, raw materials, minerals, industry, gold reserves.

I'm not suggesting that the UK way is best for USA, far from it.
Perhaps the reason that America is having problems, is because America seems to have an endless supply of resourses, it thinks nothing of wasting vital commodities.
Time for a major rethink on politics, economics & industry that does not revolve everything around the dollar.
I can see certain similarities between the American ideology & that of the UK., but also many differences. What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander.
C.I. mentioned the way things are in France & refers to the Europeans. I would ask you not to lump the UK in with Europe. Yes we are Europeans but we also have our own way of doing things, I don't think the UK is going to bow & scrape to Euro Ideology on every new idea that is thrown in the ring. Nor are we likely to submerg out treasury & currency into that of mainland europe.

cockney, Welcome to A2K. It's not I who is lumping the UK in with Euroland. It comes from my readings on how involved the UK is in the European Union, and it's eventual conversion of the UK pound into the Euro - which seems quite immanent at the present time. I'll provide my opinion on the two economies (the US and UK) shortly, after I've given it some thought.

Without coming to any conclusions, here are the "PCI" income figures for the following countries.
UK $23,250, Japan $25,300, Germany $24,450, France $24,350, Ireland $23,800, Italy $22,850, Luxembourg $38,800, and Netherlands $24,450. According to a recent report on Household Income in the UK, the average income is 25,000 pounds or about US $45,000. The 4th quintile group earns 32,000 pounds or about US $57,600. The top earners income is 62,000 pounds or about US $111,600. I dig up stats on the US to see how we compare.

cockney wrote : " Perhaps the reason that America is having problems, is because America seems to have an endless supply of resourses, it thinks nothing of wasting vital commodities". i think there is some truth to that , and i think the same applies to us in canada. we certainly waste a lot of resources; the reason for such waste (example : poor re-cycling practices, excessive electricity consumption) is usually : "it's too much bother," or even : "light-bulbs burn out faster if they are switched on and off too often". ontario is a good example of what can happen if resources are wasted/mismanaged. twenty years ago ontario had an abundance of electricity. many high-rise office buildings that were being built at that time, were built on the assumption that electricity would always be plentiful/cheap. no thought was given to energy conservation; as an example many of these buildings figured the heat given off by electrical lighting into the heating factor (i.e. to use the lights as part of the heating system for buildings). so when you are now in downtown toronto at night, you see see many empty office buildings ablaze in light. when it was suggested that the lights be turned off to conserve electrical energy, the not so surprising fact emerged that the regular heating plant could not adequately maintain heat in the buildings - so the lights must be kept on. re-fitting these buildings has started but is going at a VERY slow pace. so ontarions are now being told TO SAVE ENERGY ! another small thing : apartment buildings in germany usually have "three-minute lights" in the staircases; in canda the lights in the staircases stay on all the time (why bother with three-minute lights, right ?). when we stayed in a small hotel in vienna two years ago, there wasn't a single ordinary(power hungry) light-bulb in the whole building ! the bulbs were either power-savers or high-intensity, and ,of course, there were three minute lights in the staircase ! hbg

Ok ------ CI, I'm off to bed, so I'll catch it all in the morning.

The thing about comparing income/tax/spending/ cost of living, is that there are so many variables from country to country.
The major problem for integrating Europe is the fact that there are so many variables, economic/ social/cultural & so on. it leads to endless arguments & wasting money. end result, COMPROMISE.