DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Good news: Economy adds 54,000 jobs

Not to mention that inflation and the influx od trillions of imaginary money into the system has devalued our currency, and has caused those of us with some meager savings to have less and less buting power with our savings ..... even as we add to them over time.

That's horrible.

It used to be that if you had $50,000 or so in savings plus your IRA, you were doing pretty well. Now $50,000 makes you about $625 per year in interest (at the staggering 1.25% you get on most savings/CDs) which doesn't even begin to keep up with inflation. Thet market is still way too scary for many people to be heavily involved in ..... so what do ya do?

It's almost better to blow everything now and hope for the government to take care of us in our old ages ...... because at this rate $50,000 in liquid assets will be worth about $500 when I retire.

Buy precious metals and bury them in your backyard?

I disagree.

There is tremendous security for those who work hard and take it seriously.

Unlike many industries who are more concerned with what degree a person holds, the restaurant industry is more concerned with finding people who want to learn the business.

My younger brother is a good example. What started as a crew job while in HS turned in to him owning 5 McDonalds restaurants....be it several positions with the company and 15-20 years in between.

And that just doesn't apply to the "good old days"....today holds the same opportunity.

Whenever I see people put down McDonalds, I have to chime in....McDonalds is the greatest company in the world.

I admit, I have made a great deal of money due to the Golden Arches through stock purchase since the beginning and owning a 20% share in my brothers company.

McDonalds is great. I eat there often.



Just some fun stuff that excites me every time I read it:

My $400 invested in 66 has done me well....

http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/investors/stocks_and_dividends/dividend_and_split_information.html

I never denigrated McDs with that post (or at least didn't intend to do so). Just noted that they do have layoffs though they are more accepted as part of the business.

That's really amazing Peen..

Hard to figure why some folks think that working at McDs is a bad thing..

Pretty good article: However, I don't think China or WTO would agree to the tax on the yuan conversion.


Avoiding a Double Dip Recession, or Worse

tweet3EmailPrint..ByPeter Morici, Senior Contributor to TheStreet , On Monday June 6, 2011, 9:57 am EDT
The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Jobs creation, industrial production and car sales are slipping. Consumer confidence and stock prices have turned south. The U.S. economy may be tumbling into a second recession or worse, hitting the mat for good. Solutions are at hand, but politicians--and voters--won't embrace what needs doing.

The U.S. economy lacks not ideas and enterprise, but is short on customers for what Americans make. The huge trade deficit sends dollars abroad that Americans earn to pay for imports but do not return to purchase exports and create jobs.

With a trade deficit exceeding 3 percent of gross domestic product, either Americans borrow and spend more than they earn to keep the economy going, or the demand for U.S. made goods and services is insufficient to accomplish full employment.

Too many Americans can't find decent paying jobs, houses don't sell and prices stay depressed, and consumers don't spend. In the funk, unemployment stays above 9 percent, and counting adults stuck in part-time jobs or too discouraged to look, and young college graduates flipping hamburgers, it is closer to 20 percent.

Oil and goods from China account for the entire U.S. trade deficit--on everything else, trade is balanced.

The United States produces only 5.6 million barrels a day of oil and imports 9.6 million barrels--gasoline accounts for 8.3 million barrels. The United States could easily increase domestic production by 3 or 4 million barrels a day over several years and slice 2 million barrels off fuel consumption by using readily available, more fuel efficient internal combustion engines and plug in hybrids, and further deploying domestic natural gas use.

Drilling in the United States is an anathema to Democrats, owing to environmental concerns, but not drilling and importing what oil is needed merely shifts environmental hazards abroad--mostly to developing countries--where those are handled less effectively. If American environmentalists really believe in thinking globally and acting locally, they should get behind domestic drilling if it is coupled with a program to substantially reduce domestic gasoline use.

Curtailing gasoline use will be a bitter pill for Republicans--more government intervention in the form of higher mileage standards and assistance to automakers to more rapidly transform their factories. Fanciful investments in electric cars are nice--but electric solutions put in place by the Obama Administration won't generate sufficient reductions in gasoline use for at least a decade.
Driving won't be any cheaper--gas prices would not be much lower and money to aid industrial transformation must be taken from other places--but both policies would keep the money Americans spend on imported oil at home, create high paying jobs and get the economy growing again.

Beijing engages in quantitative easing on a grand scale--hogging growth and exporting inflation. It is time to recognize what it does--currency manipulation and protectionism to gain competitive advantage--and address it forthrightly.

Each year, China maintains an undervalued currency by printing yuan to purchase about $450 billion in dollars and other foreign currencies. This reduces domestic Chinese consumption and places a 35 percent subsidy on Chinese exports, accelerates investment and jobs creation in China, and suppresses growth in the United States and Europe, which contributes importantly to sovereign debt problems on both sides of the Atlantic.

China also uses those yuan to subsidize purchases of oil and other scarce commodities it lacks, creating global inflation.

Stagflation results--slower growth and more inflation in the United States and Europe.

Diplomacy has failed to persuade China to relent--raising the value of its currency 10 percent doesn't do much good when the intrinsic value of the yuan continues to rise, and it remains undervalued by several multiples of 10 percent.

The solution is to impose a tax on the conversion of dollars into yuan, either for the purpose of importing Chinese goods or investing in China, equal to China's currency market intervention divided by its exports--35 percent. The EU could do the same, if it likes, on euro-yuan conversions.

When Beijing stops intervening, the tax stops. In the meantime, prices that drive investment and jobs creation would be more closely aligned with those that would prevail absent Chinese currency market manipulation and protectionism. Those would be free trade prices.

That tax bothers everyone but look outside.

America is collapsing. China's currency market intervention is destroying the U.S. industrial base, thrusting millions into unemployment, driving up global energy consumption and pollution, and undermining the free trade system that took half a century to build.
Free trade is great stuff and Americans should want to compete with Chinese workers on that basis--both countries would grow. But with China's currency manipulation unanswered, it's like wrestling bare handed with an opponent holding an axe.

China continues to grow and will soon overtake the United States. Yet, U.S. politicians and pundits argue about spending cuts and tax increases, when neither will help us avoid the immediate threat of a double dip recession or ultimately the decline of America.

Then whose example will the struggling nations of Asia and Africa aspire? America's democracy or China's autocracy?

The steps outlined are extraordinary and are hardly in the American tradition of free markets and private enterprise--but America is confronted by challenges and threats to its prosperity and democracy on a scale not seen since the Great Depression and World War II.

Extraordinary times require actions to match.

pfft.. no wonder nobody believes you when you start spewing this kind of stuff.

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for those who work hard and take it seriously.

......

What started as a crew job while in HS turned in to him owning 5 McDonalds restaurants....be it several positions with the company and 15-20 years in between.

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Right.. like I'm going to work hard AND be patient...

I want it all and I want it now and if I can't have it all right now then the system isn't freakin' fair.

Both.

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Both.

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Now I need a beer

The link to the page is at the end. I have found this to be a informative site with straight forward information........

NIA Releases U.S. Economic and Inflation Update

The official U.S. unemployment rate rose during the month of May to 9.1%, up from 9% in April, with only 54,000 non-farm jobs being created for the month. The real unemployment rate including short and long-term discouraged workers is now 22.3%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) used the birth/death model to produce a positive monthly bias during the month of May of 206,000 jobs, up from 175,000 in April, 117,000 in March, and 112,000 in February. Without the birth/death model, 152,000 jobs were lost during the month of May.

By utilizing the birth/death model, the BLS is assuming that during the month of May, the number of new jobs created by start-up businesses were 206,000 greater than the number of jobs lost from companies going out of business. NIA finds this assumption to be absurd and believes it is likely that jobs lost from companies going out of business were actually much higher than jobs created by new start-up firms. It is obvious to us that the BLS is using the birth/death model to manipulate unemployment figures to make the U.S. employment situation seem far less worse than it truly is. There is absolutely no legitimate reason for the birth/death model upward bias to have increased 84% over the past three months.

McDonald's recently had their own "National Hiring Day" in which they encouraged Americans to apply for new jobs at the company. All together, 1 million Americans applied for 62,000 jobs at McDonald's and over 900,000 Americans had to be turned down. To us, this is a sign that despite government economic statistics that are bottom bouncing from their lows due to the Federal Reserve printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, the U.S. economy is still in a severe downturn without the possibility of a real recovery. It is NIA's belief that the Fed needs to allow the U.S. economy to enter into a severe depression where all bad debts can be liquidated and the free market can rebalance the economy from the ground-floor with a solid foundation.

The fact that the BLS needs to resort to deceptive birth/death model manipulative practices to give the appearance of any job creation, proves that the Federal Reserve's destructive monetary policies of zero percent interest rates and endless money printing are not creating a sustainable reduction in the unemployment rate. Bernanke can claim all he wants that America's inflation is transitory, but the only thing transitory about our economy is the artificial decline in the official U-3 unemployment rate from its peak in October of 2009 of 10.1%. The real unemployment rate has increased since October of 2009 and NIA believes that the official unemployment rate will likely rise back into double-digit territory in 2012.

From October of 2009 until now, the number of employed Americans has increased by 1.09% while the U.S. population has increased by 1.12%. The only reason the official unemployment rate has declined from 10.1% down to 9.1% is a decline in the labor force participation rate from 65.1% down to 64.2%. Based on what the labor force would be today if the participation rate had stayed the same over the past 20 months and factoring in the increasing population, 2.1 million Americans have completely given up looking for work.

The 1.09% increase in employed Americans over the past 20 months comes at the expense of a $1.30 increase in the price of gas from $2.48 to $3.78 per gallon for a gain of 52% during this time period. Many agricultural commodities have increased over the past 20 months by an even greater percentage than gas. Although prices of all commodities are volatile and have many short-term ups and downs, NIA believes that gas prices are heading to $5 per gallon over the next 12 months and food inflation is going to rapidly accelerate in the months and years ahead.

Prices are now beginning to rapidly rise for U.S. goods outside of the food and energy sectors. 90% of sporting goods manufacturers have seen their input costs rise substantially this year and 41% of them have already announced major price increases for athletic apparel, footwear, and sports equipment. As the 8,000 toy manufacturers in China are forced to raise the wages they pay their employees, Toys R' Us is now beginning to see major wholesale price increases for their products, which they will have to pass on to U.S. consumers. Hasbo recently raised prices on all of their products by 6% to 7%. Mattel recently imposed an across the board high single digit price increase after reporting a 33% decline in quarterly profits (despite sales surging by 8%) due to skyrocketing raw material costs.

The U.S. is about to be cut off from its two largest foreign lenders China and Japan, which means the Federal Reserve will need to fund all of the U.S. government's deficit spending through outright money printing. Federal Reserve holdings of U.S. treasuries just reached a new record of $1.532 trillion. Meanwhile, China's U.S. treasury holdings have fallen five months in a row down to $1.145 trillion. Chinese central bankers are now calling for the country to reduce their foreign exchange reserves, which have increased by $200 billion this year up to over $3 trillion. Japan is currently the third largest holder of U.S. treasuries with treasury holdings of $907.9 billion. Unfortunately, Japan is in desperate need to raise $300 billion to fund their rebuilding efforts and this will likely come from them dumping some of their U.S. treasuries, during a time when the U.S. desperately needs Japan to buy more U.S. treasuries than ever before.

If we look back at previous occurrences of hyperinflation in countries like Bolivia and Brazil, hyperinflation broke out as soon as their central banks were forced to begin monetizing the bulk of their government's deficit spending, as foreigners stopped lending. China's inflation crisis is a direct result of the Fed's quantitative easing and the monetary inflation that we have exported to them in return for their sporting goods, toys, and other products they produce. If China stops buying U.S. treasuries and decides to instead use their foreign currency reserves to accumulate gold that can be used to back their own currency, the Fed will have no other choice but to become the U.S. treasury buyer of last resort. Not only will we see quantitative easing to infinity, but we will see the $1.5 trillion in excess reserves currently parked at the Fed enter into the money supply and increase the money supply by as much as $15 trillion.

Besides gold, one place where the Chinese are investing their money in order to diversify out of U.S. dollars is Real Estate. Housing prices in Beijing and Shanghai rose 28% and 26% last year respectively. With concerns that Chinese Real Estate is becoming a bubble, the Chinese are now buying Real Estate in North America. However, they are avoiding the U.S. Real Estate market because of the civil unrest that will take place in major U.S. cities during hyperinflation due to empty store shelves. The most popular destination for the Chinese in North America is Vancouver, where Real Estate prices are now more expensive than New York City. While New York City Real Estate prices still haven't finished deflating, Vancouver Real Estate prices are soaring to new record highs due to Chinese buyers, with the average Vancouver home price rising 14% last year. In the Westside section of Vancouver, housing prices are up 77% since 2005.

Canada's GDP grew by 3.9% in the first quarter of 2011 on an annualized basis, up from 3.1% in the fourth quarter of 2010, 2.5% in the third quarter of 2010, and 2.3% in the second quarter of 2010. Canada's GDP growth has increased for four straight quarters. U.S. GDP growth in the first quarter of 2011 declined to 1.8% on an annualized basis, down from 3.1% in the fourth quarter of 2010. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper just announced plans on Friday to attract more foreign capital and diversify trade in an attempt to protect Canada from a collapsing U.S. economy.

The U.S. still has a AAA credit rating even with its 2011 budget deficit projected to reach 43% of government expenditures, exactly the same as Brazil's budget deficit as a percentage of expenditures right before they experienced hyperinflation. There is a major charade taking place in Washington today where Republicans are calling for spending cuts to take place in order for them to approve an increase in the debt ceiling. NIA predicts that the debt ceiling will be raised no matter what, most likely at the very last minute. We have zero confidence that Washington will implement any kind of meaningful spending cuts. The U.S. government clearly chose inflation over austerity in its attempt to stimulate the economy. It doesn't make sense for them to reverse course now, because then they will look incompetent for not having chosen austerity to begin with.

The U.S. currently has a budget deficit from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other mandatory programs alone, without even paying the interest on our national debt. Major entitlement spending cuts are necessary if we are going to have even the slightest hope of balancing the budget and preventing hyperinflation. Unfortunately, most Americans have become dependent on entitlement programs and government transfer payments just to survive. These Americans fail to realize that the reason they are dependent on food stamps and other transfer payments to survive is because of the government's deficit spending and the Federal Reserve's massive monetary inflation. Only when the dollar completely collapses and Americans' unemployment and Social Security checks aren't worth enough to pay for the gas needed to drive to the bank to cash them, will they understand the need to elect a President like Ron Paul who will mandate a balanced budget and return the country to sound money, but by that time it will be too late. The only way America will survive as an industrialized nation is if we educate as many Americans as possible to the facts and truth about the U.S. economy that the mainstream media ignores, so that as many Americans as possible can prepare for hyperinflation and we have enough resources to rebuild afterwards.

It is important to spread the word about NIA to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, if you want America to survive hyperinflation. Please tell everybody you know to become members of NIA for free immediately at: http://inflation.us

I read the "about" section of the NIA Site, but I don't know if they are affliated to anyone or any particular party etc..

Do you know?

Just asking,, trying to determine if this is a site dedicated to giving real answers or a site dedicated to an ideal.

It was a decent read up until the end where it turned into a blatant and shameless plug for Ron Paul. Aside from that plug, however, I have to say that it is a very articulate article that it would be hard to find fault with. Everything in there appears to be based in fact... it is what it is, we're a failing nation.

This article, for anyone that cares to read it, is indicative of what I just posted. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110607/ts_alt_afp/useconomypoliticsobama_20110607172835

Obama is not worried about a double dip recession - not at all. But then he goes on to say he's bothered that "he" hasn't gotten the economy going better yet.

And, ironically, he tells Europe that the debt crisis they face may affect the global economy - and he professes to tell them how to handle it....

Meanwhile, we're sitting on true unemployment of around 22%, and our gov't. is spending like there's no tomorrow. $61 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities folks. Unfunded liabilities like social security and medicare...........that money has to come from somewhere, right? Can't tax high enough to get that money. Spending has never been cut in the last how many years?

Countries that want to buy our debt are getting very leery now. So, we just print it. Loaf of bread, gas, electric, heat......hyper inflation?

This time around, we are our own Weimar Republic.

sure i read it, sure it made sense, but I have no idea if the numbers are right, I'm no freaking economist...

So ... if they were a right leaning organization, how would that color your opinion of their work?

What about if they were a left leaning organization?

What if they were libertarian?

I could find you articles that state that we will grow our way out of our current mess once the global economy recovers. I don't believe them .... and it doesn't matter who writes the articles. I believe that we are past that point. We light be past the point of no return.

The one good thing is that I have a mortgage right now and not a rent payment. If we hit hyperinflation, then my mortgage payment will be a drop in the bucket.

How's that for finding a silver lining in one hell of a cloudy mess?

My grandmother left Germany in 1921. When you see footage of people burning bundles of cash because that was cheaper than buying firewood, it was really that bad.

The politicians and some of the general public have seen this coming for many years. Most have just ignored the problem. The time is coming when that will simply no longer be possible.

Deep, tough spending cuts are coming, and when people who have been living out of other peoples pockets for generations no longer have access to free food, it is going to really hit the fan. Civil war, anarchy, total societal breakdown, racial warfare - a militaristic, totalitarian government will most likely follow.

Being able to hit a dime at 20 yards will become a very useful skill. It may also become extremely common as those who can't are killed or starve to death.

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and China and Japan will want their money.........

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SNL

web page

Obama policies paralyze business
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 03:06 AM
By Michael Barone


Various forms of the word unexpected almost inevitably appear in news stories about unfavorable economic developments.

You can find them again in stories about Friday's shocking news, that only 54,000 net new jobs were created in the month of May and that unemployment rose to 9.1 percent.

But with news that bad, maybe bad economic numbers will no longer be "unexpected." You can only expect a robust economic recovery for so long before you figure out, as Herbert Hoover eventually did, that it is not around the corner.

Exogenous factors explain some part of the current economic stagnation. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused a slowdown in manufacturing. Horrendous tornados did not help. Nor did bad weather, though only a few still bitterly cling to the theory that it's caused by manmade global warming.

But poor public policy is surely one reason why the American economy has not rebounded from recession as it has in the past. And political posturing also has played a major role.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajorities of 2009-10 raised federal spending from 21 percent to 25 percent of gross domestic product. Their stimulus package stopped layoffs of public employees for a while, even as private-sector payrolls plummeted.

And the Obama Democrats piled further burdens on would-be employers in the private sector. Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill are scheduled to be followed by thousands of regulations that will impose impossible-to-estimate costs on the economy.

That seems to have led to a hiring freeze. The Obama Democrats can reasonably claim not to be responsible for the huge number of layoffs that occurred in the months following the financial crisis of fall 2008. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did manage to help stabilize financial markets.

But while the number of layoffs is now vastly less than in the first half of 2009, the number of new hires has not increased appreciably. Many more people have been unemployed for longer periods than in previous recessions, and many more have stopped looking for work altogether.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the threat of tax increases and increased regulatory burdens have produced something in the nature of a hiring strike.

And then there is the political posturing. On April 13, Obama delivered a ballyhooed speech at George Washington University. The man who conservatives as well as liberal pundits told us was a combination of Edmund Burke and Reinhold Niebuhr was widely expected to present a serious plan to address the budget deficits and entitlement spending.

Instead, the man who can call on talented career professionals at the Office of Management and Budget to produce detailed blueprints gave us something in the nature of a few numbers scrawled on a paper napkin.

The man depicted as pragmatic and free of ideological cant indulged in cheap political rhetoric, accusing Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who was in the audience, of pushing old ladies in wheelchairs down the hill and starving autistic children.

The signal was clear. Obama had already ignored his own deficit-reduction commission in preparing his annual budget, which was later rejected 97-0 in the Senate. Now he was signaling that the time for governing was over and that he was entering campaign mode 19 months before the November 2012 election.

People took notice, especially those people who decide whether to hire or not. Goldman Sachs' Current Activity Indicator stood at 4.2 percent in March. In April - in the middle of which came Obama's GW speech - it was 1.6 percent. For May, it was 1.0 percent.

"That is a major drop in no time at all," wrote Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal.

After April 13, Obama Democrats went into campaign mode. They staged a poll-driven Senate vote to increase taxes on oil companies.

They launched a Mediscare campaign against Ryan's budget resolution that all but four House Republicans had voted for. That seemed to pay off with a special-election victory in the New York 26th congressional district.

The message to job creators was clear. Hire at your own risk. Higher taxes, more burdensome regulation and crony capitalism may be here for some time to come.

One possible upside is that economic bad news may no longer be "unexpected." Another is that voters may figure out what is going on.

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.