The State of the Economy Thread - “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery”

[TheGreatBuzz]

Just now, twa said:

 

But the recession will drive more snowbirds to Florida and increase the market.....too soon

Better too soon than too late.  We made a nice chunk of change.

[PleaseBlitz]

6 hours ago, twa said:

 

But the recession will drive more snowbirds to Florida and increase the market.....too soon

add

https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2019/09/19/canadian-snowbirds-could-get-more-time-to-roost-in-florida/

 

Not sure that recessions cause lots of people to retire early. I seem to recall them losing jobs and then taking young people’s (****ty) jobs rather than retiring. 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by PleaseBlitz

[twa]

2 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

Not sure that recessions cause lots of people to retire early. 

 

https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2011/10/31/the-recessions-impact-on-baby-boomer-retirement

 

Well certainly not the poor ones.

[PleaseBlitz]

1 minute ago, twa said:

 

Well certainly not the poor ones.

 

  Very true. 

 

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-29/americas-aging-baby-boomers-forced-work-until-death-blamed-collapsing-us-productivit

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Larry]

Curiously, views on the econmy differ widely depending on the subject's party identification.  (Further down in the above article).  

 

Which might be a good thing to discuss.  How do the supposedly extrteme liberal membership of Tailgate feel about the economy?  

 

To answer my own question, I think you'd have to be wearing some really partisan glasses to describe the economy as bad.  To me, the traditional gold standards of GDP and unemployment are both good  to excellent.  

 

I do think we're due for some kind of recession.  Simply because it's been abot that long.  

 

I also think that, if/when we have a recession, the Republicans have really crippled our ability to deal with it, because our usual techniques for dealing with a recession (deficit spending and low interest rates), they're demending that we do them when we don't have a recession.  

 

I also confess to having a gut feeling tha what the GOP are doing is literally trying to create the biggest bubble they can.  (Deficit spending, artificially low interest rates, and getting rid of anti-bubble laws and regulations).  Have their actions turned what would have been a small, routine, recession, a year or two ago, into not only a Great recession 2, but one where we don't have the tools to mitigate it that we had, last time, a few years from now?  

[gbear]

I consider myself fairly liberal. I think we are suboptimally running a hot economy.  We are not taking in immigrants despite needing more labor, a problem with which every industrialized country in the world save Mexico is dealing. We all have aging workforces save Mexico. So in our effort to preserve our current White Anglo dominant culture, we go to great lengths to make our country unappealing. This will hurt us in the medium term.

 

When I look at everything we are doing to stimulate our economy, I think of a car running in the red. We are burning oil, and when our engine starts to overheat, it is going to be bad.

 

The dollar is currently the default world reserve currency which has had a huge benefit stabilizing our economy when we used defecit spending to blunt recessions. It is a situation that has benefited all parties because we were seen as a stable reliable economy. When that perception disappears or another currency replaces the dollar, our recessions will get more severe. Keep in mind the biggest thing preventing this is perception which is reality because so many believe it to be so. This perception is not helped by Trump and trade wars, real and threatened.

 

For right now, our car continues to barrel ahead at 95mph, but a crash or an engine fire at 95mph is a hell of a thing.

 

We might wish we had kept a pit crew instead of deporting them when we finally realize we can't run the whole race alone in the driver's seat with the peddle to the meatle. It might be nice, if others will be there to help us when we need a part for our break down.  However, the cost to our pride will be steep if we are left asking for help from those we spit upon now as we deny global warming and our (meaning humanity's) part in causing it, refuse to stand by long alliances, and are seen taking the side of those threatening democracy.

[volsmet]

[volsmet]

 

[techboy]

If you're going to peddle the Austrian school, I prefer the rap battle format:

 

 

[Larry]

Stopped listening after the assertion that every bank in the world is bankrupt because leveraging exists. 

 

Now, if you want to tell me that we're letting banks OVER leverage, I'd say there's at least a case for that position. And that we need to quit letting people repeal the regulations we put in place after the last time the house of cards fell down. 

[twa]

Bankrupt Illinois Cities Forced To Cut Services To Fund Pensions

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bankrupt-illinois-cities-forced-cut-services-fund-pensions

 

would the fed raising rates save or add more pain?

 

[twa]

be afraid

 

 

[Renegade7]

U.S. manufacturing is in deep recession as companies blame Trump’s trade war

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/01/trump-is-heading-into-re-election-with-deep-manufacturing-recession/

 

 

[LadySkinsFan]

It's like the polar icecaps and glaciers melting...much faster than thought.

 

Can't wait for all that frozen bacteria and microbes is released into the atmosphere that we don't have immunity for.

[twa]

 

[Larry]

Maybe we should stop bullying the Fed into financing massive deficits and inflating bubbles with artificially low interest rates, to try to prop up the incumbent political party.  

 

[TradeTheBeal!]

Again, the car biz is not the end-all, be-all of economic bellwethers.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-01/toyota-typifies-ugly-month-with-16-slide-auto-sales-update

 

OTOH, if you’re in the market for a new car there will be deals out there in the last quarter.

[gbear]

Of course our president sees any current economic bad news as the natural result of what is being done unjustly to him. The stock market going down is because he might be impeached. That is a much more plausible explanation to him than automltive sales going way down, manufacturing slowing down, and on going trade wars. That's not the answer he thinks of when he asks his "magic" mirror why all this stuff happens on his world.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/02/dow-plunges-more-than-points-wall-street-extends-october-losses/

[China]

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/09/30/is-there-a-recession-coming-keep-an-eye-on-these-key-indicators.html

[tshile]

unemployment down

jobs number was 10k under consensus, but previous reports were revised up quite a bit. part time workers numbers are good.

 

job growth has slowed but that should make sense when you're trending downward on unemployment at 3.5%.

 

wage growth still a (decades old) problem. 2.9% YoY.

 

manufacturing industry is hurting.

 

the economy is not perfect but calling for a recession may be premature (despite everyone's new found love for the inverted yield curve.)

 

wish we could run a parallel world without trade wars to see how much that is impacting the economy. What would things be like without it? Would just be interesting to know.

 

[gbear]

I think the more telling stat might be that 3 out of 4 people expect next year to be worse for the economy.  That goes right to consumer confidence which could be critical as consumer spending has been the biggest prop to our economy thus far.

Edited October 4, 2019 by gbear

[tshile]

3 minutes ago, gbear said:

I think the more telling stat might be that 3 out of 4 people expect next year to be worse for the economy.  That goes right to consumer confidence which could be critical as consumer spending has been the biggest prop to our economy thus far.

 

Yeah that's where things get weird... people can make things better/worse by adjusting their spending habits based on what they think is going on, which from what I can tell... most people have no ability to determine what is going on accurately.

 

3 out of 4 people telling me they expect the economy to be worse means nothing to me outside of the fear they might stop spending money (and if 75% of people stop spending money that certainly would cause problems or exacerbate a problem.) 9 out of 10 have no idea what they're talking about, so i'm not really concerned about 3 out of 4

 

[PleaseBlitz]

9 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

Yeah that's where things get weird... people can make things better/worse by adjusting their spending habits based on what they think is going on, which from what I can tell... most people have no ability to determine what is going on accurately.

 

3 out of 4 people telling me they expect the economy to be worse means nothing to me outside of the fear they might stop spending money (and if 75% of people stop spending money that certainly would cause problems or exacerbate a problem.) 9 out of 10 have no idea what they're talking about, so i'm not really concerned about 3 out of 4

 

 

Adam Smith's murderous ghost will be paying you a visit tonight.  

 

#EconJokes

Edited October 4, 2019 by PleaseBlitz

[gbear]

I am less sure than you are.  I was recently at a Fed Gov stats conference, and one of the more interesting talks was by the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.  For what it is worth, I remember he mentioned consumer confidence dips having a decent correlation with upcoming recessions but still ranked it behind the sentiment of small business owners.

 

So I take the consumer confidence numbers with the manufacturing problems and the farm issues (both trade wars and drought), and I have a bad premonition about the coming year's economic outlook.  I hope I am wrong.