Monday, August 28, 2017

Matters of Ecomomics 1

This should open some people's eyes.  Quote: "Even though I write about our ongoing long-term economic collapse every day, I didn’t realize that things were this bad.  In this article, I am going to show you that the average rate of growth for the U.S. economy over the past 10 years is exactly equal to the average rate that the U.S. economy grew during the 1930s.  Perhaps this fact shouldn’t be that surprising, because we already knew that Barack Obama was the only president in the entire history of the United States not to have a single year when the economy grew by at least 3 percent.  Of course the mainstream media continues to push the perception that the U.S. economy is in “recovery mode”, but the truth is that this current era has far more in common with the Great Depression than it does with times of great economic prosperity."    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/06/02/over-the-last-10-years-the-us-economy-has-grown-at-exactly-the-same-rate-as-it-did-during-the-1930s/ 

This is what Trump is doing that is making the political left unhappy.  But, many Americans and businesses are happy.  He is removing the Obama era shackles that were choking the economy.  See the results.  http://www.libertyheadlines.com/trump-deregulates-left-cries-foul/?  

This video reveals the truth about how bad big government is for small businesses.    https://www.prageru.com/courses/economics/big-government-kills-small-businesses

This item details a totally different banking concept that is taking hold.  Check it out.    http://www.wealthauthority.com/articles/is-it-time-to-hop-on-board-with-bofi-holding/

This former Goldman Sachs executive and Trump appointee believes the too big to fail banks need to be shrunk to size.  Lets hope that corrective action is taken to make it happen.  Quote: "In a private meeting with lawmakers, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said he supports a policy that could radically reshape Wall Street’s biggest firms by separating their consumer-lending businesses from their investment banks, said people with direct knowledge of the matter. Cohn, the ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive who is now advising President Donald Trump, said he generally favors banking going back to how it was when firms like Goldman focused on trading and underwriting securities, and companies such as Citigroup Inc. primarily issued loans, according to the people, who heard his comments. The remarks surprised some senators and congressional aides who attended the Wednesday meeting, as they didn’t expect a former top Wall Street executive to speak favorably of proposals that would force banks to dramatically rethink how they do business.   https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/04/07/destroy-all-monsters-cohn-said-to-back-wall-street-split-of-lending-investment-banks/

This deals with the subject of government pushing the minimum wage.  A good or bad idea?  Quote: In fact, given all the talking points and media coverage the issue has received lately, it's not surprising that most people assume that approximately 30 percent of US workforce earns minimum wage. Presumably something that gets so much attention affects a lot of people, right?  It only affects 1.5 percent of the entire workforce."    https://fee.org/articles/the-minimum-wage-conspiracy/?   More bad news regarding the minimum wage.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/?    More.  Robots are replacing low waged workers.    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-27/minimum-wage-massacre-wendys-unleashes-1000-robots-counter-higher-labor-costs  And, http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-ex-ceo-takes-on-minimum-wage-2016-5    Liberals must be proud to have eliminated beginner jobs for teens.  They were starter jobs.  They were never intended to pay adult workers a living wage.

This despicable arrangement between crony capitalist and government is one of the reasons our country is in such deep trouble.  https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/08/15/corporate-welfare-how-big-business-lives-off-government-subsidy/

It is government that destroys jobs.  This item explains.   https://fee.org/articles/governments-destroy-jobs-not-automation/?


It is time for both Yellen and the FED to go the way of the do-do bird.   https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/07/10/janet-yellen-false-prophet-of-prosperity/

The political left proves over and over again that they do not understand even the simple basics of economic.  Take a look at this quick review of comments Obama made several years ago and those socialist Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly spouted.   http://www.wnd.com/2017/07/you-didnt-build-that-5-years-later/   No wonder socialist economies always fail.  To them individual initiative and hard work does not exist.  Government is the source of all things right and good - they think of government as a god.

Democrats and good fiscal management do not go together.  This item elaborates.  https://libertywriters.com/2017/06/democrats-destroyed-state-unbelievable-happens-next-sick/  That being said, Republicans are more responsible but not nearly as much as they need to be.

Quote: "In a column from December of 2015, the Wall Street Journal's Mary O'Grady unveiled an inconvenient fact that poverty warriors on the American left and right would perhaps prefer remain hidden: from 1980 to 2000, when the U.S. economy boomed, the number of Mexican arrivals into the U.S. grew from 2.2 million in 1980 to 9.4 million in 2000. The previous number is a clear market signal that the U.S. is where poverty has always been cured, as opposed to a condition that requires specific U.S. policy fixes. Economic progress always and everywhere springs from investment. O'Grady's statistics came to mind while reading a recent New York Times column by Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He writes that a "highly progressive agenda [from Democratic scholars and politicians] has been coming together in recent months, one with the potential to unite both the Hillary and Bernie wings of the party, to go beyond both Clintonomics and Obamanomics."  The problem is that the agenda that's got Bernstein so giddy has nothing to do with the very economic growth that is always the source of rising economic opportunity for the poor, middle and rich."     https://fee.org/articles/the-politically-hopeless-completely-incoherent-and-totally-lame-economic-agenda-of-the-democratic-party/?

We all need to consider the implications of the contents of this piece. Quote: "As part of its historical revision to GDP, the BEA also had to adjust personal income and spending, with the full results released in today’s July report. What it revealed was striking: over the revised period, disposable personal income for US household was slashed cumulatively by over $120 billion to just under $14.4 trillion, while spending was revised higher by $105 billion, to just above $13.8 trillion. There were two immediate consequences of this result."     https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/08/02/a-quarter-trillion-dollars-in-us-savings-was-just-wiped-away/

We can learn something from this guy. Quote: "For an excellent (albeit indirect) analysis of how Austrians and libertarians can advance their cause from a minority position, Taleb’s recent article The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority is a must-read. He reminds us that a small minority with courage—the most important form of skin in the game— can prevail over the slumbering masses. And he also reminds us that courageous individual actors, not 51% mass movements, drive real changes in every society: The entire growth of society, whether economic or moral, comes from a small number of people. So we close this chapter with a remark about the role of skin in the game in the condition of society. Society doesn’t evolve by consensus, voting, majority, committees, verbose meeting, academic conferences, and polling; only a few people suffice to disproportionately move the needle. All one needs is an asymmetric rule somewhere. And asymmetry is present in about everything."    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/05/03/what-nassim-taleb-can-teach-us/#more-149453

This has been said before but is worth a repeat.  Paul Craig Roberts knows of what he speaks.  Quote: "For 66 years the Glass-Steagall act reduced the risks in the banking system. Eight years after the act was repealed, the banking system blew up threatening the international economy. US taxpayers were forced to come up with $750 billion dollars, a sum much larger than the Pentagon’s budget, in order to bail out the banks. This huge sum was insufficient to do the job. The Federal Reserve had to step in and expand its balance sheet by $4 trillion in order to protect the solvency of banks declared “too big to fail.”   And, "The enormous increase in the supply of dollars known as Quantitative Easing inflated financial asset prices instead of the consumer price index. This rise in bond and stock prices is a major cause of the worsening income and wealth distribution in the United States. The economic polarization has undercut the image and reality of the US as a land of opportunity and has introduced political and economic instability into the life of the country.  These are huge costs and for the benefit only of the rich who were already rich.  So, what we can say about the repeal of Glass-Steagall is that it turned a somewhat egalitarian democracy with a large middle class into the One Percent vs. the 99 percent. The repeal resulted in the destruction of the image of the United States as an open prosperous society. The electorate is very much aware of the decline in their economic situation, and this awareness expressed itself in the last presidential election."    And, "Not only must Glass-Steagall be restored, but also the large banks must be reduced in size. That any corporation is too big to fail is a contradiction of the justification of capitalism. Capitalism’s justification is that those corporations that misuse resources and make losses go out of business, thus releasing the misused resources to those who can use them profitably. Capitalism is supposed to benefit society, not be dependent on society to bail it out."    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/06/10/without-glass-steagall-america-will-fail/

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