Who’s responsible for the current economic expansion, Obama or Trump? Trump has enjoyed good numbers since becoming president. But things were improving toward the end of Obama’s term. But for many Americans who are still struggling, there is no boom to argue about.
Obama or Trump: Which President Gets Credit for the Economic Boom?
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A few bits of fallout from this particular boom.
1 As we all know, the unemployment rate that is used by the mainstream media is a fiction. It doesn’t count people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, prisoners, people who simply aren’t looking for work, etc. The U-2 counts people who are currently collecting unemployment.
2. The Dow Jones Industrial Average. If a stock does badly, it gets booted off the DJIA. (More of point 1.) The numbers look great because only the great numbers are counted. Take a look at all the treadmills you’ve seen that are used to hang clothes on. The commercials never show those users, just the toned, tight, sexy-cored lunatics who put in 10 miles a day for three years. The ones with the shiny eyes and the brittle, almost-hysterical smiles are the ones who tell you how easy it is to shed those bulky pounds.
3. The companies aren’t hiring. They’re using the boom times to buy back stocks. This is analogous to other con artists. Once you’ve plucked the table nearly clean, you start calling in the IOU’s so that you can leave before they get wise to you. Get out of the game now before the bottom drops out.
I don’t like the doomsayers–mainly because they’re like televangelists and psychics; when they finally get it right by luck, they claim that as a hit, but they will not hear a word about all the times they were wrong–but I keep thinking the next crash isn’t going to be like the dot-com or the housing mortgage bubble. It’s going to be a cascade failure. This next one, they won’t be able to hold back to just one sector. Maybe it will start with the student loans or the credit cards. Maybe someone will finally commit an act of cyberterrorism in the U.S. that will zero out everyone’s bank account. Maybe it will just be a plain old collapse, but this time, it’s just going to spread, and spread, and spread.
Obama’s “recovery” went right to the top 1%. The rest of us got scraps, if that. Trump’s “recovery”? The stock market’s soaring. No one’s answering where all the Baby Boomers are going to get the money they need to retire. You think they’re going to accept finally being handed the bill for the party they ran for the last 40 years? They all thought they’d be dead before that particular bill landed on the table.
P.S. Ted, you should get the book in a day or two.
«The numbers look great because only the great numbers are counted.» Or, in the saying attributed by a centain Mr Clemens to Disraeli : «Lies damned lies, and statistics». If one gets to choose what one measures, it’s not surprising that the measurement often correspond to one’s interests. Good of Ted – and Alex – to remind us….
Henri
Great points, Alex.
“the unemployment rate that is used by the mainstream media is a fiction.”
Dolphins are seen by some to be (as now the economy is) the friend of humans, because they are said to have saved drowning men by pushing them to shore.
But no one knows of, or speaks of the humans (like the victims of the economy) who are pushed further out to sea and never heard of, or seen again.
GDP, the bedrock unit of measure for growth, is also problematic.
My understanding is, if one billionaire sells a 400 million dollar Van Gogh to another billionaire, that then counts as 400 million added to GDP. (right?)
Also, stock buybacks, I would guess. All of those useless transactions are added to GDP, are they not?
So while it may appear that there is growth, very little of that actually has anything to do with money going to the 99%.
Economists have to do better.
An economist who did better would be putting his own employment is jeopardy.
in jeopardy
> My understanding is, if one billionaire sells a 400 million dollar Van Gogh to another billionaire, that then counts as 400 million added to GDP. (right?)
Nope – the P is for “product” The vn Gogh is an already-existing item. It was a product back when it was painted.
You still need to produce something to create new wealth, so that your boss can buy more van Goghs
«My understanding is, if one billionaire sells a 400 million dollar Van Gogh to another billionaire, that then counts as 400 million added to GDP. (right?)» According to this source>, Aaron, the most common method of calculating a country’s GDP, the so-called «Expenditure Approach», that would indeed seem to be the case, as the purchaser spent that amount of money to buy the painting. However, if I understand matters aright, according to the «Production or Value-Added Approach», if the seller (presuming it was not Dhr Van Gogh himself) had himself purchased it from someone else for, say, 300 million USD, than the above sale would only add some 100 million USD to the GDP. I suppose that is what is meant by karma…. 😉
Henri
Economists need to do better?
Economists are paid well to do EXACTLY what they are doing: being “expert” apologists for the financial crimes of the 0.001%.
Exactly!
Roger. Thanks all. Good stuff.
Current U-6 Unemployment Rate for August 2018 is:
7.4% down from 7.9% in July and 8.1% in June.
It was 7.3% in May and 7.4% in April, 8.1% in March, and 8.6% in February
Differential between U3 and U6 reaches September 2006 Lows
The Gallup equivalent to U-6 (they call the “Underemployment Rate”) is no longer being published.
https://unemploymentdata.com/what-is-u-6-unemployment/
All,
(Keep in mind, it’s only because of Ted’s cartoons that my mind ends up going down these dark, dank corridors …)
I think part of the reason why I think the NEXT bubble will be catastrophic (and I don’t just mean Cayden and Taylor will have to settle for iceberg lettuce at the wedding dinner instead of artisanal kale infused with baby arugula reduction) is that the dot-com bubble was during the Internet’s infancy. The 2007 bubble? Facebook went public (meaning everyone could get on it) in late 2006. Twitter started in March 2006. As I recall, their presence was minimal at the time of the actual collapse. In the next collapse? I think a lot of the media’s sins will be brought to a head.
Here’s a small example of what I mean. At the UN the other day, the news tells me, world leaders laughed at Trump during his address to the general assembly when he bragged about how bigly his administration was going. Yes. They laughed. And the media got that right. The bit they left out? Go watch it yourself. After they laughed, histrionics-tending Trump made a disarming joke about it, and the assembly genuinely laughed–not AT but WITH him. No one’s riding the media’s ass on that because the narrative on Twitter and Facebook is that Trump is evil, Trump is single-handedly going to kill the world, Trump is standing right behind you, even as I type this, waiting to strangle you with his huge, manly hands. …
What happens when the bubble bursts though? The media is going to face a massive attack from Twitter and Facebook. It’ll go something like this: the stock market collapses. How did the Dow plummet 2,300 points in five days? What? The DJIA is a meaningless number? The real unemployment stats are WHAT? Omigod, did you read this? How could the media have told us all this horseshit for so long?
That’s when the panic will set in. When a large enough number of people finally discover that the books have been cooked for decades and the people who were supposed to warn them never said boo about it. Ought to be quite a show. …
Three “economists” worth consulting:
Michael Hudson
Jack Rasmus
Doug Henwood
Lonks to the websites of wo economists worth consulting follow below. A third will be found in my own reply to this post:
Michael Hudson
Jack Rasmus
Links to three economists worth consulting will follow in this post
and sequential replies:
Michael Hudson
Jack Rasmus
Doug Henwood
Trick question right?
The economy never improved.
Stock market looks good.
I suggest going to http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts and seeing the truth.
If the economy was good under Obama or Trump, why are there so many homeless? Children without food? Record Social services? People out of the labor force?
Do you people NOT pay attention?
Or simply CHOOSE to be factually ignorant?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/billionaire-la-times-owner-calls-social-media-the-cancer-of-our-time.html
Billionaire LA Times owner calls ‘fake news’ and how it spreads on social media the ‘cancer of our time’
LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong advocates for a change in how people consume news on social media.
Social platforms may have revolutionized how people get information, but they’ve also been criticized for spreading fake news.
“The short attention span we’re creating in this millennium is actually very dangerous,” he says.
“That Rall case really gets on my tits.”
Sorry. It’s Rall who is the Democrat in populist clothing.
Well, that and those who don’t look at the real stats regarding poverty and employment.
Of course everyone since Johnson has doctored unemployment figures.
I think Bikers should sue the rich over the cultural appropriation of 1%
“One percenter
Some outlaw motorcycle clubs can be distinguished by a “1%” patch worn on the colors. This is said to refer to a comment by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) that 99% of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens, implying the last one percent were outlaws.[25]
The alleged AMA comment, supposedly a response to the Hollister riot in 1947,[26][27] is denied by the AMA, who claim to have no record of such a statement to the press and that the story is a misquote”