Pawlenty: US headed for double-dip Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) predicted Tuesday that the U.S. will face a double-dip recession that could last all the way until the 2012 elections. The likely presidential candidate said the government, under President Obama, has devalued the dollar by injecting "fiat money" into the economy in an attempt to boost it â a plan he said will be damaging in the long-run. ---------- This fiat money sounds dangerous!
Cov, anytime you make money from a defective product, like a Fiat you will have problems. For example, back in the 70's I saw a 124 coupe' rust right in half, now the engine still ran and the trans still shifted, but it basically came in on the hook with the engine and front suspension hanging out of it. Also they had a bit of a problem with EFI meltdowns. So I think if the policy makers in Washington: wait, whats that, hold on one of our Anal/ ists is talking to me. Oh, FIAT not Fiat, Nevermind. The Never Driving A Fiat VIPER
Look at the BLS figures for "underemployment". The other piece are all of the folks taking that 3 years of benefits and who are not even looking for work. The price of gasoline and the torrid pace of price inflation will dominate the economic conversation for the next 18 months.
The dreaded "inflation" that the inflationists have been sounding the bell on for the past 5 years is finally upon us it appears. Regardless of what the data says (I say that because obviously the govt has a vested interest), I can see it happening in my business at an alarming rate. Our cost of goods started rising 4-5 months ago, and is picking up steam. I would imagine most of it will not be able to be passed onto the consumer, which means lower earnings for the company (private, mid sized family business). Lower earnings = no wage increases and keeping productivity as high as possible High productivity = less man hours worked from our hourly employees. This will be happening on a large scale in most companies, including large/public/multi-national corporations. I believe this will stall the QE recovery in a big way by this fall. I think you'll see a 2012 election cycle similar to 08, where Obama sees bad news day after day on the economy, that has never recovered fundamentally anyway. The QE propping up is about to burst.
A large amount of Obama voters never had and never want a job. All they want are their free government handouts, and they will continue to vote for whoever will give that to them.
That is true, but he can't win with only the deadbeat class. In fact he can't even pose a threat of winning with the entire Democratic base. He needs over 50% of the Indy's and most of those people work or are retired (as proven by the fact that they're not Dems). I believe that segment of the electorate will see that his policies haven't helped and have only made the pain worse. The only two problems that I foresee are: 1. The Republicans will have a hard time nominating a candidate that is even remotely exciting to the voters. 2. The Republican base might get frustrated that the Congress hasn't been able to accomplish anything substantial in regards to rolling back Obamacare or significant spending cuts. They set themselves up for disappointment because the Republicans only control 1/3 of elected government. A Congress can contain Obama and the Democratic Senate, but you can't move your agenda very far in that scenario.
Exactly. It's a race to try and create a majority of freeloaders, wardens of the state and cajole them into lifelong voting Democrats. (It started years back, but that's another story). This effort has essentially fueled the opposition and created all of these head to head conflicts in states such as Wisconsin, where they can visibly observe the politics of public sector largesse and impending bankruptcy.
That is all one needs to look at. Period. End of Story. Every other artificially derived indicator that the MSM and it's paid shill, Olias, use to deceive the populace ignores this very simple chart that tells the real story. Unemployment is sky high, underemployment and part-time work, commissioned sales jobs, etc try to fill in this structural problem. It's at the heart of why the public has vehemently turned against public sector largesse. When the private sector average Joe is getting thrown a bone with a very modest hourly wage and barebones benefits, then opens up his local paper and sees some retiring school administrator living off of a $350,000 per year pension plan for life, it resonates.
btw, as an addendum to that chart, it's VERY interesting to note that the 03-06 bounce never approached the peak employment reached in the late 1990s. As I have contended before, that very brief but extremely damaging housing bubble was created to pick up the massive and burgeoning slack in employment from the tech fallout. The concentration of employment surrounding housing was very real, yet very transitory. We literally mortgaged the entire country, the currency and the debt funding going forward for 3 years of all out monetary expansion. Nevermind all of the shadow banking growth, although it's at the heart of this debacle.
Is it even possible to know what the real unemployment situation really is? The reason I ask is there are so many people that are not counted; eg: 1099 unemployed, self employed that business failed now looking for work, people not drawing unemployment anymore, etc Could the real unemployment figure be closer to say 20% or is that conservative?