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Monetary Indicators give some hope?

The economy has fallen off a cliff, but there are at least some hopeful indications that we might not have too much further to fall. Both Calculated Risk and Econbrowser have posted graphs indicating that the severe credit crunch evident during September has eased, and while the indicators haven't gone back to normal, they are at least out of the panic zone.

In addition to those, both monetary indicators I have been tracking now point to recovery.

Oligarchs speak on the financial collapse

A guest op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday regarding the prospects of the U.S. defaulting on its debt, reminded me of a comment I had made on DailyKos about a week ago. Which led me to polishing and expanding the comment and posting it a diary.

Writing in the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard a few days before Christmas, Christopher Caldwell, reviewed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke’s erratic responses to the collapse of the financial system – and defended them::

Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan - Opinions & Analysis

Submitted by on

Obama hasn't been sworn into office yet and he's basically laid an egg on his economic stimulus plan. That said, opinions are like censored and let's look at some analysis.

Firstly we have Christina Romer & Jared Bernstein analysis.

Frankly, I find this this report odious simply going off of the principle that a 1% increase in GDP equates to 1 million jobs. Well, that's all great if the U.S. were an isolated economy, but it's not and today's GDP does not equate directly to U.S. domestic job growth, as a 1:1 correlation. Rebate checks end up buying goods from other nations. Tax cuts not dealing with global labor arbitrage and offshore outsourcing won't create jobs.

The Very Bad Year is Just the Beginning

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Anyone in denial about the United States and the economy should now get over it.

The unemployment numbers for December came in and it ain't pretty.

The unemployment rate is now 7.2%. This is the largest unemployment jump since 1945, The massive job hemorrhage shows the economy is in free fall.

 

Also the Congressional Budget Office released it's Budget 2009 Outlook report and it ain't pretty either.

  • CBO projects that the deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP
  • CBO expects federal revenues to decline by $166 billion, or 6.6 percent, from the amount in 2008
  • An unemployment rate that will exceed 9 percent early in 2010
  • CBO anticipates that the current recession, which started in December 2007, will last until the second half of 2009, making it the longest recession since World War II

How We All Get To Vote On The Stimulus Plan.

So you only have one President at a time, and clearly, right now, the President is Barack Obama who is standing up and attempting to do something about the economic situation here in the United States, a situation which is worsening by the day.

As such, the world online and off is exploding with opinion, new ideas, some old ones rehashed and many of the usual talking points being thrown around with increasing speed. Clearly, there is some great commentary being written about the Stimulus Plan, what it means and what might happen over the next days and weeks as the plan is debated.

For example, at TruthDig, it is pointed out that "Now Is No Time For Phony Thrift" lampooning Mitch McConnell who presided over hundreds of billions of dollars in government overspending, now suddenly worried about waste.

The Great Depression, Part 4

In Part I of this series, Bonddad and I looked at the years 1929 - 1933. These years saw a decline of 25% in the chained GDP figures; a failure of 20% of commercial banks, a drop in personal income from $90 billion to $50 billion and a drop in the level of industrial production from 60 to 30. In
part II we looked at the years 1934 - 1940, where we saw that growth returned to 1929 levels in 1937, although this was lowered by the recession of 1938. By 1939 GDP was again increasing. In Part III, we looked at what happened statistically and practically during the years of 1934 - 1938.
In this, our 4th and final installment, we expose and rebut the lies and distortions of the RW noise machine New Deal denialists.

Obama makes disturbing noises about entitlements

There are some very disturbing sounds coming from the President-Elect. Even more disturbing is that only a small number of people in the progressive blogsphere have picked up on what’s been said.

Stirling Newberry warned yesterday that Obama Puts New Bank Bailout in Stimulus Bill - allowing financial companies to use losses in this crisis to “recover” taxes paid on profits going back five years! As Newberry notes, “The Wall Street Journal calls it a bonanza.”

But even worse, is what Obama had to say about what he is considering now:

“We expect that discussion around entitlements will be a part, a central part” of efforts to curb federal spending, Mr. Obama said at a news conference. By February, he said, “we will have more to say about how we’re going to approach entitlement spending.”

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