Are we really in a recovery?

[seanD]

US "recovery" in a visual nutshell:



You be the judge.

[seanD]

More visuals of the wealth gap:



Though not as specific as what I outlined in post #6, notice how the gap begins to widen before Clinton and Obama, but that it distinctly spikes during Clinton's and Obama's admin. But I wouldn't put much stock in that, as there's no doubt Romney (who supported the bailout, of course), who's just as much of a wallstreet puppet, would have allowed the Federal Reserve to engage in the same unprecedented actions post 2008. Only reason I pointed it out is the political irony, as "democrats" are typically touted as the least pro-super rich.

[One Bad Pig]

US "recovery" in a visual nutshell:



You be the judge.

These would be more meaningful if they all covered the same time period.

[seanD]

These would be more meaningful if they all covered the same time period.

Depends on what perspective one is looking at it from. From a political perspective, yes. In other words, it's difficult to place the blame on any specific prior president because some of the trajectories cover multiple presidential admins. But I think it's meaningful from a much bigger economic problem with our system, which is what I've tried to convey in this thread and correlates with post #5; that our economy is fake because it's based on a wealth illusion that is really just consumer debt. Federal Reserve, the US central bank, has been fueling this illusion cycle by micromanaging (manipulating) the system with its policies. It's just that the Fed's manipulation has really gotten out of hand in the last several years or so (note that most of the spikes have occurred within the 2008 bust cycle), perhaps because the debt is so massive that the illusion is wearing off and the chickens are coming home to roost.

[One Bad Pig]

Depends on what perspective one is looking at it from.

No matter what perspective, using the same start and end points would allow an accurate comparison of the data.

From a political perspective, yes. In other words, it's difficult to place the blame on any specific prior president because some of the trajectories cover multiple presidential admins. But I think it's meaningful from a much bigger economic problem with our system, which is what I've tried to convey in this thread and correlates with post #5; that our economy is fake because it's based on a wealth illusion that is really just consumer debt. Federal Reserve, the US central bank, has been fueling this illusion cycle by micromanaging (manipulating) the system with its policies. It's just that the Fed's manipulation has really gotten out of hand in the last several years or so (note that most of the spikes have occurred within the 2008 bust cycle), perhaps because the debt is so massive that the illusion is wearing off and the chickens are coming home to roost.

[seanD]

No matter what perspective, using the same start and end points would allow an accurate comparison of the data.

I don't understand what you mean by "start and end points." The point of the charts is the decline (most of which has occurred significantly within the 2008 period of a so-called recovery). Please, explain your point.

Thanks for your contribution to the thread.

[One Bad Pig]

I don't understand what you mean by "start and end points." The point of the charts is the decline (most of which has occurred significantly within the 2008 period of a so-called recovery). Please, explain your point.

The point is hazy because the charts don't all start at, e.g., 2000 and end at 2014; it raises the question of cherry-picking the start and end points to make the data look as bad as possible.

[seanD]

The point is hazy because the charts don't all start at, e.g., 2000 and end at 2014; it raises the question of cherry-picking the start and end points to make the data look as bad as possible.

That makes no sense. You can clearly distinguish the peaks and declines within the "recovery" after 2008, which is the benchmark year I'm focusing on, so I don't understand how it would be hazy. If you think it's cherry-picking you can certainly look at the data yourself.

[One Bad Pig]

I think I'll just let you go back to your monologue.

[seanD]

Cool. The thread has a lot of posts with a lot of information to digest. My "monologue" in a nutshell is that we were never in a recovery. The recovery was an illusion because our economy is based on an illusion and the data supports the fact that it's all an illusion.

In the future, I have no problem with anyone refuting anything being posted, but if anyone's going to refute something, please know what the heck you're talking about and have more of an argument than just emoticon smilies. That's all I ask

[seanD]

No Federal Reserve rate hike in September...

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...et-yellen-live

Of course not. Because the Fed claims they're "data dependent" which determines whether they'll raise rates or not, and, as I've been pointing out in this thread, the data ain't good.

The problem is that the data isn't getting any better, it's getting worse, hence the reason the Fed has been bluffing about raising rates for years now. But if there was no reason to raise rates a couple years ago when the data seemingly wasn't as bad, then there's absolutely no reason to raise them now when the global economy is now on the brink of disaster.

It amazes me why economists believed they would raise in September or that they will raise any time this year. Only reason the Fed would raise rates at this point is if they completely ignore all the data.

[seanD]

I thought I'd add a bit more support to the idea that the Federal Reserve's monetary action (I'm specifically focusing on the period during Bernanke/Yellen's term) is directly responsible for the growing wealth gap of late, as opposed to free market capitalism in general.

All it takes is just a little common sense to know that if you give select financial institutions more than four billion dollars in exchange of their bad assets within seven years, and then keep 0% interest rate loans available to this same exclusive group of wealthy institutions during that same timeframe, while excluding everyone else from that party, the wealth of the former group will greatly surpass the wealth of the latter group. I mean, this isn't rocket science.

But here's the data[ATTACH=CONFIG]7451[/ATTACH]

As you can see, not only is the middle class fading fast (more about the shrinking middle class here

Just more confirmation that the "recovery" was lopsided and only benefited the already wealthy...


Source

Looking at eight groups of household income selected by Census, only those whose incomes are already high to begin with have seen improvement since 2006, the last full year of expansion before the recession. Households at the 95th and 90th percentiles had larger earnings through 2014, the latest year for which data are available.

Income for all others was below 2006 levels, indicating they're still clawing their way out of the hole caused by the deepest recession in the post-World War II era.

"Each decade, it's taken longer for the poor to recover from recession, for the poverty rate to start turning around after the official end of the recession," said Arloc Sherman, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. "There's quite a bit of work left to do."

Median household income is 6.5 percent lower than in 2007, the year the recession started.

Overall, median income was $53,657 in 2014, not a statistically significant difference on an inflation-adjusted basis from 2013's median of $54,462. It's the third straight year that there's been no significant change, after two consecutive years of annual declines.

So, don't for a minute fall for the spectacles surrounding the Federal Reserve's actions post-2008 or the decreasing U3 unemployment number, because how these are represented is complete bullcrap.

[seanD]

I kind of backed away from this thread because there are so many data metrics showing we're heading towards (or are already in) an economic downturn that I figured people were getting bored. Analyzing economic data metrics gets technical and people get bored with technicals because this results in very long posts.

But Obama gloating about the January jobs report

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/04/news...shrinks-again/

Source

As a side note, the unexpected wage jump in January 2016 also happened right as several states are implementing a mandatory wage hike, not because of any indicator of economic improvement like some MSM economists were implying in order to garnish the 4.9 U3 number with additional positive outlook. All we need to do is look around and use some common sense here: wages are obviously not going to increase, nor are food stamp recipients going to shrink (which are still at historical highs), nor is homelessness going to shrink (which has actually been rising nationwide -- see here and here

Activity in the vast U.S. services sector slowed to a near two-year low in January, suggesting that economic growth weakened further at the start of the first quarter even as the labor market remains resilient.

The economy has been undermined by a strong dollar, softening global demand and an inventory destocking, which have pressured manufacturing and export industries. Spending cuts by energy firms, reeling from a collapse in oil prices, have also dragged on growth.

Until recently, services sector strength had offered hope that the economy would weather both the domestic and global headwinds, which held gross domestic product growth to a 0.7 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKCN0VC1JZ

There's also a bigger problem with the adult population/labor participation rate ratio that is amiss. But since this is much too technical and I want to keep things as simple as I can, I'll just leave a link in case you're inclined to delve into it. So, to summarize what the U3 number really means:

- The jobs market has been driven primarily by a non-manufacturing service sector.
- We're not sure how much of a factor multiple part time jobs per individual is skewing the jobs number; we can certainly guess that this is a major factor (the shrinking labor participation rate perfectly fits into this context).
- The slight wage increase came right as state minimum wages increased.
- The service sector surge, the only factor keeping the economy treading water, is now also showing signs of waning in the new year.

I should also note that the employment number is always the last data metric to go negative when a recession hits. In other words, it's a lagging indicator, thus can't be used as evidence of a future healthy economy even if the U3 number legitimately represented a healthy economy. But let's celebrate because on the surface a 4.9% U3 number certainly looks a whole lot better than a 10% U3 number, and that's all that matters to the masses that don't know what the underlining data really says.

Here's my prediction for 2016. I still am not sure (as I stated in post #5) whether the decline will end in a sudden collapse (meaning a violent stock market flash crash a la 2008) or a gradual regressive economic decline. I still cling towards the latter, despite the fact we're now seeing clear signs of a stock market crash looming on the horizon (i.e. crazy market fluctuations currently taking place). Due to other economic data metrics, what I know for sure is things will get worse. We are going to see some serious indications of economic downturn in 2016, to the point that even the populace masses that don't have a clue of the economic technicals are going to notice something's terribly wrong, so much so that not only will MSM be forced to address it, but the federal reserve will likely lower rates once again and possibly even institute more QE and/or lower rates into negative territory (of course, I'm barring a possible black swan such as a major war here that can be used as a scapegoat to all this).

[seanD]

As Zerohedge put it; this is peddling what Obama calls fiction...



source

Others would call it the Orwellian reality, where up is down and down is up; black is white and white is black; bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter; fiction is fact and fact is fiction.

[seanD]

So much for the plunging Labor Force Participation Rate...




Being the result of retirees...

This means that while total workers aged between 16 and 54 are still some 3.5 million below where they were in December of 2007, during the same period workers aged 55 and over have grown by a whopping 8.1 million to a new all time high of 34.4 million, and as of this moment the oldest worker group comprises a record 22.8% of the total number of workers (per the Establishment survey) of 151 million.

source

So the next time you hear that excuse from an MSM economic Keynesian shill or from their ignorant minions, show them this chart...