Clouded by Knee-Jerk Relativism

Although relative comparisons are quite useful, the absolute numbers matter, too. In my experience, Wall Street "analysts" tends to give short shrift to the latter. That's why, for example, they can argue (with a straight face, no less) that stocks are cheap vs. bonds -- without making reference to the fact that bond yields are at artificially-depressed extremes as a result of unprecedented Federal Reserve assistance.

In "Don’t Be Fooled by These 10 Misleading Economic Indicators,"  The Philly Post's Gene Marks highlights a number of instances where knee-jerk relativism has clouded the bigger picture.

What reports like "consumer confidence" and "housing starts" really mean.

We all hear plenty of economic data every week. And recently, the news reports have been generally positive. Increased retail sales. Decreasing unemployment. A higher stock market. But it’s all relative. Sure, we’ve been seeing better numbers lately. But compared to what? The recession? A lot of the economic news is more than a little misleading. Let me give just a few examples, using data and charts from the very excellent Calculated Risk blog written by Bill McBride.

1. Gross Domestic Product
Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is a measure of a country’s industrial output. During the recession, the U.S. had a negative GDP. So people are high-fiving because the Fed is predicting growth of 2 to 2.3 percent this year, which is up from the 1.7 percent growth recorded in 2011. This is not something to cheer about. China’s economic growth has slipped to (gasp!) only 8 percent! India is growing at a 7 percent rate. Even Sweden—Sweden, for God’s sake—is predicted to grow at more than 3 percent next year. How bad are we doing? If our economy’s projected growth rate doubles to 4 percent it would still be 30 percent behind its growth rate from before the recession, and half of what it was back in the ’80s.

2. Housing Starts and 3. Home Sales
Did you know that housing starts are about to cap their best quarter since 2008? Whoopee! But hold on a sec … let’s look a little closer. Yes, the real estate and construction industries are slowly starting to recover. But for small businesses in those places you’ve got a long, long way to go. For example, that fantastic housing starts number? It’s still at one-third the level of housing starts back in the mid-2000’s. Yes, you read right: one-third. New home sales are hovering around 300,000 per month compared to 1.4 million (yes, million) back in the mid 2000’s. And today’s existing home sales are about 35 percent less than they were back at the same time.

4. Unemployment Rate and 5. Weekly Unemployment Claims
People were slightly concerned the other week when it was announced that the unemployment rate only fell to 8.2 percent. We should be very concerned. Ask any economist, and they’ll tell you that a “natural” rate of unemployment (where the supply of labor is near where the demand of labor is) should be about 6 percent. That’s because there will always be a percentage of people unemployed—seasonal employees, etc. Today, our unemployment rate is much higher than it should be. We still have more than five million people less employed than before the recession started. In early April, everyone was excited because weekly unemployment claims were at 375,000 … a four-year low. That’s really nothing to cheer. Before the recession, weekly unemployment claims were consistently below 300,000. Last month, the economy added 120,000 net new jobs. At that rate, it would take 42 months to get back to the level we were at before the recession. That’s three-and-a-half years!

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[The reality is things are going to get worse]

Shocking Footage – Dublin Home Eviction – by Anglo Irish Bank

This chilling video is of an elderly couple being removed from their home with force , they had the loan from Anglo Irish Bank

http://maxkeiser.com/2012/04/19/shocking-footage-dublin-home-eviction-by-anglo-irish-bank/

[Tom]

Another misleading number is the supposed "growth" in countries like China and India. These as well as all the other nations of the world will fall off rather quickly as
a) food gets scarce and "natural" catastrophes (like sea level rise, dead zones, monsoons, typhoons volcanic action, earthquakes and flooding, not to mention drought - most of which we, as a species are influencing due to our constant pollution, especially of CO2, but also of farm run-off, and fracking-caused earthquakes and sinkholes) strike more and more frequently, while countries (and insurance companies) fail to keep up or go bankrupt trying; and
b) economies begin to collapse under the weight of all the fraud and corruption behind the international banking syndicate, the whole idea of "debt," and the diminishing natural resources (like fresh water and top soil) which underlies it all. Expect more wars all over the planet as people struggle through the collapse that over-population on a finite planet that we so ignorantly brought on as a by-product of greed, laziness, ever-increasing "profit," using the earth as a dumping ground and source of "free resources" to be exploited, and especially our failure to heed the warnings DECADES ago (by Paul Ehrlick, Rachel Carson, James Hansen, etc).

[Elmo explains it to you like you're a two year old]

Keynes For Muppets: Elmo Explains The National Debt

It’s hard to get the right answer when you’re counting the wrong stuff, and maybe that’s why Wall Street’s minions never discuss income per capita. It’s a meaningful measure of economic strength that ordinary Americans can relate to. Well, that and it exposes “pro-growth” policies for what they actually are: An excuse to loot the country in broad daylight by focusing on GDP, where government money, no matter how horribly misspent, shows up in the “win” column. Strip away that illusion and it becomes crystal clear that their path to prosperity is our highway to hell.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/keynes-muppets-elmo-explains-national-debt

[roger]

Relativism denies that objective truth can be obtained,a position that naturally leads towards idealism, the knee-jerk part is a wonderful modifier and fits like a custom made glove our establishment economists and our foreign policy makers.

[Squeezing the lifeblood out of economies]

Goldman Sachs Never Misses an Opportunity

Goldman Sachs and the financial technocrats have taken over the European ship. Democracy has gone out the window, all in the name of keeping the central bank independent from the “abuses” of government. Yet the government is the people—or it should be. A democratically elected government represents the people. Europeans are being hoodwinked into relinquishing their cherished democracy to a rogue band of financial pirates, and the rest of the world is not far behind.

Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada.

Today the issuance of money and credit has become the private right of vampire rentiers, who are using it to squeeze the lifeblood out of economies. This right needs to be returned to sovereign governments. Credit should be a public utility, dispensed and managed for the benefit of the people.

http://usawatchdog.com/goldman-sachs-never-misses-an-opportunity/#more-7729

[Please add to your links]

Michael Krieger

The world is a very dangerous place at the moment and it is becoming more treacherous with each passing day. The reason for this is because the self-proclaimed “global elite” or TPTB, whatever you want to call them, have declared war on the rest of us. It is not just financial and economic war but it is also a moral and spiritual one. The game is being played on many levels and most of humanity remains completely unaware of it (although I would say a higher percentage of us are aware than ever before in recorded history thanks to the internet). When people look back at what has happened in the past decade or so and wonder why the welfare-warfare state continues to grow despite who sits in the Presidency the answer becomes clear. The leadership in the United States of America, and in reality pretty much every government on the planet, could care less about the advancement of their people.

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/

[Everyone forgets]

“Money-Creation in a Finite World,”

The first 32 minutes of this video from Claremont Colleges’ Center for Process Studies’ conference, “Money-Creation in a Finite World,” is Professor Timothy Canova’s presentation to explain how the Federal Reserve can be governed away from its captured status to redirect trillions of dollars in annual benefits for Americans (recent paper here). Note: the bottom-right of the video has screen options to switch screen-in-screen and full-screen options; the remainder of the video is panel and audience discussion.

The 99% must achieve factual command of the basic facts how money and credit are created, or else continue their debt-damned existence under an oligarchic and Robber Baron-era structure.

Monetary reform creates debt-free money that extinguishes the debt (details here), and allows government to become employer of last resort for infrastructure investment (hard and soft). This creates full-employment, optimal infrastructure, and falling prices because infrastructure historically creates more value to the economy than cost. Credit reform allows for public loans (interest directly pays for public goods/services) as another monetary tool for stable money supply.

http://dailycensored.com/2012/04/16/federal-reserve-can-serve-100-not-criminal-1-prof-tim-canova-explains/