Keynesians and reality
One of the reasons there are so many schools of Keynesian economics is none of them actually work in the real world. It only works in the fantasy world of academia. No wonder leftists flock to it.
When faced with reality, Keynesians, in typical leftist fashion, deny it. Robert Murphy provides some excellent examples.
When the passage of the Obama “stimulus” package coincided with the economy falling off a cliff, the Keynesians said, “Oh wow, good thing we passed that! The economy is even worse than we realized!”
When the implementation of “austerity” coincided with an economy improving according to the standard metrics, the Keynesians said, “Phew! We got lucky! The economy was doing a lot better than we realized.”
As it has been pointed out here previously, by our Dear Leader‘s own metrics, the US economy is in worse shape than if the federal government had done nothing, make his economic policy a miserable failure.
Recent US history also provides examples of a roaring recovery following a recession even worse than the one that was in place when our Dear Leader took office.
Bottom line for leftist in denial, the Keynesian economic policies of Barack Hussein Obama has made things worse for America, not better.
Some true words on the US economy and entitlement spending.
Some true words on the US economy and entitlement spending.
Sunday Round Up
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Media Bias, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics, When democrats attack
Here is collection of interesting items I put in my “blog about” file but didn’t get to.
Let’s lead off with some Blue on Blue media attacks. George Soros’ bought and paid for thugs at Media Matters attacked the uber-liberal reporters at NPR for committing an act of Journalism. Chana Joffe-Walt did a story on that covered the fraud and corruption in the federal disability program on Chicago’s Public Radio This American Life and National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered. Ms. Joffe-Walt apparently forgot about the memo that said that all news stories must praise our Dear Leader and blame Republicans.
Jon Stewart, a fairly reliable talking head for the extreme far hard left agenda, ripped in our Dear Leader for basic incompetence on his handling of the obscenely long backlog at the Veterans Administration. Gee, it’s almost as if Obama sees US military veterans as his enemy and is trying to kill them off.
Obamacare’s PR Problem: Not Just a Flesh Wound
Megan McCardle points out an annoying fact that leftists don’t like: The Aaron Sorkin Model of Political Discourse Doesn’t Actually Work
Democrat congressman Stephen Lynch on Benghazi Talking Points: ‘It Was Scrubbed … It Was False Information. There’s No Excuse For That.’ Yup, the Obama regime flat out lied the American people for the purpose of ”damage control” prior to the election. This really does call for hearings.
Chicago Law Prof on Obama: “The Professors Hated Him because he was Lazy, Unqualified & Never Attended any of the Faculty Meetings” Hmmm…doesn’t sound like his work habits changed much.
Let Us Examine the Obama Economy Once Again
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
The GDP growth rate is out for Q1 2013, and at 2.5%, it is a nice improvement over Q4 2012′s 0.4% rate, which was revised up from the original estimate of -0.1%. It’s also lower than the 3% growth the Keynesian economists the Obama regime is strangely still paying attention to, predicted.
It’s not all good news for the worst recovery since the Great Depression, as this CNBC article points out.
A full percentage point of that 2.5% growth was a one time effect of the farming industry recovering from a drought. So the real growth rate was an anemic 1.5%
Household incomes also dropped at a 5.3 percent rate in the first quarter of 2013, and the saving rate – the percentage of disposable income households are socking away – fell to 2.6 percent, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2007.
Neither of those last two items are a good sign for increases in consumer spending, which is going to get worse, as federal taxes go up, as well as local taxes. The tax burden will be worse in the so-called “Blue” states as their expensive social programs continue to overwhelm their budgets, and their revenue generating working classes flee for states with less oppressive taxes on anyone moderately successful.
The only bright point was that the official government inflation rate was only 0.9%. That is good for tax paying consumers, but is another missed milestone of the Obama Economic Team. They want at least 2%.
Let’s look at the numbers again…
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
The March unemployment numbers are out and the federal U3 number dropped from 7.7% in February to 7.6%. That should be good news, still over two points over what our Dear Leader promised us we would have if we passed his massive porkulus act, but still moving in the in right direction.
So why did the architect of the Obama economic plan, Austan Goolsbee, call the March unemployment numbers a “punch to the gut”?
To answer that,we need to look at some more numbers. Like the number of jobs the Federal BLS says were added in March, which is 88,000. Since you have been paying attention, you know that the US economy needs to generate at least 120,000 new jobs a month just to break even. So how did the U3 rate drop a tenth of a percent when we missed the break even point by over 33,000 jobs? The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the U3 (and 5 other “U” rates) rate as a percentage of the labor force. While the BLS added 88,000 jobs, it dropped 630,000 workers from the labor force. That gives us a net loss of over a half million workers from the US economy in March 2013. Just what would the Federal BLS U3 number be if those 630,000 Americans were still counted in the labor force? One estimate has it at 11.7%. That is Carter era employment numbers. It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama’s Worst Recovery since the Great Depression is catching up with the Worst Recession since the Great Depression.
Not a shining moment for the Obama regime and it’s Keynesian economy policies. Not enough for them to give up on those failed policies though. For the left, their political agenda always trumps the truth.
Quote of the Day
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
“Very few people know, for example, that the gap between black and white incomes narrowed during the Reagan administration and widened during the Obama administration. This was not because of Republican policies designed specifically for blacks, but because the free market policies create an economy in which all people can improve their economic situation.”
– Thomas Sowell
Leftist bias vs. reality
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, Obama Economy, Politics
I was listening to a tech podcast where a couple of California were making fun of Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Let’s compare Texas under the leadership of Gov. Perry to California under Governor Moonbeam.
Let’s start with unemployment for January 2013
Texas: 6.3%
California: 9.8%
The federal U3 rate for January was 7.9%
So Texas was under the national rate by 1.3% while California was over the national rate by 1.9%
Take a look at job growth in Texas vs. California, and population shifts. The people California needs to pay its criminally high tax rates are leaving California. One of the more popular destinations of those fleeing Governor Moonbeam’s socialist paradise is Texas.
It’s clear that the tech reporters in question were laughing based on their leftist political bias, and not economic reality.
Reality vs Obama: The Economy
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Let us once again refer the the chart our Dear Leader‘s economic team used to scare people into buying into the miserable failure of a porkulus package the democrats rammed down the throat of America back in 2009. Oh, but with reality also displayed.
So, using the Obama regime’s own metrics, the so-called “economic policy” has made things worse for average Americans than doing nothing would have done! They predicted an unemployment rate of 5.5% by now if nothing was done and 5.1% if the administration got to print more money and give it to democrat campaign donors.
The only reason the current U3 unemployment rate is is as low as 7.9% is that over eight million people have been removed from the labor pool that the feds use to calculate the employment rate. That includes everyone in the obscenely high long term unemployment pool that have run out of the extended unemployment benefits. The U6 rate, which includes the underemployed is still at 14.4%, which appears to be the “new normal” in Obama’s progressive dream of America.
James Pethokoukis points out that our Dear Leader‘s economic team made other really bad predictions.
…recall that back in January 2009 Team Obama economists Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer predicted the unemployment rate by 2013 would be closing in on 5%. (Of course, Obama’s economists also thought we’d be in a mini-boom of 4%-plus economic growth. That hasn’t happened either.)
In case you haven’t heard, GDP for the fourth quarter of 2012 came in at -0.1. That’s right, after three and half years of the worst recovery since the Great Depression, the US has slipped back into negative GDP growth under the stewardship of our Dear Leader. We actually could be in another recession, but we won’t know for another three months. Until then, we’re in a Schrödinger’s cat situation of recovery/recession.
Given that our Dear Leader and his democrat minions are calling for more taxes, more government spending (with $0.46 on the dollar borrowed) and more business hindering regulations, it’s looking more like that cat is a recession.
Quote of the Day
We’re $16+ trillion in debt, no federal budget in nearly four years, $1+ trillion deficits each of the last five years – and a president who says “We don’t have a spending problem.”
Quote of the Day
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, economy, Obama Economy, Politics
If I had a nickel for every time I heard a liberal place social issues above economic issues, I’d have enough money to pay off the monstrous $16.4 trillion and counting national debt.