To the man on the street in most G-8 countries, life hasn't recovered at all post-2007/2008. And for true improvements in everyday life, I'm sure it's been stagnant for 2-3 decades. When US corps. can simply be HQ'd here, but build and sell products overseas without any interaction with US shores, how relevant is that activitity truly to US indicators. Or $ being made here is remitted to some other country. The rest of the G-8 and G-20 can deal with these issues too, when "Chinese" products are built next door and sold in Vietnam, or "Indian" products are built and sold in Bangladesh.
"Slowdown"? Old rivalries will become physical when Thais see Cambodians stealing their work. Damn, my thinking is getting in the way of feel good, Chamber of Commerce/DC/Wall Street/MSM lies.
I guess once political and business leaders have an agenda that requires acknowledging a slowdown, only then will they do it (e.g., needing QE3-QE99, more visas for "smarter, more talented entrepreneurs + workers").
OECD just released their economic indicators. The U.S. can be interpreted as "stagnant", which it certainly is.
The CLIs for Japan, the United States and Russia remain above long term trend but continue to point to dissipating momentum, especially in the case of Russia.
The CLIs for France, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Euro Area as a whole continue to point towards economic activity below long-term trend. In Italy the CLI signals point more strongly to a slowdown.
The CLIs for China and India point strongly to a slowdown with economic activity falling below long-term trend.
In Brazil the CLI continues to point to economic activity returning towards long-term trend but with a weaker intensity than in last month’s assessment.
Needs to be written out of law, in other words we need Congress to either clearly state a corporation is not a person, or force them to be subject to societal rules. Example, they must give back to the U.S. by "swearing an oath of loyalty", hiring citizens.
Then, our meta corporate personhood. At the bottom is coverage of Margaret Blair, testimony before Congress with some exceptional policy suggestions to start making corporations act in the national interest.
The link above under residential real estate goes to all of the economic statistical overviews. A huge question is how much "shadow" inventory is still around but inventories have dropped overall. I think nationally, housing prices haven't hit bottom, as case-shiller mentioned earlier in the year. But overall, the "cliff dive" has stopped. Beyond institutional and foreign investors and I think I link to the amazing amount of Canadians buying U.S. houses, I don't see some "amazing recovery" for housing. I see housing kind of rolling around where it is, maybe a small uptick but anyone who believes we're returning to the days of 2004 even I think they are smokin' crack. I see nothing in the data to suggest this and let's see....
What was that about "green shoots" in 2009 and "the unemployment rate will drop quickly" and so on? In other words, I can't count how many times Bonddad has been dead wrong on these predictions, but so have many other "financial pundits".
More amazing after so many "predictions" out there which are outright fiction, why are these people still read?
Anyway, I can see residential fixed investment going up to even 0.8 percentage points of GDP, so that's an increase in activity, but hardly this massive "saving of the economy". That said, if Congress doesn't do anything about those draconian budget cuts, I think the CBO is dead on as have the Fed hinted, we will see negative GDP in 2013.
Check out James Hamilton's take, it's in the first comment. Pretty much is close to what this article is about.
"Will Housing Save the Economy in the Second Half? Their Stocks Say Yes
Over the last few weeks, both NDD and I have weighed in on the housing market, arguing that we've put in a bottom and that we could see a big improvement in the second half. The stocks of this sector are starting to agree with that assessment.
I would be very interested in hearing your take on the subject. Frankly, I'm confused. Who is going to be buying houses give unemployment, marginal employment, low wages, increased medical expenses...have I missed anything?
Citizens United is based upon the faulty premise that corporations enjoy "personhood". In fact, at one time, corporate charters were only valid for twenty years and some charters had double liability provisions.
It appears that the time limitation on corporate charters was removed to perpetuate Federal Reserve.
The point is that corporations already have representation through the citizens who purchase stock and the citizens they choose to employ. Effectively, Citizen's United give the corporation an extra voice that is not necessarily composed exclusively of citizens.
Housing in the US is such an interesting issue, same as China and other nations face too.
1) Even if people wanted to buy houses and enter into 30 year contracts with banksters that they could trust in and never fear banksters would screw them in, how could they ever count on securing a safe, stable job in the same locale for 10+ years when the govt. and American companies are doing everything they can to scare the Hell out of Americans, force them into short-term/low-wage contract jobs (when they offer jobs)? There's such a contradiction there and given the IQ + corruption of banks, companies (even real estate companies), and govt., I'm not sure they even care to address this dichotomy. A mortgage requires faith in multiple systems and organizations and in one's future, I see that honestly destroyed. A rental agreement one can get out of within a month or two and move across the world for work if necessary seems essential nowadays as companies seem to view people more and more as expendable cogs for short-term use with no value to them.
If you don't create community builders through govt. and company actions, then they need to prepare for a Nation of people who will move at the drop of a hat - burdening local services without property taxes or forcing a new way to provide local services people want.
2) Should new housing construction even be sought at this point given the overabundace of homes that aren't moving, are off the lists because of shadow inventory, etc.? Again, the US has entire sections of cities and towns that are uninhabited, so the govt., average citizens, banks, and companies should look into how these sections of the USA can be fixed and people can find good housing in areas that will be utilized effectively with good schools, fire+police, sewage, etc. There's no point building more homes in Detroit or southern Cal. or AZ. or Nevada if the neighborhood around it is completely vacant, banks are sitting on homes next to new construction, the city won't provide sewage service to the house, or no jobs can be found within 50 miles, etc. China has ghost cities, so it's in this same predicament too, but is 100% building a property bubble to give the world the impression it's got no probs.
Again, as long as the average person isn't involved in the govt. + policy making, nothing true or productive will come. Only suckers would look to DC, Wall Street, and the real estate industry for insightful questions and real answers - until honest people and groups are involved, we'll keep discussing BS "fixes" to banksters and less regulation = better times for America, no hiring is a result of "too many taxes for job creators," and housing bottoms called every week and how everyone needs to buy a house (why they should when too much debt is always blamed on the consumers, or how the press keeps telling people to remain mobile cogs, or with what $ is not even discussed).
If anyone wants specific details on BLS data, please leave a comment. Unanswered question, observation? There is a lot of material to cover out of the BLS and then there is a huge problem with "missing" data, as well as the never ending problem of the CES and CPS differences. I'm curious to know what kind of unanswered details people want to know more about. Literally I could fill the site up with labor statistics graphs and one reason I have a tendency to ignore race statistics, esp. because those definitions are so "1960's". Today we need by immigration status. Because the BLS "Asian" statistics are front loaded with foreign guest workers and "Hispanics" are front loaded with illegals, about the only minority it's safe to bet are mostly U.S. citizens are "Blacks".
Investments consisting of purchases of private residential structures as well as residential equipment that is owned by landlords and rented to tenants.
Investment in residential structures consists of new construction of permanent-site single-family and multi-family units, improvements (additions, alterations, and major structural replacements) to housing units, expenditures on manufactured homes, brokers’ commissions on the sale of residential property, and net purchases of used structures from government agencies. Residential structures also include some types of equipment that are built into residential structures, such as heating and air-conditioning equipment.
So, because existing homes are just changing hands, unless they are owned by the government, in terms of growth, it's just the commissions and business/activity surrounding selling and buying that existing home. FYI, next time you see some brew ha-ha from NAR. It's new construction that's more important, in terms of GDP.
Finding BEA quick definitions is irritating, most often the methods are buried in some large pdf.
James Hamilton, over at Econbrowser just put up some tables of housing's contribution to GDP in recent recessions and right afterwards. Click here to read his article. Lots of tables, graphs, statistics to amplify his points.
Very nice, he seems also to be pointing to dark clouds and there is no return to the housing bubble to temporarily stimulate economic growth as well.
Even when people find a job in today's America, they are often short-term, terminable within a day's notice, contract jobs with no benefits. Good luck trying to date someone, marry someone, settle down in one town or city, lease a car, lease an apartment or buy a house, have a pet, or, dream a dream - have a kid or two that you might want to raise as a good American who would actually think politicians or their masters are anything but the lowest of the low, with these new "jobs." This has also been preplanned. The puppets in the media were prepping the populace with all the "benefits" of terminate on-site contract jobs for the last decade (what do you mean you can't make a livable income when you're competing with other freelancers willing to work for $2/hr.). Shockingly, those jobs always seem to benefit the manager or CEO, never the worker bees who must find someway to feed themselves when they are terminated with no notice. But temp agencies that post fake jobs and HR asshats and CEO dolts make $$$, and if you don't look 24/7 365 for these jobs and take them when offered - you must be just another "lazy American" (per MSM). Oh, by the way, if you don't accept these jobs, you will be forced to pay for an internship to gain experience so that one day you might work for $1/hr. after min. wages are eliminated.
Whatever you do, don't ask why someone would ever pay a worker if workers can be forced to work for free, DC and corporate America don't like questioning or intelligent citizens aka "smartasses" - thus the deemphasis on real education and real thinking.
The Grapes of Wrath was Nirvana compared to this crap. Tom Joad is coming back real soon and he is mighty pissed off. Good for Tom, I look forward to it, along with many, many other screwed over Americans.
We'll be putting up a graph of directly calculated "alternative" unemployment rate. I cannot confirm shadowstats, as stated many times, for he does not tell exactly what he is counting and from where. That's HUGE and if I cannot validate someone's methods, then why should I believe those statistics are valid?
Seriously, that's a huge deal to not explain one's assumptions, data points, methods.
That said, our own "alternative" unemployment rate is typically between 18-19%. Coming soon but one thing we do is calculate this directly from the BLS data and by definitions.
I hope to put up much more over the weekend on jobs generally. I don't want to announce what kind of numbers I'm after in case I cannot really find enough to put forth some valid stats, but this will be "all about jobs" in terms of articles.
It's truly tragic because every day all the politicians just posture and delay improving anything, spew out the same crappy lines, but keep on raking in dough and living their lives while shadowstats continues to show 22%+ real unemployment using old measures. Oh look, MSM says Mitt "The son of an ultimate insider/powerplayer" Romney was on a jetski, so Obama must care about the unemployed more (huh?). Oh look, MSM tells me Obama's family is partying globally while raising funds from banksters so Romney must care about the unemployed more. Gosh, which one cares more, heads or tails, such massive difference (sarc)?
Meanwhile, every day another job is lost due to NAFTA, or CAFTA, or the new TPP, another family will go homeless, or another unemployed + overqualified vet or other American will kill themselves. But the money and speaking fees will be lined up, the politicians will take another paid-in-full vacation, and they couldn't give less of a [fill-in-the-blank]. They have no incentive to change anything, absolutely none. Obama and every single Dem will become ludicrously wealthy after they leave office no matter what, and the same for every Republican. Meanwhile, tens of millions of more Americans simply count less and less. Meanwhile LIBOR scandal shows the rich keep getting richer and don't care about the unwashed masses. Maybe the French and Russians in years past had no other choice to get the "elites" attention. At this point, do our elites really care about us besides spinning fairy tales on the MSM? Doesn't look like it.
The idea that only the Commerce Clause governs insurance is pure fiction. McCarran Ferguson owns federal authority through a body called NAIC - the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. This body has authority to standardize any state rule or regulation regarding insurance. This is because insurance regulation, when disputes arise over standards, is a federal matter.
NAIC has never been shy about standardizing rules nation-wide so that there is consistency. The U.S. has always been a federal system, unlike our Confederacy, and unlike the EU, another Confedaracy.
So the Commerce Clause of Article I is secondary. The power of McCarran derives from Article I enumerated powers. That power has never been challenged in 70 years. SCOTUS is a political body, geared towards the most reactionary of agendas. The leak from Scalia proves this.
If the SCOTUS decision were thorough and well researched, there would be references to McCarran-Ferguson in some form.
In a convoluted way, SCOTUS validated a Affordable Care Act that few want, for reasons hardly any informed observers can accept.
The minute we saw refusal to let Greece have a managed bankruptcy, beyond the eventual CDS hair cuts, all due to sovereign bond holdings in banks and CDSes by investors, you know Banks trump nation-states.
At minimum, we need Glass-Steagall back, 100%. But these Banks own governments, figuratively, through political "donations" and literally.
Lying, manipulating numbers, creative accounting, 105 repos and on and on and on. But the biggest crime to me is the destruction of the real, production economies, the financialization of the globe, which has in turn led to more offshore outsourcing, labor arbitrage and middle class destruction.
Parliament's Select Committee put bankster arrogance on display yet again. Calling everyone by their first names when he "responded" to questions/lathered himself up in self-love? No regrets, no humility, Barclays is a "master of the universe" still despite causing the entire world to be bilked out of hundreds of trillions of dollars in the bankster cartel? Business as usual, move on, nothing to see here yet again.
Can you imagine a suspect/defendant calling a cop, prosecutor, corrections officer, or judge by their first names? But yet these criminals show who controls and owns who. They truly believe they are above-the-law because, for all intents and purposes, they are.
"Sorry, Joe, I refuse to answer any question. So I raped, robbed, and pillaged globally, so what? Oh, hi John, I own you, so don't dare arrest me. Hi Jane, how's being a judge? I'll see you on the golf course. By the way, the public annoys me. Can you make them be my slaves in return for me not killing them?"
Between this and the ISM employment sub-indices, I expect to see a BLS report around or above 100k tomorrow. But you can bet I'll be graphing that puppy up til doomsday. I think I'll try to do some quarterlies, since the month-to-month on BLS data is really flaked out, esp. the CPS survey, high noise IMHO.
Glad you appreciate this, I find getting a feel for data without graphs or at least tables is nuts.
Thanks,
You provide empirical reasons for what I intuitively felt.
Best
Tom
To the man on the street in most G-8 countries, life hasn't recovered at all post-2007/2008. And for true improvements in everyday life, I'm sure it's been stagnant for 2-3 decades. When US corps. can simply be HQ'd here, but build and sell products overseas without any interaction with US shores, how relevant is that activitity truly to US indicators. Or $ being made here is remitted to some other country. The rest of the G-8 and G-20 can deal with these issues too, when "Chinese" products are built next door and sold in Vietnam, or "Indian" products are built and sold in Bangladesh.
"Slowdown"? Old rivalries will become physical when Thais see Cambodians stealing their work. Damn, my thinking is getting in the way of feel good, Chamber of Commerce/DC/Wall Street/MSM lies.
I guess once political and business leaders have an agenda that requires acknowledging a slowdown, only then will they do it (e.g., needing QE3-QE99, more visas for "smarter, more talented entrepreneurs + workers").
OECD just released their economic indicators. The U.S. can be interpreted as "stagnant", which it certainly is.
Needs to be written out of law, in other words we need Congress to either clearly state a corporation is not a person, or force them to be subject to societal rules. Example, they must give back to the U.S. by "swearing an oath of loyalty", hiring citizens.
Check out some of Ralph Gomory's articles on this.
Then, our meta corporate personhood. At the bottom is coverage of Margaret Blair, testimony before Congress with some exceptional policy suggestions to start making corporations act in the national interest.
The link above under residential real estate goes to all of the economic statistical overviews. A huge question is how much "shadow" inventory is still around but inventories have dropped overall. I think nationally, housing prices haven't hit bottom, as case-shiller mentioned earlier in the year. But overall, the "cliff dive" has stopped. Beyond institutional and foreign investors and I think I link to the amazing amount of Canadians buying U.S. houses, I don't see some "amazing recovery" for housing. I see housing kind of rolling around where it is, maybe a small uptick but anyone who believes we're returning to the days of 2004 even I think they are smokin' crack. I see nothing in the data to suggest this and let's see....
What was that about "green shoots" in 2009 and "the unemployment rate will drop quickly" and so on? In other words, I can't count how many times Bonddad has been dead wrong on these predictions, but so have many other "financial pundits".
More amazing after so many "predictions" out there which are outright fiction, why are these people still read?
Anyway, I can see residential fixed investment going up to even 0.8 percentage points of GDP, so that's an increase in activity, but hardly this massive "saving of the economy". That said, if Congress doesn't do anything about those draconian budget cuts, I think the CBO is dead on as have the Fed hinted, we will see negative GDP in 2013.
Check out James Hamilton's take, it's in the first comment. Pretty much is close to what this article is about.
Today 8/7 Bonddad leads off with:
"Will Housing Save the Economy in the Second Half? Their Stocks Say Yes
Over the last few weeks, both NDD and I have weighed in on the housing market, arguing that we've put in a bottom and that we could see a big improvement in the second half. The stocks of this sector are starting to agree with that assessment.
I would be very interested in hearing your take on the subject. Frankly, I'm confused. Who is going to be buying houses give unemployment, marginal employment, low wages, increased medical expenses...have I missed anything?
So I'd love to know what you think
Best
Tom
Citizens United is based upon the faulty premise that corporations enjoy "personhood". In fact, at one time, corporate charters were only valid for twenty years and some charters had double liability provisions.
It appears that the time limitation on corporate charters was removed to perpetuate Federal Reserve.
The point is that corporations already have representation through the citizens who purchase stock and the citizens they choose to employ. Effectively, Citizen's United give the corporation an extra voice that is not necessarily composed exclusively of citizens.
Housing in the US is such an interesting issue, same as China and other nations face too.
1) Even if people wanted to buy houses and enter into 30 year contracts with banksters that they could trust in and never fear banksters would screw them in, how could they ever count on securing a safe, stable job in the same locale for 10+ years when the govt. and American companies are doing everything they can to scare the Hell out of Americans, force them into short-term/low-wage contract jobs (when they offer jobs)? There's such a contradiction there and given the IQ + corruption of banks, companies (even real estate companies), and govt., I'm not sure they even care to address this dichotomy. A mortgage requires faith in multiple systems and organizations and in one's future, I see that honestly destroyed. A rental agreement one can get out of within a month or two and move across the world for work if necessary seems essential nowadays as companies seem to view people more and more as expendable cogs for short-term use with no value to them.
If you don't create community builders through govt. and company actions, then they need to prepare for a Nation of people who will move at the drop of a hat - burdening local services without property taxes or forcing a new way to provide local services people want.
2) Should new housing construction even be sought at this point given the overabundace of homes that aren't moving, are off the lists because of shadow inventory, etc.? Again, the US has entire sections of cities and towns that are uninhabited, so the govt., average citizens, banks, and companies should look into how these sections of the USA can be fixed and people can find good housing in areas that will be utilized effectively with good schools, fire+police, sewage, etc. There's no point building more homes in Detroit or southern Cal. or AZ. or Nevada if the neighborhood around it is completely vacant, banks are sitting on homes next to new construction, the city won't provide sewage service to the house, or no jobs can be found within 50 miles, etc. China has ghost cities, so it's in this same predicament too, but is 100% building a property bubble to give the world the impression it's got no probs.
Again, as long as the average person isn't involved in the govt. + policy making, nothing true or productive will come. Only suckers would look to DC, Wall Street, and the real estate industry for insightful questions and real answers - until honest people and groups are involved, we'll keep discussing BS "fixes" to banksters and less regulation = better times for America, no hiring is a result of "too many taxes for job creators," and housing bottoms called every week and how everyone needs to buy a house (why they should when too much debt is always blamed on the consumers, or how the press keeps telling people to remain mobile cogs, or with what $ is not even discussed).
If anyone wants specific details on BLS data, please leave a comment. Unanswered question, observation? There is a lot of material to cover out of the BLS and then there is a huge problem with "missing" data, as well as the never ending problem of the CES and CPS differences. I'm curious to know what kind of unanswered details people want to know more about. Literally I could fill the site up with labor statistics graphs and one reason I have a tendency to ignore race statistics, esp. because those definitions are so "1960's". Today we need by immigration status. Because the BLS "Asian" statistics are front loaded with foreign guest workers and "Hispanics" are front loaded with illegals, about the only minority it's safe to bet are mostly U.S. citizens are "Blacks".
Thanks for the great information and the charts. I always look forward to your analysis of the jobs numbers.
Real residential fixed investment is defined as:
So, because existing homes are just changing hands, unless they are owned by the government, in terms of growth, it's just the commissions and business/activity surrounding selling and buying that existing home. FYI, next time you see some brew ha-ha from NAR. It's new construction that's more important, in terms of GDP.
Finding BEA quick definitions is irritating, most often the methods are buried in some large pdf.
James Hamilton, over at Econbrowser just put up some tables of housing's contribution to GDP in recent recessions and right afterwards. Click here to read his article. Lots of tables, graphs, statistics to amplify his points.
Very nice, he seems also to be pointing to dark clouds and there is no return to the housing bubble to temporarily stimulate economic growth as well.
Even when people find a job in today's America, they are often short-term, terminable within a day's notice, contract jobs with no benefits. Good luck trying to date someone, marry someone, settle down in one town or city, lease a car, lease an apartment or buy a house, have a pet, or, dream a dream - have a kid or two that you might want to raise as a good American who would actually think politicians or their masters are anything but the lowest of the low, with these new "jobs." This has also been preplanned. The puppets in the media were prepping the populace with all the "benefits" of terminate on-site contract jobs for the last decade (what do you mean you can't make a livable income when you're competing with other freelancers willing to work for $2/hr.). Shockingly, those jobs always seem to benefit the manager or CEO, never the worker bees who must find someway to feed themselves when they are terminated with no notice. But temp agencies that post fake jobs and HR asshats and CEO dolts make $$$, and if you don't look 24/7 365 for these jobs and take them when offered - you must be just another "lazy American" (per MSM). Oh, by the way, if you don't accept these jobs, you will be forced to pay for an internship to gain experience so that one day you might work for $1/hr. after min. wages are eliminated.
Whatever you do, don't ask why someone would ever pay a worker if workers can be forced to work for free, DC and corporate America don't like questioning or intelligent citizens aka "smartasses" - thus the deemphasis on real education and real thinking.
The Grapes of Wrath was Nirvana compared to this crap. Tom Joad is coming back real soon and he is mighty pissed off. Good for Tom, I look forward to it, along with many, many other screwed over Americans.
77k for May, revised, 84k (private) for June.
We'll be putting up a graph of directly calculated "alternative" unemployment rate. I cannot confirm shadowstats, as stated many times, for he does not tell exactly what he is counting and from where. That's HUGE and if I cannot validate someone's methods, then why should I believe those statistics are valid?
Seriously, that's a huge deal to not explain one's assumptions, data points, methods.
That said, our own "alternative" unemployment rate is typically between 18-19%. Coming soon but one thing we do is calculate this directly from the BLS data and by definitions.
I hope to put up much more over the weekend on jobs generally. I don't want to announce what kind of numbers I'm after in case I cannot really find enough to put forth some valid stats, but this will be "all about jobs" in terms of articles.
It's truly tragic because every day all the politicians just posture and delay improving anything, spew out the same crappy lines, but keep on raking in dough and living their lives while shadowstats continues to show 22%+ real unemployment using old measures. Oh look, MSM says Mitt "The son of an ultimate insider/powerplayer" Romney was on a jetski, so Obama must care about the unemployed more (huh?). Oh look, MSM tells me Obama's family is partying globally while raising funds from banksters so Romney must care about the unemployed more. Gosh, which one cares more, heads or tails, such massive difference (sarc)?
Meanwhile, every day another job is lost due to NAFTA, or CAFTA, or the new TPP, another family will go homeless, or another unemployed + overqualified vet or other American will kill themselves. But the money and speaking fees will be lined up, the politicians will take another paid-in-full vacation, and they couldn't give less of a [fill-in-the-blank]. They have no incentive to change anything, absolutely none. Obama and every single Dem will become ludicrously wealthy after they leave office no matter what, and the same for every Republican. Meanwhile, tens of millions of more Americans simply count less and less. Meanwhile LIBOR scandal shows the rich keep getting richer and don't care about the unwashed masses. Maybe the French and Russians in years past had no other choice to get the "elites" attention. At this point, do our elites really care about us besides spinning fairy tales on the MSM? Doesn't look like it.
The idea that only the Commerce Clause governs insurance is pure fiction. McCarran Ferguson owns federal authority through a body called NAIC - the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. This body has authority to standardize any state rule or regulation regarding insurance. This is because insurance regulation, when disputes arise over standards, is a federal matter.
NAIC has never been shy about standardizing rules nation-wide so that there is consistency. The U.S. has always been a federal system, unlike our Confederacy, and unlike the EU, another Confedaracy.
So the Commerce Clause of Article I is secondary. The power of McCarran derives from Article I enumerated powers. That power has never been challenged in 70 years. SCOTUS is a political body, geared towards the most reactionary of agendas. The leak from Scalia proves this.
If the SCOTUS decision were thorough and well researched, there would be references to McCarran-Ferguson in some form.
In a convoluted way, SCOTUS validated a Affordable Care Act that few want, for reasons hardly any informed observers can accept.
The minute we saw refusal to let Greece have a managed bankruptcy, beyond the eventual CDS hair cuts, all due to sovereign bond holdings in banks and CDSes by investors, you know Banks trump nation-states.
At minimum, we need Glass-Steagall back, 100%. But these Banks own governments, figuratively, through political "donations" and literally.
Lying, manipulating numbers, creative accounting, 105 repos and on and on and on. But the biggest crime to me is the destruction of the real, production economies, the financialization of the globe, which has in turn led to more offshore outsourcing, labor arbitrage and middle class destruction.
Parliament's Select Committee put bankster arrogance on display yet again. Calling everyone by their first names when he "responded" to questions/lathered himself up in self-love? No regrets, no humility, Barclays is a "master of the universe" still despite causing the entire world to be bilked out of hundreds of trillions of dollars in the bankster cartel? Business as usual, move on, nothing to see here yet again.
Can you imagine a suspect/defendant calling a cop, prosecutor, corrections officer, or judge by their first names? But yet these criminals show who controls and owns who. They truly believe they are above-the-law because, for all intents and purposes, they are.
"Sorry, Joe, I refuse to answer any question. So I raped, robbed, and pillaged globally, so what? Oh, hi John, I own you, so don't dare arrest me. Hi Jane, how's being a judge? I'll see you on the golf course. By the way, the public annoys me. Can you make them be my slaves in return for me not killing them?"
Between this and the ISM employment sub-indices, I expect to see a BLS report around or above 100k tomorrow. But you can bet I'll be graphing that puppy up til doomsday. I think I'll try to do some quarterlies, since the month-to-month on BLS data is really flaked out, esp. the CPS survey, high noise IMHO.
Glad you appreciate this, I find getting a feel for data without graphs or at least tables is nuts.
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