Category Archives: Economy

UPDATED: The GDP Gambit

Official GDP numbers are deceptive because they chart—and include—the growth of government debt. In order to come to grips with America’s real economic prognosis, you must tease apart modest economic growth from the monstrous accretion of public debt.

In his latest book, “The Real Crash: America’s Coming Bankruptcy, How to Save Yourself and Your Country,” financier Peter Schiff does just that, noting that, “From 2008 to 2009 our national GDP (of around $14 trillion) contracted by $212 billion. To prevent any further dips, the government aggressively spent, borrowing heavily to do so. To the relief of just about everyone, these moves did stop the nominal contraction. From 2010 to 2011 the U.S. GDP expanded by $502 billion, and from 2011 to 2012 it added an additional $508 billion. All told, from the end of 2008 the U.S. economy added a cumulative $798 billion in GDP. But those gains came at a very high price.”

“The combined federal deficits for the same time frame come in at a staggering $4.2 trillion! In 2009 alone the feds chalked up a chart breaking $1.4 trillion in debt (the deficit was a mere $161 billion in 2007). In other words, we borrowed five times more than we grew. This ‘strategy’ for growth is no different from an individual who loses half his income, but continues to spend by running up credit card debt.”

Could this be described as economic growth? But that’s just how we are describing our current economy, and for the large part, expert economists, politicians, investors, and academics all agree..”

UPDATE (May 30): Writes Nixter Jeelvy on Facebook : “GDP = Aggregate Demand = all the money SPENT within a year, within the nation. It’s no measure of wealth, Lord Keynes and his pipe dreams be damned.”

The President’s Proboscis Problem

Barack Obama, Bush, Debt, Democrats, Economy

If, like Pinocchio, a politician’s proboscis grew each time he lied, the world would be overtaken by noses flopping about everywhere.

Congressional Budget Office figures, cited by the Wall Street Journal, are finessed. US debt problem is worse than CBO projections.

Still the amount of lying Obama manages is quite impressive:

Obama’s claim that “federal spending since [he] took office has risen at the slowest pace of any President in almost 60 years,” is audacious. (And yes, Bush set the example.) It’s “like an alcoholic claiming that his rate of drinking has slowed because he had only 22 beers today and 25 beers yesterday. (WSJ)

Notwithstanding that GDP measures include the Brownian Motion of debt growth, “Prior to Mr. Obama, the U.S. had not spent more than 23.5% of GDP—that was in 1983, amid the Reagan defense buildup—since the end of World War II. Yet Mr. Obama has managed to exceed that four years in a row: 25.2% in 2009, 24.1% in 2010 and 2011, and an estimated 24.3% in 2012, up from a range between 18%-21% from 1994-2008.”

Mr. Obama can fairly blame $1 trillion or so of the $5 trillion debt increase of the last four years on Mr. Bush. But what about the other $4 trillion? Debt held by the public now stands at 74.2% of the economy, up from 40.5% at the end of 2008—and rising rapidly.

UPDATE III: Planet Facebook Owns It (The Little Guy/Gal Needs Social Media)

Business, Democracy, Economy, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Internet, Labor, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Technology

“Planet Facebook Owns It” is the title of my new column, now on WND. Here’s an excerpt:

“The more you hear from your average, financial-markets hater—the more you wish you could transport each one back to a mud hut in a far-away land, where women wear grass skirts, and carry their groceries on their heads, and where no man dares to or is capable of dreaming-up businesses like Costco, Overstock.com, or Facebook.

Planet Facebook, in particular, is a global, social, political, and potential economic revolution. Had the idea for this social-networking site not come into being, we’d be the poorer for it.

Facebook users love it and cannot imagine life without. Yes, they complain endlessly—but largely because they can. Unlike government (and CNN’s Anderson Cooper), you can keep private enterprise honest. Business aims to please its constituents, the consumers. Complaints encourage compliance.

Facebook went public. In the process of going public, some people got rich, or richer; others didn’t.

INDIVIDUALS VS. CORPORATIONS: To the media, these are two antagonistic and atomistic solitudes, never the twain shall meet. This ‘angels versus demons’ caricature is lapped up by the masses, even though most of them own shares in major American companies, through their pension funds.

Most Americans benefit from and are heavily vested in corporate America.

True to this cartoon, the Little Guy is depicted as good; Big Players as bad. Invariably, those who can’t get rich off an initial public offering (IPO) are labeled sympathetically as ‘small investors,’ or ‘retail investors.’ Those who land in the lap of luxury for the umpteenth time, because of their capacity to invest vast sums, are dubbed derisively ‘big investors,’ ‘Wall Street.’

SIMPLIFIED: People with oodles of money make a killing. People without much money would kill to be in their shoes.

U2’s Bono exemplifies the first type. Bono might be a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners, but he knows a good business deal when he sees one. In 2009, the singer invested $90 million in Facebook stock.

Cui bono, you ask. And the answer as to who benefits from Bono’s industry is this: The singer has pledged the $1.5 billion he reaped from his Facebook investment to charities in Africa.

Business, in contrast to Barack Obama, is a positive-sum game. …”

Read the complete column, “Planet Facebook Owns It,” now on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column (WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column) in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” “Return To Reason” on WND, and the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT.

UPDATE I: Myron, “that FACEBOOK is overpriced” doesn’t contradict what I wrote, to the effect that “… prices are supposed to fluctuate continuously, as market forces bring supply and demand into balance.” Does it?

UPDATE II: To “Old Man”: I don’t hang out on Facebook, much less on twitter. Rather, I use social media quite efficiently to promote my work, only. I’ve gotten good at this efficiency. I waste no time at all, engaging in little extraneous discussion. In fact, when that “Hi, baby” chat window pops up at me (you can no longer disable the thing with ease), I “Unfriend” the creep right away.
For the little gal with no promotional assistance, Facebook is business. If you look at my pages, you’ll see that all my blogs propagate to Facebook and twitter (now, there’s a useless forum) mostly automatically through special applications interfaces. (Of course, these often malfunction, but not nearly as badly and as routinely as the government does.)
My book I advertised on Facebook, managing to reach 3 million pages, if I recall. That was a bit of creative work.
How cool is that? Very cool when you have no other promo support. As hard as it is to fathom, I’ve worked uphill to get my book out on Amazon, the Only Bookshop That Matters. As I noted in the “MAÑANA” blog post, “the softcover of The Cannibal is coming ‘Mañana,’ Pacific Time.” (The hardcover is available, for now.)
Although the soft-spined (but never spineless) Cannibal has been collated (in-house by myself and my husband) and features bonus material, its Publisher disavows Amazon, and is in no rush to supply the Only Store Worth Supplying with Cannibal softcover copies. (“After almost a decade in the Pacific Northwest region, I can safely say that, with a few treasured exceptions, people outside the Microsoft workforce (who, with Boeing, is the main employer here) have a hard time acting professionally and honorably.”)

So, yes, Facebook can be valuable for the Little Guy/Gal, who has no other option but to work it .

Incidentally, employers can, through Facebook, find out something about the bums they are about to employ. For example, I had employed a social media person, initially. This being America, the paid personnel rarely responded to my inquiries. Busy was she? Not on your life. She was chatting frivolously on Facebook, in real time, as I tried to reach her via email. Since then, three more potential “workers” have conducted themselves similarly. (It’s America. We are, for the most, unmotivated by obligation, professionalism, contract, intellectual honestly, or proprietary; but by how things make us feel. Doing the right thing we frame as an act of heroism.)

UPDATE (May 26): Thanks for your support for this work, Nell. As I said, the writer in this instance has no influence. Readers will have to use their clout to get the softcover issue to the Amazon market, where most readers prefer to shop. Do contact the publisher.

UPDATE II: Bush Babies ‘Debunk’ Obama ‘Smirk Fests on MSNBC’ (Liars All)

Barack Obama, Bush, Debt, Democrats, Economy

To put it in the most charitable terms, the claim made by the emissaries of the liberal media—“MSNBC , liberal blogs, newspapers and even the Wall Street Journal”—that “Federal spending under Obama [is] at historic lows” is counterintuitive. Surprise, surprise: In charting the evidence for their claims, these sources are lying:

“It turns out,” writes Ann Coulter, in “Figures don’t lie – Democrats do,” that “Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama’s entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.

That’s not a joke.”

Nutting’s “analysis” is so dishonest, even the New York Times has ignored it. He includes only the $140 billion of stimulus money spent after Oct. 1, 2009, as Obama’s spending. And he’s testy about that, grudgingly admitting that Obama “is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill.”
Nutting acts as if it’s the height of magnanimity to “attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush. …”
On what possible theory would that be Bush’s spending? Hey – we just found out that Obamacare’s going to cost triple the estimate. Let’s blame it on Calvin Coolidge!
But Obama didn’t come in and live with the budget Bush had approved. He immediately signed off on enormous spending programs that had been specifically rejected by Bush. This included a $410 billion spending bill Bush had refused to sign before he left office. Obama signed it on March 10, 2009. Bush had been chopping brush in Texas for two months at that point. Marketwatch’s Nutting says that’s Bush’s spending.

Of course, Ann Coulter is still a Bush baby. The factual information she offers in “Figures don’t lie – Democrats do” notwithstanding, Coulter is making the standard excuses for Genghis B., who set the pace for Obama.

She ignores that the two presidents, Bush and Obama, coexist on “a continuum of criminality.”

The correct, cynical tone about Obama-Bush comparisons was taken in, dare I say, “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism“?

Moocher Obama has pulled ahead of Looter Bush with respect to deficits and debt. The Bush budget for 2009 was a trivial $3 trillion, while Obama’s 2010 budget was a respectable $3.5 trillion. According to “Bankrupting America,” “Bush doubled the debt to almost $6 trillion and Obama’s plans would leave us with an IOU of an additional $8.5 trillion by 2020.”
C’mon. Six trillion; 8 trillion: the act of racking up such financial liabilities exists on a continuum of criminality ? it does not constitute a difference in kind (or in “core values”).

UPDATE I: LIARS ALL. There is structural lying in all government accounting (via Lou Dobbs).

UPDATE II: TORTURED DATA. “Federal spending has risen at its lowest pace” under his administration, claims BHO. “Torture data enough and it’ll confess,” quipped Stephen Moore, of the Wall Street Journal, to Fox Business’ Gerri Willis.