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Real U.S. Unemployment Rate 19 Percent - Part 1 of 4 October 14, 2008 SouthAmerica: Let me review one more time why the financial markets should be bullish about the US economy in 2009, in 2010 and even beyond. 1) The unemployment rate should rise in the United States from 6 to 9 or 10 percent and the number of people unemployed should increase from 9.5 million to 14 million people. 2) Real estate prices should continue to fall at least another 20 or 30 percent making the real estate crisis even more critical. 3) Major companies consolidation, and reorganization in the US. 4) Major budget crisis in most states in the USA â cutting new projects, and reduction in jobs at all levels federal, state, and local. 5) Massive losses to be reported from all kinds of companies in the private sector related to financial losses.(derivatives, lost collaterals and so on.) 6) Major belt tightening by US consumer with major impact in GDP. 7) Wave of banking, financial companies, and other types of companies filling for bankruptcy. 8) To get some of its credibility back the 3 major US financial credit rating agencies - Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch Ratings â after a complete review of the balance sheet of the US government and taking in consideration all the new obligations assumed by the US government during 2008 â they all arrived to the same conclusion and they changed the credit rating of the US government to a more realistic status of: Toxic Financial Rating of US government = Junk 9) After people from around the world realized the wrecked estate of the US economy then the smart money started dumping their US dollars assets in an effort to out run the herd and the stampede. 10) The US economy is descending into a deep recession and some economists are estimating that the current official US unemployment rate will increase from September 2008 unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, by the end of 2008 we should have at least a 7 percent unemployment rate, and an estimated 9 percent unemployment rate for 2009. At an official unemployment rate of 9 percent that means the number of unemployed persons will be 14 million people. If the unemployment rate decline even further to an official 10 percent unemployment rate then 15.6 million people would be unemployed. The US economy is going through a period of complete turmoil, and in the next few months we are going to have massive businesses consolidation, in the auto industry, airline industry, in the US banking and financial system, in the real estate industry, and this major consolidation and reorganizations are also to affect government jobs of all kinds. Remember there are a lot of problems related to financial losses for all kinds of businesses and financial institutions that are already in the pipeline and will put a lot of people out of business. During the year of 2007 about 1.3 million illegal immigrants left the United States to return to their countries, in 2008 the pace of illegal immigrants leaving the country is increasing because of the deteriorating economic situation in the United States and the increased enforcement of the law that is a major incentive for illegal immigrants to leave the country. In 2008 probably another 1.5 illegal immigrants are going back to where they came from. Last week a Congressman from California said during an interview by CNN News that on his district there were 10,000 foreclosed houses from illegal immigrants. You can bet that a large number of these foreclosed houses used to belong to illegal immigrants that decided to return home, and I would not be surprised if many of these people also left behind thousands of US dollars in unpaid credit-card debt. In 2009 you can bet that this exodus of illegal immigrants is going to continue since the unemployment rate is supposed to explode here in the United States. And we can estimate very conservatively that another 1.5 million illegal immigrants are going to leave the United States. This reversal trend of illegal immigration is going to have a big impact on the US economy. Instead of having the usual 500,000 new illegal immigrant arrivals into the US economy, we are having an exodus of people leaving the country. By the end of 2009 just on this are of illegal immigrants the US economy is going to suffer a negative impact of almost 6 million people on its GDP. 11) You should also take in consideration that the real GDP of the United States it is closer to $ 9 trillion dollars after you adjust it for all the garbage that is included on that figure instead of the Fairy Tale figure of $ 14.5 trillion dollars. Maybe the way to make some money in the US stock market in the near future might be by shorting the stocks, and after all things are considered testing the Dow Jones 6,000 or 7,000 level may not be a bad idea. ***** I have been writing for years about the real unemployment rate in the United States including in the Elite Trader economics forum as follows: The real Unemployment rate in the United States http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...ighlight=the+US+unemployment+rate#post1736415 Years ago I wrote an article published on Brazzil Magazine on October 1, 2003 âHow to Reduce Unemploymentâ by Ricardo C. Amaral http://www.brazzil.com/component/content/article/20-october-2003/1073.html I donât know what happened to the rest of that article since the portion that still published on that webpage it is just 1/3 of the original article. I need to find out where the editor of Brazzil magazine published the other part of this article. Quoting from that article: ââ¦The Easy Fix To improve the unemployment rate in Brazil overnight, the Brazilian government should adopt the same system of counting the unemployed as the system being used by the United States government today. It is a simple method of counting the unemployed, massaging the figures and various modern techniques, such as: "Lying, Deception, and Misinformation." Today, if the Brazilian government started using the same method of counting the unemployed as the method being used by the US Labor Department, the Brazilian rate of unemployment would go overnight from its current 13 percent rate to a more acceptable rate of 5 percent. And the country can even be losing and exporting millions of jobs to Asia as in the case of the US economy. The financial markets in Brazil should accept the new rate with open arms, as Wall Street accepts the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent as reported by the US Labor Department. I know there is an 8 percent difference between the two rates (from 13 percent to 5 percent), but that is easy to fix, the Brazilian government doesn't need to lie; they just need to add a footnote to the report; saying that 8 percent of the population is not counted as unemployed because they are discouraged and have abandoned their job searches. (This type of misinformation works in the US, and should work in Brazil as well.) If the people in the labor department in Brazil need an actual example of what I am saying, then they should check the US government's unemployment report for July 2003. They just made a footnote to its unemployment report in July 2003 saying that the report did not include 556,000 unemployed people, because the government claims that these people left the labor force. They want people to believe that a large number of job seekers are discouraged and abandoned their searches. Data from the US Labor Department shows that the current unemployment rate in the US is 6.1 percent. Wall Street commemorates the data by sending the stock market up, up and away. But if you make some rational adjustments to the unemployment rate as reported by the US Labor Department, you get a different picture. It is estimated that at least 3 million people are hiding in the disability figures. They had an explosion in the number of people on disability in the last 2 and half years. Another 4 million are not counted because they left the labor force and are considered discouraged workers who abandoned their job searches. If we adjust the unemployment rate for these items, then the US unemployment rate jumps to over 12 percent. If we make further adjustments for the over 2 million people in the prison system in the US, and for the over 6 million people who are underemployed or decided to further their education because they could not find a job, then a more realistic picture appears of the unemployment rate in the United States, with the actual unemployment rate increasing to over 18 percent. There is something here for Brazilians to learn from the Americans, and the Brazilian Labor Department can use the same type of misinformation as the one being used in the US. The Brazilians can reduce the official unemployment rate in Brazil to 5 percent, or they can be even bolder and reduce to 3 percent; the financial markets will not know the difference. If they get away with that type of garbage in the US, the Brazilian government should be able to get away with it as well. That type of misinformation also works for the local numbers as well. For example: the city of São Paulo should not make public that they have an unemployment rate of over 20 percent. They should use a number in the range of 7 to 8 percent. That type of lie works for New York City; I would not be surprised if the real rate of unemployment in New York City is closer or higher than 15 percent. .
. Real U.S. Unemployment Rate 19 Percent - Part 2 of 4 If you are an ethical person you might be thinking that I am a complete idiot for suggesting such a thing. But that is how things work in the United States today, and as a major economic power, the US sets an example for the other countries of the world. The US government fudges their statistics, and they make footnotes to let everybody know that the figures published are not worth much. But people still use the data anyway, as if the data had any value. We have one fraud after another in Wall Street where trillions of dollars in investors' money have been lost in the last few years, and trillions more will be lost in the future. Wall Street has become a fools' paradise, and they have the record to back that up. The US government has lost most of its credibility around the world since the Bush administration took office. It is not a secret that the current administration doesn't make much distinction from good information and garbage; if it is useful information to further their agenda they'll use it. The United States Labor Department It is depressing to think of how far the United States declined in the last three years, it has been a steep decline for such a short time. Contrast the high quality of the people in Bill Clinton's administration, with the pathetic group of people in George W. Bush's administration. President Bill Clinton, one of the best Presidents the United States had in the last hundred years, had a number of high caliber people in his administration including the outstanding members to his economic team such as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, and his Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. During the eight years of the Clinton administration the US economy created 23 million new jobs. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich was one of the stars of that administration and it was hard to miss him, because he was in the news all the time. The economy was growing, creating new jobs and Americans knew who the Labor Secretary of the United States was. Jeremy Rifkin wrote in one of his published articles: "Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, for example, talks incessantly of the need for more highly skilled technicians, computer programmers, engineers, and professional workers. While Secretary, he barn stormed the country urging workers to retrain, retool, and reinvent themselves in time to gain a coveted place on the high-tech express." Even though the United States economy has been going through a severe economic decline and has lost over 3.5 million jobs since George W. Bush became President, I had no idea who the Labor Secretary was in this administration. The current Labor Secretary, must be hiding somewhere in Washington D.C. I asked a number of people who was the Labor Secretary of the current Bush administration, and not a single person knew his name. I do read various newspapers every day including The New York Times, and The Financial Times of London, and I had no idea who was the Labor Secretary in the United States. I had to go to the US Labor Department website to find out who was the invisible Labor Secretary of the Bush administration. I was surprised to find out that the current Labor Secretary was a Chinese-woman named Elaine L. Chao. Now, I am beginning to understand why so many jobs in the United States are being outsourced to Asia. (Maybe there is a connection here.)â¦â ***** October 03, 2008 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Nonfarm payroll employment declined by 159,000 in September, and the unemployment rate held at 6.1 percent. The unemployment rate (6.1 percent) was unchanged in September. The number of unemployed persons was little changed at 9.5 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 2.2 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 1.4 percentage points. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm ***** October 14, 2008 SouthAmerica: Anyway, I was just doing research on the web to find out the latest information regarding the official unemployment rate in the United States when I came across this research paper prepared by the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C. which was published in June 2007 â âIs the âRealâ Unemployment Rate in the United States 15 Percent? This research paper confirms what I have been writing about the US unemployment rate for years. And we arrived to a similar conclusion about the real unemployment rate in the United States. We both agree that the real unemployment rate in the United States is around 15 percent and if the unemployment increases even further by another 4 percent which is a real possibility in 2009, then the real unemployment rate in the United States would be approaching the Great Depression level, and by the end of 2009 we should be approaching the 19 percent unemployment rate level then 30 million people would be official unemployed in the United States. Just imagine what another 5 million unemployed people, and another 1.5 illegal immigrants leaving the country can do to push real estate prices even lower in the United States in 2009 and making the real estate crisis even more critical than today. .
. Real U.S. Unemployment Rate 19 Percent - Part 3 of 4 Issue Brief ⢠June 2007 Center for Economic and Policy Research 1611 Connecticut Ave, NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20009 tel: 202-293-5380 http://www.cepr.net Is the Unemployment Rate in Sweden Really 17 Percent? By: JOHN S. CHMITT In May 2006, the McKinsey Global Institute published a 252-page analysis of the Swedish economy. One of the report's most frequently cited findings was that the "de-facto" unemployment rate in Sweden in 2004 was between 15 and 17 percent, about three times higher than the official unemployment rate of 5.4 percent in that year (McKinsey Global Institute, 2006, Exhibit 6). Important media outlets such as the Financial Times (September 10, 2006; January 22, 2007; April 17, 2007) and The Economist (September 9, 2006) repeated the McKinsey estimate as part of critiques of recent Swedish economic performance. The Economist even went so far as to accuse Sweden of being "a world champion at massaging its jobless figures." To arrive at their 15-17 percent "de-facto" unemployment rate, McKinsey added what they viewed as "people who don't work, even though they should be able to" to the pool of the unemployed. These groups that McKinsey added to the unemployed included: "latent job candidates"; the "underemployedâ; those "excluded from [the] labor force with ability to work"; and workers on government programs. Reasonable people could disagree with McKinsey concerning both their choices of the types and the numbers of individuals to include in their "de-facto" unemployment calculation. The analysis here, however, accepts that McKinsey methodology and, instead, asks: what happens if we use the same methodology to estimate the "de-facto" unemployment rate in the United States? To calculate this, we added "discouraged workers," "marginally attached" workers, and part-timers for "economic reasons" (three official government categories), plus estimates of "early retirement" and the disabled population in the United States that could work following McKinsey's methodology, plus a reasonable estimate of the share of the U.S. workforce that are in moderately subsidized jobs (through the Earned Income Tax Credit). John Schmitt is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The author would like to thank Dean Baker for helpful comments, Rozina Ali for research assistance, and Ben Zipperer for analysis of the SIPP EITC data. Is the âRealâ Unemployment Rate in the United States 15 Percent? The resulting "de-facto" unemployment rate in the United States is 13.8 percent, compared to a 5.5 percent official U.S. unemployment rate, and an estimated 15.5 percent "de-facto" Swedish unemployment rate. If we also include the two countries' prison and jail populations in the "de-facto" unemployment rate --something in the spirit of the original McKinsey analysis, but not included in the original analysis done exclusively in the context of the Swedish economy-- the "de-facto" unemployment rate in the United States rises to 15.2 percent, just 0.5 percentage points lower than McKinsey's figure (15.7 percent) for Sweden including its prison and jail population. The unemployment rate is far from a perfect measure of economic well-being or national labor-market performance. To the extent that critics of the Swedish economy rely on the McKinsey Global Institute's estimates of the "de-facto" unemployment in Sweden, those critics must also be sure to apply the same criteria to other countries serving as implicit or explicit points of comparison. Data and Methods The table summarizes our application of the McKinsey methodology for Sweden to the United States. The first two columns reproduce the McKinsey results for Sweden. The last two columns present corresponding figures from the United States, based on my analysis of a variety of U.S. data sources. The table follows the McKinsey methodology closely until panel (f), where, in the spirit of the McKinsey report, the table also considers the effect of prison and jail populations on the "de-facto" unemployment rate, a factor not included in the McKinsey analysis. Since the McKinsey report covered 2004 for Sweden, the table looks at 2004 for the United States, as well, even though more recent data are also available. For Sweden, the specific numbers in the table differ slightly from those published by McKinsey. The small discrepancy appears to be related to the way that McKinsey converted their estimates of the additional "de-facto" unemployed to a "de-facto" unemployment rate. Typically, the unemployment rate is calculated as the total number of unemployed divided by the total labor force, where the labor force is defined as the total employed plus the total unemployed. The McKinsey calculation appears to add the "de-facto" unemployed to the pool of unemployed in the numerator of the fraction used to calculate the unemployment rate, but to exclude the "de-facto" unemployed from the total "de-facto" labor force in the denominator of the fraction. For consistency, and ease of comparison with the United States, we use the standard definition of the unemployment rate and apply it to both Sweden and the United States, using McKinsey's published numbers for the "de-facto" unemployed for Sweden and our own corresponding estimates for the United States. Official Unemployment Rate The first line in the table gives the official unemployment rate in both countries, following guidelines established by the International Labor Organization (ILO). According to this definition, a person is unemployed if: (1) they worked less than one hour in a nationally determined reference period (usually one week); (2) looked for worked during that period; and (3) were available to work during that period. By these definitions, in 2004, the unemployment rate in Sweden (5.3 percent) was basically identical to the unemployment rate in the United States (5.5 percent). TABLE 1 - Comparison of unemployment rates in Sweden and the United States using the McKinsey Global Institute Methodology, 2004 http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/sweden_unemployment_2007_06.pdf The U.S. unemployment rate is the official rate published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on its web page (http://www.bls.gov/ ). "Latent Job Candidates" The first category of "de-facto" unemployed workers that McKinsey adds to the Swedish unemployment rate are "latent job candidates," which McKinsey describes as "[p]ersons that are included in 'not in the labor force' but that want to work and can start within 14 days, including full-time students who have applied for work." (McKinsey, Exhibit 6) McKinsey's estimate of 140,000 latent job candidates increases the "real" Swedish unemployment rate by 3.1 percentage points. A roughly comparable group in the United States would include two categories of workers designated by the BLS: "discouraged workers" and the "marginally attached workers." The BLS defines discouraged workers as: "Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but who are not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify." (See: http://www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm .) Marginally attached workers are: "Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey." (The discouraged worker category is a subset of the marginally attached.) In 2004, about 2 million people in the United States were either "marginally attached" or discouraged workers. Counting them as "de-facto" unemployed would raise the "real" unemployment rate 1.4 percentage points. The U.S. data in the table are taken from the BLS website; they are derived from the 2004 Current Population Survey (CPS). The discouraged workers series is LNU05026645; marginally attached workers are series LNU05026642. .
. Real U.S. Unemployment Rate 19 Percent - Part 4 of 4 Underemployed The second category of "de-facto" unemployed are the underemployed. For Sweden, McKinsey defined the group as "[p]ersons with employment but working less than they would like to"(McKinsey, Exhibit 3). By McKinsey's estimate, about 132,000 Swedish workers were underemployed in 2004, which would have raised the "de-facto" underemployment rate by 2.9 percentage points. For the United States, the table shows the portion of part-time workers who say that they would like to work full-time but are not able to do so for "economic reasons" such as the unavailability of full-time work or reduced demand for hours at their current employer. In 2004, about 4,566,000 U.S. workers reported working only part-time hours for economic reasons. Following McKinsey, the table multiplies this figure by half (because the part-time workers were, on average, only missing "half" a job). The inclusion of these involuntary part-time workers as "de-facto" unemployed would raise the unemployment rate 1.5 percentage points. The involuntary part-time data are taken from the BLS web page (series LNS12032194). "Excluded from Labor Force with Ability to Work" McKinsey also includes as "de-facto" unemployed workers that it concludes have been excluded from the labor force but could, in fact, be working. This group is primarily "people who are on sick- leave or early retirement above and beyond the levels seen in around 1970" (McKinsey, p. 25). According to McKinsey's calculations, about 215,000 Swedes fall in this category. Including this group in the pool of the unemployed would raise the overall unemployment rate 4.6 percentage points. For the United States, the table presents estimates of the size of corresponding groups in the United States. To calculate "excess disability," the table compares the share of the total population age 25 to 64 that received Social Security Disability Insurance (SSI DI) in 1970 (1.6 percent) with the share receiving SSI DI in 2004 (3.9 percent), and, following McKinsey, declares any SSI DI above the 1970 level as reflecting "excess" disability. Given the size of the population age 25 to 64 in 2004, the calculation implies that about 3,561,000 formally disabled workers would be "able to work," raising the "de-facto" unemployment rate 2.4 percentage points. (SSI DI data are taken from Autor and Duggan, 2006, Figure 1.) To calculate "excess early retirement," the table takes a different approach. Instead of using the 1970 employment rate for 55 to 64 year olds as a benchmark, the table uses the 2004 employment rate for 55 to 64 year olds in Sweden. In 2004, despite McKinsey's concerns about excess early retirement in Sweden, the employment-to-population for 55 to 64 year olds (69.5 percent) was actually 9.6 percentage points higher in Sweden than it was in the United States (59.9 percent). The table, therefore, assumes that the United States in 2004 ought to be able to do at least as well as Sweden in 2004. McKinsey, of course, applies a stricter benchmark to Sweden, which was to do at least as well as Sweden around 1970, when employment rates for 55 to 64 year olds were higher than they were in 2004. Using contemporary Sweden as a benchmark, the McKinsey methodology applied to the United States suggests that the "de-facto" unemployment rate, including "excess early retirement", would be about 1.8 percentage points higher than the official rate that year. Using the employment-to-population rate in the United States in 1970 would have added only a negligible number of workers to the "de facto" unemployment rate. (Employment-to-population rates for 55 to 64 year olds in Sweden and the United States are taken from the OECD, 2006, Tables C and D.) Government Programs McKinsey does not define exactly which workers it includes in "government programs," but presumably these involve government-provided or government-subsidized jobs. McKinsey estimates that about 106,000 Swedes fall in this category. Counting this group as "de-facto" unemployed would raise the unemployment rate 2.3 percentage points. The United States also has a large program that subsidizes wages of many low-wage workers: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In 2004, about 21.6 million tax filing units, which may include more than one worker, reported receiving some income from the EITC (Brookings Institution, http://www.brookings.edu/metro/eitc.htm .) An analysis of data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) indicates that among one- and two-adult households receiving income from the EITC about 25 percent received EITC payments equal to more than 15 percent of their income from work. The table assumes that recipients in these fairly heavily subsidized jobs could reasonably be considered "de-facto" unemployed under the McKinsey criteria. Under these assumptions, the "de-facto" unemployment rate would increase 3.5 percentage points. Prison and Jail Population The McKinsey report did not examine the effects of the prison and jail population on the "de-facto" unemployment rate in Sweden, presumably because it would have had only a negligible effect. In fact, when we use data from the International Center for Prison Studies on the Swedish prison population, under the assumption that all prisoners would count as "de-facto" unemployed, the impact would only be to raise the "real" unemployment rate 0.2 percentage points. The U.S. prison and jail population, however, is much higher as a share of the population. Data from the same source put the comparable population in the United States in 2004 at about 2.1 million people. Including these prisoners as "de-facto" unemployed would raise the unemployment rate 1.4 percentage points. For both Sweden and the United States, the prisoner populations are averages from the ICPS sixth and seventh reports on prison populations. Conclusion The McKinsey Global Institute's estimates of the "de-facto" unemployment rate in Sweden have received widespread attention, and have been used to put Sweden in an unfavorable light when compared to other economies. The problem is that McKinseyâs calculations of Sweden's "official" and its "real" unemployment rates don't make similar adjustments to other -- implicit and explicit -- comparison countries. If we apply the McKinsey methodology to the United States, the "de-facto" U.S. unemployment rate rises from about 5.5 percent to 13.8 percent (compared to 15.5 percent in Sweden). If we also include the prison and jail populations in both countries, the gap between Sweden and the United States is even smaller: 15.2 percent for the United States, compared to 15.7 percent for Sweden. If the McKinsey numbers are evidence that the Swedish economy needs significant reform and restructuring, then these figures for the United States also suggest an urgent need for reform and restructuring here. Source: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/sweden_unemployment_2007_06.pdf .
Excellent Commentary......Excellent Previous Calls......and Excellent Future Calls...... ........................................................ You know William Faulkner used to be ridiculed in Oxford , Mississippi as the "no Count Count".....Oddly, after his death, became one of the best writers in the US..... ............................................ I do not know what the actual numbers are, but for simplicity's sake.....what you are describing is a US after being deleveraged.... Deleveraged in every aspect starting with the funny money balance sheets which have been most pronounced on Wall Street..... What has happened is a force de jour about accounting and legal largesse creating false values.... ie ...how does it happen that what should have been a $120,000 house has over $1,000,000 in legal agreements depending on its comparable real estate appraisals.... Greenspan forced cheap money Appraisal fees Rating agency fees Brokerage firm commissions Underwriting and selling fees... Legal fees..... Opaque markets.... Accounting rules.... The list goes on..... But at the end of the day......all because of a simple few bricks, concrete, and some wood on a tiny piece of land.....that might be worth $120,000......somehow commanded over $1,000,000 in legal agreements which could be held on the accounting books of others as manufactured money, from which people were paid.....people who were educated and greedy..... The US....and the world's economy has to go through what it is going through...... Make no mistake....deleveraging means that the original $120,000 correct price will be reflected.....and the US Government will not be able to hold up valuations which reflect the prior $1,000,000 in legal agreements..... At the end of the day......although the price of a house may go to $0, one still has the house.... When a pile of paper legal agreements go to $0, one has $0.....
Since SA says that Clinton was the best president of the last 100 years this thread should be in Chit Chat. The guy was so hot for black votes he set up the subprime crisis we now have. Bill Clinton was probably the worst President we have had to date, this next communist wannabe Obama, if elected, will certainly outdo him in doing damage to the best qualities of the US. I don't think it takes even a triple digit IQ to predict stock market crashes. They happen all the time.
. October 14, 2008 SouthAmerica: Reply to Libertad Thanks for your support. I have received a number of invitations from people asking me to start posting my articles on their magazines and forums around the web. I just received an email from a fellow asking me to move to his website and he his email said: October 12, 2008 Dear southamerica, I specifically registered for this board for the purpose of contacting you. I have been reading some of your posts and I am appreciative for the information you provide. I disagree and condemn all the flack and insults you have been getting from the other members. It is my opinion that this board is poorly moderated. *** Then he explained to me the type of people that participates on a regular basis on the discussions on this particular forum. Another fellow also asked me to start posting on this forum in the China market - and he told me that he had been reposting many of my articles from this forum and also from Brazzil magazine on this forum in China. What I am saying to people is that just go ahead and post a copy of my articles on other forums and just make a link to the source of the information. The more people who are reading my postings the better it is to educate the largest number of people possible. I also said to that fellow the following: I don't mind the people who gives me a hard time I am used to go to war against them, and I am getting vicious with these guys. They got the wrong guy to fight against and I don't get intimidated by anyone of these clowns. The more people help me spread the information that I am providing for free for the these forums the better informed Americans are going to be and they can fight back against this corrupt system that we have today here in the United States. Ricardo Among others I also received an invitation from the Huffington Post for me to submit articles to that website for publication. .
. October 14, 2008 SouthAmerica: Fractals R Us. Clinton was the second best president in the last 100 years. FDR was the number one. At least get your facts straight. .
Surveys do show FDR as the best president in the last 100 years, but do not list Clinton in the top tier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents
. October 14, 2008 SouthAmerica: At least we have one guy who is honest when he gives his opinion. ***** âFormer Fed chief says U.S. now in recessionâ Reuters â October 14, 2008 SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said on Tuesday the U.S. housing sector faced more losses and the economy was in recession even as authorities moved to stabilize the financial system. Volcker said the priority for U.S. authorities in the credit crisis was to stabilize the financial system even though that meant heavy government intrusion. "The first priority is to stabilize the financial system. It is necessary even though the cost involved is heavy government intrusion in markets that should be private," he said in a speech at a seminar in Singapore. "House prices in the U.S. are still declining. There are still more losses to come there. The economy, I believe, is in recession." Volcker is chairman of the board of trustees of the Group of 30, an international body composed of central bank governors, leading economists and private financial sector experts. He is credited for battling double-digit inflation that flared in the 1970s. He was chairman of the U.S. central bank between 1979 and 1987, before handing the reins over to Alan Greenspan, and oversaw a sharp increase in interest rates to quell the price pressures. Volcker was asked by a member of the audience if the massive infusion of liquidity by the Federal Reserve could lead to inflation or stagflation. "It's not going to be a problem in the short run. Inflation doesn't flourish in the face of recession," he said. "It's something we have to worry about when we get out of this recession." The United States has announced various measures to combat a credit crisis that emanated from the U.S. housing market and which has spread globally. U.S. authorities are expected to announce plans later on Tuesday to pump $250 billion into the country's banks following similar concerted measures in Europe to revive money markets and stave off a global recession. "I have been around for a while. I have seen a lot of crises but I have never seen anything quite like this one," Volcker said. "This crisis is an exception. I don't think we can escape damage to the real economy." (Reporting by Vidya Ranganathan and Koh Gui Qing; Editing by Neil Fullick) Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081014/us_nm/us_financial_volcker .