I Dare You To Tell Me The Economy Is "Booming" After Reading This List Of 19 Facts...

[Ron Obvious]

I was forwarded this article, but I don't recognise or know anything about this blog so I don't know how credible it is. It's true that I find it difficult to square stories about the economic boom times we're supposedly living in with the reality of the world around me.

The following are 19 facts about our current economic performance that should deeply disturb all of us…

#1 In April, U.S. auto sales were down 6.1 percent. That was the worst decline in 8 years.

#2 The number of mortgage applications has fallen for four weeks in a row.

#3 We just witnessed the largest crash in luxury home sales in about 9 years.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/i-dare-you-to-tell-me-the-economy-is-booming-after-reading-this-list-of-19-facts-about-our-current-economic-performance

[BigmanPigman]

1. I think they must be mixing up

the stock market with real economic measures. When will they adjust the way they rate the overall economy? When will they look at real income, wages cost of living and compare it to the 50s, 60s, and 70s and the 80s and since the 80s? They would see very different numbers if they did, just ask Warren!

[FiveGoodMen]

2. "When will they adjust the way they rate the overall economy?"

When more than just the stock market matters to them.

Everything is being done for the rich.

They don't care about what happens to the rest of us.

And they manage to stay in office, so why would they change?

[TexasBushwhacker]

3. #13 is especially disturbing

"Overall, U.S. retailers have announced more than 6,000 store closings so far in 2019, and that means we have already surpassed the total for all of last year."

[trev]

23. Brick-and-mortar stores

are having trouble competing with online shopping.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. We were warned that all

GDP and Economics Stats would be skewed to the positive by Trump in his first month in office.

Notice how Jeep just shut down their Chicago Assembly because of Inventory Glut. Fourteen Hundred out the door until further notice. So those Grand Cherokee's are not making the Sales. Falcon Transport bit the dust last Friday,another thousand Drivers as well as Office Staff,hmmm,they had haulage contracts with GM and Fiat as well as Ford. No pay checks for two or more weeks.

Yup,typical Rethug economy,Koch Brothers,Waltons win,the rest still struggling.

[kimbutgar]

5. Even here in California it was in the newspaper that homes sales are down throughout the state

I know a lot of people working 2-3 jobs and are still struggling. You go into malls and they are empty even on weekends.

Something tells me these numbers are fake and the fat Donnie administration has pressured the labor department to come out with fake numbers so he brag he is the greatest. I wonder how many career employees were pushed out in this department, something the Democrats needs to investigate or at least audit.

And all those people who worked at Payless, GM and all those other companies who closed down found jobs quickly? I doubt it!

[mathematic]

6. The economy is booming and that site is straight trash.

That guy is constructing a fantasy. He then sells that fantasy to people that want to believe things are bad economically and getting worse. That notion is popular on both extremes of the political spectrum. On the right, it's because we're profligate welfare spenders so greatly in debt America will never be great again. Nonsense. On the left, it's because it doesn't matter how good things are as long as a business is making a profit somewhere somehow, our economy is a crime against humanity.

It's all garbage. The economy is doing great. The economy was doing great in 2016. White people are voting for Trump because their wallets are full enough that the only thing they worry about is "securing the existence of their people and a future for white children".

Here's a bio for the author of that "list of facts":
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_T._Snyder

Michael T. Snyder is a far-right Christian evangelist crank and conspiracy theorist who has started numerous blogs as a testament to his raging insane belief that the world is about to end. He started with The Economic Collapse Blog in 2007, with constant articles stating how the world is going to hell every single day since the meltdown started in 2007. It seems as though Snyder blames the government for every ill in the world, because without it everything would be great.

[blueinredohio]

7. I'm calling bullshit.

[riverine]

9. Kind of like that garbage CT site 'Naked Capitalism'

which has been predicting economic collapse every year since 2009.

[Celerity]

10. Naked Capitalism is NOT a CT site at all, that is an outrageous smear, complete bollocks

This blog in the OP is garbage, however.



The New York Times financial reporter Gretchen Morgenson cited Naked Capitalism as one of the "must-read financial blogs" she read regularly.

https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/04/25/follow-the-money-gretchen-morgenson-on-wall-street

Gretchen C. Morgenson is an American, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist notable as longtime writer of the Market Watch column for the Sunday "Money & Business" section of the New York Times.


NC Archive at New York Magazine

http://nymag.com/tags/naked-capitalism/



Bill Moyers

https://billmoyers.com/guest/yves-smith/

Yves Smith
Financial Blogger

Yves Smith’s blog, Naked Capitalism, is a highly-ranked and admired website focusing on the economy and finance.

With over 25 years of experience in finance, Smith has developed investment banking strategy for McKinsey & Company, played a role in acquisitions and leveraged buyouts at Goldman Sachs, and established a New York-based mergers and acquisition department for Sumitomo Bank. More recently, Smith founded Aurora Advisors Inc., a New York-based management consultant firm.

Smith’s comprehensive observations of the financial landscape have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, New York Times and Slate. She is also the author of ECONned, published in 2010, in which she “blows the top wide open on the role that economists and policy makers had in enabling Wall Street greed and misdeeds,” according to NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini.

DAILY KOS Naked Capitalism Archive

https://m.dailykos.com/news/NakedCapitalism

[riverine]

11. Yes, Naked Capitalism is garbage - here is Yves Smith's "deathwatch" on Bank of America

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/bank-of-america-deathwatch-moves-risky-derivatives-from-holding-company-to-taxpayer-backstopped-depositors.html

She shorted their stock - AFTER the great Warren Buffett invested in them and went long plus warrants. Their stock went from $5 to $30 today.

Buffett is the expert on banks and she tried to shame him (note Buffett is a Democrat and "Yves Smith is not)

She is a hack who sells grief to doomsday merchants thus the tile of her book 'Econned'.

[Celerity]

14. meh, pure tosh, go back to reading IBD

BOA WAS on the verge of collapse, they WERE a giant systemic criminal enterprise, with tens of BILLIONS in fraud and bailouts needed to prop them up.You post an 8 year old 2011 article and then try and play that off AFTER they got years and years of too big to fail, too big to jail largesse.

Bank of America received $20 billion in the federal bailout from the U.S. government through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on January 16, 2009, and a guarantee of $118 billion in potential losses at the company.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks-idUSTRE50F1Q720090116



Fraud

In 2010, the U.S. government accused the bank of defrauding schools, hospitals, and dozens of state and local government organizations via misconduct and illegal activities involving the investment of proceeds from municipal bond sales. As a result, the bank agreed to pay $137.7 million, including $25 million to the Internal Revenue service and $4.5 million to state attorney general, to the affected organizations to settle the allegations.

Former bank official Douglas Campbell pleaded guilty to antitrust, conspiracy and wire fraud charges. As of January 2011, other bankers and brokers are under indictment or investigation.

On October 24, 2012, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan filed a lawsuit alleging that Bank of America fraudulently cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion when Countrywide Financial sold toxic mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The scheme was called 'Hustle', or High Speed Swim Lane. On May 23, 2016 the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the finding of fact by the jury that low quality mortgages were supplied by Countrywide to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the "Hustle" case supported only "intentional breach of contract," not fraud. The action, for civil fraud, relied on provisions of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act. The decision turned on lack of intent to defraud at the time the contract to supply mortgages was made.

During 2011, Bank of America began conducting personnel reductions of an estimated 36,000 people, contributing to intended savings of $5 billion per year by 2014. In December 2011, Forbes ranked Bank of America's financial health 91st out of the nation's largest 100 banks and thrift institutions.

Bank of America cut around 16,000 jobs in a quicker fashion by the end of 2012 as revenue continued to decline because of new regulations and a slow economy. This put a plan one year ahead of time to eliminate 30,000 jobs under a cost-cutting program, called Project New BAC.



by all means keep defending rapacious mega-banks and massive billionaires who game the system via regulatory capture, tax avoidance, hyper complex web of financial casino gambling in a rigged market (and THEN have their losses SOCIALISED, whilst the massive profits racked up before and after are always privatised, etc etc

[riverine]

16. Bank of America took in $45 billion in TARP and repaid $49.57 billiion

for a taxpayer profit of $4.57 billion.


https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/entities/27-bank-of-america

Propublica is THE public watchdog for TARP payments.

That is not "fraud". That is harsh retribution since the penalties were all on Countrywide which BoA acquired.

You are way out of your league on this topic, pal.

[riverine]

12. Here is an essay by Yves Smith entitled 'Obama - the Great Deceiver' in which she calls him an evil

liar and charlatan.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/barack-obama-the-great-deceiver.html


If you really want to be humiliated in an argument you can take her cause up. Believe me - she is a despicable liar who hates Democrats.

[Celerity]

15. not buying what you are selling

[riverine]

17. The real question is do you still buy the bullshit of Yves Smith?

do you?

[Celerity]

18. Go do a search on this very site back in 2012, (I just did) and you will see dozens (hundreds

probably) echoing many of the same sentiments that you are trying to retroactively use revisionist re-framing on.

Like I said, I do not buy into your positing.

It is laughable that you are tying to fob off BOA as some excusable entity. The damage they and the other mega banks did to this nation (and will do in the future) is almost immeasurable.

[Ron Obvious]

13. Really?

This site and author may well be everything you say, but this:

It's all garbage. The economy is doing great. The economy was doing great in 2016. White people are voting for Trump because their wallets are full enough that the only thing they worry about is "securing the existence of their people and a future for white children".

You don't really believe that do you? You may want to look into conditions of the white working class in the rust belt states, including the loss of manufacturing and the opiate crisis. The Democratic party ignored them and called them deplorables rather than addressing their concerns, and the last election was lost because of around 70,000 votes in the midwest.

[mathematic]

21. Well Mr. Seattle I LIVE in the rust belt and know plenty of poor whites

These whites might be your rhetorical weapons you use to promote your politics but they're MY neighbors and colleagues. Actual people I know. I called many friends, Before Trump.

I know them quite well and every one that voted for trump is a stone cold racist. The middle class ones range from a dash of racism to full blown racism.

They've all got better jobs now than they did 10 years ago (if they were even working back then). They're all raising families, buying trucks, buying homes, and going on vacations (which might be as humble as a local weekend fishing trip). NONE of them complain about their financial welfare. Hell, I know a guy that manages a Denny's and you know what HE complains about? Black Steelers smoking pot and being uppity, or some shit. Loves the rapey white quarterback though. Really believes they need a wall to keep the mexicans out of west virginia, too.

Your post is like, peak 2017. Attributing Trump to economic factors? I can't believe people still believe that.

Oh and for the record I know plenty of poor whites that voted for Hillary because they might be poor but they ain't dumb fucking racists.

[D_Master81]

8. Here in Northern Indiana

we are known for RV & camper production. My neighbor said they have gone from 177 in his plant down to 96 now. And his son works at another factory that is closing 2 of its production plants. I think we're right now in the midst of an expanding bubble, I only hope it pops before Trump is gone.

[struggle4progress]

19. "But it's a great time for the rich in America!"

[ProudLib72]

20. FACT: The economy is in the toilet.

[Liberal In Texas]

22. In Trumpland the economy is doing great because the stock market is doing great.

First of all the stock market is not the economy. In a simplistic view, here is what I have been able to garner:

The stock market is doing great because the tax cut bill is allowing companies to buy back their stock. This raises the price of the stocks. CEOs are mostly paid in stock. At a lower tax rate. So CEOs are making more $. Not only is the tax law pumping the stock market, so is the low interest rates maintained by the Fed.

Now, you and I don't get low interest rates, just look at you credit card statement. But the $ being tossed around in the corporate world is practically free. If the Fed ever raises the prime thing, the house of cards will start to crumble. Just look at every time there is a hint of a rate hike, the market dives.

[Recursion]

24. We have 102 million jobless people because we have 50 million retirees

And the problem is every one of those indicators is the worst since... some earlier point in the current expansion.

The 2016 election was not about the economy; Hillary Clinton won voters who listed "jobs" or "the economy" as their chief concern by 12 points. There just weren't very many of them. There are going to be even fewer next year, barring a large downturn: the 2020 election won't be about the economy either.