George W. Bush's great

[Bottomfeeder 244]

Btw, on the subject of unemployment, I seem to remember that somewhere they stated unemployment numbers were only drawn from people actively recieving unemployment and that the new laws for maximum time under unemployment has many people falling off those lists due to recieving unemployment to its end and moving on to welfare.

This is true.

Are you confusing unemployment with welfare?

I was referring to the unemployment numbers being incorrect. The true unemployment numbers would include those who are no longer claiming unemployment insurance benefits or who have dropped off of the roles.

Now let's look at some speculative numbers concerning the GDP:

Paul Kasriel of Northern Trust suggests that the second quarter slow down

in consumer spending this year will cut into growth later in the year. As

a result, he predicts, real GDP growth (which rebounded slightly in the

second-quarter), is going to fall back in the second half to about 1.7%

annualized rather than the consensus forecast of 2.7%. But, although

Kasriel suggests that the slow down in spending will hold some consumer

prices down, he still thinks food and energy prices will go up. Even if

the boom starts staggering, your gas and your groceries are going to cost

you a lot more.

http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/good-inve...nts/2007/07/17/

On Friday Iranians demand that Japan trade with them only in yen. So much for the US Dollar being the world's reserve currency.

Addison Wiggin, reporting from Baltimore...

"On Friday, the Iranians insisted that Japan pay for all its oil with yen,

not dollars. Earlier in the year, Iran's central bank announced it would

be cutting their dollar reserves to less than 20%. Since Japan is on track

to spend at least $10 billion on Iranian oil this year alone - it's a

likely place to start.

"Iran is technically a foe of the United States, so their move away from

dollar reserves doesn't wrankle too many feathers in DC... yet. If other

countries were to follow suit, like Kuwait did earlier this year, well,

then the currency markets would really begin to get interesting."

http://agorafinancial.com/5MinForecast/5Mi...ast_071607.html

Pressure Cooker of Inflationary Food Prices

"Global Exodus from the US Dollar in Motion", by Gary Dorsch of Global Money Trends newsletter. He writes, "US Treasury chief Henry Paulson, and former chairman of Goldman Sachs, 'monitors the financial markets closely,' and has reinvigorated the infamous 'Plunge Protection Team,' which comes to the rescue of the US stock market whenever nasty revelations come to the surface."

So what is the "big idea" now? Mr. Dorsch writes, "At the moment, Paulson's grand strategy is to offset losses in the US housing sector with big gains in the stock market, to prevent the US economy from sliding into recession", while the Federal Reserve provides the financing, in that "The Bernanke Fed is preventing borrowing rates from rising at a time of explosive loan demand for US corporate mergers and takeovers, by rapidly increasing the US money supply."

And since the echoes of me laughing too loudly and too long about the frightening growth in the money supply are still reverberating around the neighborhood, it is not surprising that he reminds us "Since the Bernanke Fed discontinued the decades-old reporting of the broad M3 money supply in March of 2006, the growth rate of M3 has accelerated from an 8% rate to a sizzling 13.7% clip, its fastest in more than three decades."

-- Jim Willie CB of the Hat Trick Letter calculates that Americans have suffered roughly a 50% erosion in the buying power of incomes since 2000, based on the fact that "For the last six years, the actual consumer price inflation rate has varied between 7% and 11%", which works out to about half of your buying power disappearing.

...that the Fed and the banks providing unlimited amounts of money to create the real estate bubble (which I sarcastically note was created by the Fed and Congress to bail out the busted stock market bubble in 2000, which the Fed also provided the financing for) has created $5 trillion in "bubble wealth."

The significance of this is that "$5 trillion in bubble wealth has created an extra $250 billion in consumption that would not be present if it were not for the housing bubble. This works out to be 2 percent of our GDP; in other words, without that wealth we would already be in a recession."

[Tiger in Spain 0]

Btw, on the subject of unemployment, I seem to remember that somewhere they stated unemployment numbers were only drawn from people actively recieving unemployment and that the new laws for maximum time under unemployment has many people falling off those lists due to recieving unemployment to its end and moving on to welfare.

So, unemployment numbers are sometimes skewed by the fact that long term unemployment means leaving the statistical group represented. My point is its easy to maintain unemployment numbers if you don't keep people who aren't drawing unemployment anymore on the list until they are reemployed.

From what I learned in economics class, to be considered unemployed, one has to be employable. In other words, the person has to be of age to get a job and has to be actively seeking employment.

The numbers don't take into account the numerous deadbeats we have that still live in their parents basement and refuse to go out and get a job.

[BamaGrad03 0]

It doesn't matter where they draw unemployment numbers from. They are still the SAME comparative metrics they've always used. So if, under those numbers, our current unemployment rate is one of the lowest ever...that's what matters.