Stock gains don’t make up for continued sluggishness in economy, job market
The Dow Jones Industrial Average today briefly touched the 14000 mark, before falling slightly. As I write, it’s hovering right around that level, the first time it’s done so since late 2007. The broader S&P 500 is at a five-year high, about 3 percent off its all-time peak in October 2007. The Nasdaq is at a 10-year high, though it’s significantly lower than its tech-bubble peak. In all, though, these major indices finally are back to roughly where they were before the housing crash and Great Recession (as long as we don’t adjust them for inflation, that is).
Yet, earlier today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the unemployment rate had ticked upward to 7.9 percent even though more people had stopped looking for work than found a job. At January’s rate of job growth (157,000 net jobs created), it would take until at least 2025 to regain pre-recession employment levels. At the rate for all of 2012 (an upwardly revised 181,000), it would take “only” until 2022, a decade and a half after employment peaked.
And yesterday, the Commerce Department said the economy shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012, the first negative quarter since mid-2009. The economy is an estimated 14 percent smaller than it would have been if it had grown since 2008 at the long-term average of 3.1 percent a year. That’s some $2.25 trillion of economic production that never came into existence.
The reason for continued market advances in the face of sluggish economic news might be summarized by this quote from the Wall Street Journal:
“Any not-bad news is helping this market,” said Jonathan Corpina, senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, a New York brokerage. “If we get great news, good news, or okay news, it’s still going to make our screens green.”
“Not-bad” is not exactly indicative of a boom. If this quarter were to repeat last quarter’s performance, the above numbers are where the Obama Recovery would have left us: barely back to zero for investors, still well below it for job-seekers and economic growth.
This is the reality wrought by the primary economic policy of the past four years — trying to jump-start the private sector via government spending and monetary expansion. All the spending and expansion hasn’t translated into robust private-sector growth. Four years later, there’s little reason to believe a boom is just around the corner.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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557 comments Add your comment
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
11:00 am
“I didn’t get my schooling in Cumming, er, Forsyth County High. Sorry.”
Neither did I, Real Athens.
And yes, you ARE sorry.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
11:03 am
“Historians say”
The same “historians” who put President Incompetent in the Top 10, JDW?
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
11:06 am
The difference between you and me, JDW, (besides your complete inability to think), is that I do not accept people’s “opinions” as fact.
And I do not blindly follow anyone’s philosophy, social or economic.
I leave that to you libs.
Rightwing troll
February 2nd, 2013
11:06 am
I was unaware anybody other than you all who live here put W in the top 10… That what you lying, cranky, old, mooching 47%ers are calling yourselves now???… “Historians”?
Rightwing troll
February 2nd, 2013
11:07 am
Double snirt…
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
11:09 am
Troll, nice try, but you’ll never see me putting GWB in the Top 10 of any list.
But you’d know that if you actually read some of my posts.
Or understood the English language.
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
11:10 am
“I do not accept people’s “opinions” as fact. And I do not blindly follow anyone’s philosophy, social or economic.”
But we’re supposed to blindly follow your uniformed, misguided, continually repudiated “facts”? I guess you formed your bigoted philosophy on your own. Most are taught.
Conspiracy theorist.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right
February 2nd, 2013
11:19 am
And out comes the race pimp comments.
Prove I am a bigot, Real Athens, using any comments I have ever posted.
Anywhere.
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
11:25 am
Out comes what? Read here:
Tiberius – pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
10:29 am
According to the Urban Dictionary, there are two definitions of race pimp. Which one am I? Which one are you?
Give it a rest, angry old man.
@@
February 2nd, 2013
11:27 am
Rightwing troll:
It’s sCHnirt with a CH. You can spell it correctly here at Kyle’s. It is, however, verboten at the neighbor’s “goo log”.
SCHNIRT!
Bromances appear to be short-lived.
Blog on, fellas…blog on.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 2nd, 2013
11:28 am
RA – Being that you are a member of the people’s republic and have never been exposed to any reasoned debate, allow me to explain how this works. You object to my comments and put up a reason for this, however lame it was. So I come back with text from a study that details findings that the entire UN report is based on false logic. This is quite good reason to skip over the parts of the report that describe how the UN would like to impose taxes and brutalize poor people and nations. I don’t blame them.
Now here is where fairness, a solely Conservative trait, enters your side of the argument. Instead of squealing like a stuck pig, how about we allow you to produce something from your beloved UN report that proves Cato wrong?
Good luck.
indigo
February 2nd, 2013
11:39 am
Aesop – 10:39
I guess 97% is just not good enough for you, right pee wee?
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/06/scientists-overwhelmingly-believe-in-man-made-climate-change/1
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 2nd, 2013
11:50 am
This data comes from a new survey out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. About 85 percent of funding (for the National Academy of Sciences) comes from the federal government through contracts and grants from agencies and 15 percent from state governments, private foundations, industrial organizations, and funds provided by the Academies member organizations.
The same government that would love to brutalize domestic energy production. Real objective thinking there indigo.
JDW
February 2nd, 2013
11:51 am
@Mark…I guess I am just out of step with “alternate reality”. The downside of the ability to think for oneself I suppose.
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
11:51 am
Aesop, I Report, whomever: It’s in the lede, right after the Arlo Guthrie quote:
“The 2013 report, as it now stands, tips the scales at over 1,000 pages, consequently, we haven’t made our way through it yet …” However it didn’t stop them from defining it and you re-printing it.
Uniformed, non-researched opinion. Needn’t go any further than there?
However, if you follow our thread, my mentioning the CATO Institute was in regard to the Glenn Beck climate conspiracy nonsense you posted initially here today. You can’t even keep up with your own hogwash.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right
February 2nd, 2013
11:55 am
I see that Real Athens can’t come up with anything but a baseless accusation.
So typical for the liberals on this blog when called out.
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
11:56 am
“The same government that would love to brutalize domestic energy production. Real objective thinking there indigo.”
“A new report by the International Energy Association says the U.S. will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2017, overtaking current leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia. U.S. energy policies initiated by the George W. Bush administration and implemented by President Barack Obama have moved the U.S. toward energy independence and away from Middle East energy sources. U.S. oil production has risen rapidly since 2008 and oil imports are at their lowest level in two decades.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/u-pass-saudi-arabia-energy-production-iea-says-170907660.html
Objective thinking? Try it sometime.
indigo
February 2nd, 2013
11:56 am
Aesop – 11:50
Please explain why you think our Government “would love to brutalize domestic energy production”.
JDW
February 2nd, 2013
11:59 am
@Tiberius…”The same “historians” who put President Incompetent in the Top 10, JDW?”
Yep that would be them…they rank him number 10 out of 20 since 1900…just what I have said all along…he is average, but way better than that Republican Dufus on the bottom of the list.
As for this gem…”I do not blindly follow anyone’s philosophy, social or economic.” Indeed that is you to a T…completely out of step with the world around you.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 2nd, 2013
12:00 pm
I was asking for prove that Cato’s detailed analysis of the UN reports faulty logic is incorrect, not blubbering about them not reading the whole report.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 2nd, 2013
12:07 pm
Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits.
Republicans jumped on the news that the Obama administration is delaying judgment on the Keystone XL pipeline by another six months.
The Obama administration Thursday reversed a Bush-era decision and blocked a bid to build one of the largest mountaintop removal coal mines in Appalachian history.
Next question.
td
February 2nd, 2013
12:10 pm
Aesop’s Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 2nd, 2013
12:07 pm
And when gas goes back over $4.00 per gallon this spring and summer the Dems will blame it on the GOP.
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
February 2nd, 2013
12:10 pm
For the FDR worshipers:
But as Amity Shlaes explained in her outstanding history of the era — “The Forgotten Man” — it was precisely FDR’s “bold, persistent experimentation” that was largely to blame for the length, depth and severity of the Great Depression.
Convinced that the government had to do something, FDR tinkered and experimented, she said, figuring that if he didn’t “get it right the first time … maybe he’d get it right the second time.” But the very arbitrariness of FDR’s actions, she found, made it impossible for businesses to make plans. And so, as FDR’s bold experiments increased, business activity decreased and markets froze.
“From the point of view of a business,” Shlaes said in a 2009 interview, “it is annihilating to hear Washington uncertain, and that itself retards recovery because you really don’t know what to expect.”
If Obama wants to conduct experiments, he should get a job as a high school science teacher, and not use the entire nation as guinea pigs, particularly when we already know how his tests will turn out.
Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/090712-625080-terrifying-promise-obama-made-.htm#ixzz2JlLF6ZyF
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
12:16 pm
Dutch Royal Shell was endangering the Alaskan Fishing Industry.
Keystone Pipeline — ugh.
Mountaintop removal coalmines? Sheesh.
Without doing any of the three you cited the U.S.: “will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2017, overtaking current leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia. U.S. energy policies initiated by the George W. Bush administration and implemented by President Barack Obama have moved the U.S. toward energy independence and away from Middle East energy sources. U.S. oil production has risen rapidly since 2008 and oil imports are at their lowest level in two decades.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/u-pass-saudi-arabia-energy-production-iea-says-170907660.html
indigo
February 2nd, 2013
12:21 pm
Aesop – 12:07 “next question”
What have you got against clean air?
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
12:22 pm
TD:
Read on:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-consumption/gas-price.htm
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
12:27 pm
Rafe:
Ms. Shlaes book has sold many copies and been lauded by many. However, there is a cadre of folks who disagree with it and some of her statistical models:
“Economist Paul Krugman has criticized The Forgotten Man. He has taken issue with its central tenet that New Deal policies exacerbated the Great Depression. Krugman wrote of “a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that FDR actually made the Depression worse…. But the definitive study of fiscal policy in the 1930s, by the MIT economist E. Cary Brown, reached a very different conclusion: Fiscal stimulus was unsuccessful ‘not because it does not work, but because it was not tried’.” Krugman specifically accused Shlaes of disseminating “misleading statistics.”
Shlaes responded to Krugman in the Wall Street Journal, specifically saying that for her estimates of employment and unemployment during the period she used the Lebergott/Bureau of Labor Statistics series. She wrote that statistician Stanley Lebergott “intentionally did not include temporary jobs in emergency programs — because to count a short-term, make-work project as a real job was to mask the anxiety of one who really didn’t have regular work with long-term prospects.”
Journalist Jonathan Chait has called the book self-contradictory, misleading, and inaccurate. Novelist and essayist John Updike criticized the book as “a revisionist history of the Depression.”
The International Herald Tribune review by David Leonhardt comments: “With 75 years of hindsight, surely we can all agree that Roosevelt’s vision was imperfect. Yes, he helped build many pillars of the modern economy — Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the modern Federal Reserve and more. He also understood the folly of Hoover’s protectionism and pursued a more open trade policy. And his public works slowly, if unevenly, provided employment. (As the historian Eric Rauchway has noted in Slate, Shlaes exaggerates joblessness in the 1930s by counting many people who worked in relief programs as unemployed.) But other attempts to fine-tune the economy truly did fail. From today’s vantage point, the worst of them may have been farm subsidies, which essentially live on, giving a handout to agribusiness while raising the cost of food for everyone else and hurting poor farmers around the world.”
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
February 2nd, 2013
12:30 pm
JDW, your top 10 presidents, with the exception of Reagan, would be considered charter members of the Progressive Hall of Fame. I believe Wilson started that foolishness, followed by Teddy R, and FDR. Obviously the list was put together by “experts” who believe in the progressive agenda. I guess they thought they would throw Reagan in as an effort to appear objective.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 2nd, 2013
12:33 pm
The libs answer my question for me.
Thanks.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
12:34 pm
“Economist Paul Krugman has criticized The Forgotten Man.”
There’s your sign . . .
Of course, any group that would give out a “prize” like they did for a President who hadn’t (and still hasn’t) accomplished anything, just doesn’t have a whole lot of gravitas anymore.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
12:37 pm
“She wrote that statistician Stanley Lebergott “intentionally did not include temporary jobs in emergency programs — because to count a short-term, make-work project as a real job was to mask the anxiety of one who really didn’t have regular work with long-term prospects.”
Amazing how government repeats it’s failures over and over again. How many full-time, permanent jobs were actually CREATED by the Stimulus, libs?
Oh, yeah. You can’t find that number, because it has morphed into created, saved and part-time jobs.
That were never permanent.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
12:37 pm
Oh, and still waiting for your proof that I’m a bigot, Real Athens.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
February 2nd, 2013
12:39 pm
Off to help a buddy out. Looking forward to any shred of proof from Real Athens, or an admission of error from Indigo on what I am and believe.
I’m confident I won’t have to wait by the keyboard for either.
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
February 2nd, 2013
12:39 pm
my posts are disappearing!!!!!!!!1
td
February 2nd, 2013
12:44 pm
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
12:22 pm
“Last week we discussed the implication of federal, state and local taxes on the price of a gallon of gasoline. This week we are going to cover how constrictions, or potential constrictions, in refining capacity will affect gasoline prices. A prime example of how supply and demand drive prices is taking place in the northeast United States. The media continues to drive the point home that we have an excess of crude oil and therefore the price of gas should be much lower. We agree that there is an ample supply of WTI crude to meet demands for that product. The increase in price for crude is driven by global demand and pricing and cannot easily be changed.
Gasoline is a bit of a different beast in that it is best refined close to its end customers or as an alternative can be shipped by tankers. Therefore refining capacity and location are key components to the supply side of the pricing equation. Slowly and quietly there has been a constriction of gasoline refining capacity taking place in the northeast United States. In February 2010 Sunoco closed its Eagle Point/Westville, N.J., refinery with total daily refining capacity of 145,000 barrels. September of 2011 brought another closure at the Western Refining Yorktown, Va., facility that processed 66,300 barrels of oil a day. The total capacity removed from the market equaled 211,300 barrels of oil a day. A large portion of this loss was replaced by the PBF Energy Co. LLC’s Delaware City Refinery being brought back on line after being shut down in 2009. This facility replaced 182,000 of the 211,300 barrels lost in the closing of the two refineries.”
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2012/mar12/mar12/0306AgvisorsMRsr.cfm
Now go and google the effects of the environmentalist movement is building new refinery’s. The real problem is the radical environmentalist (Led by the President) and their hate of fossil fuels.
td
February 2nd, 2013
12:47 pm
Real Athens
February 2nd, 2013
12:27 pm
Rafe:
Ms. Shlaes book has sold many copies and been lauded by many. However, there is a cadre of folks who disagree with it and some of her statistical models:
“Economist Paul Krugman has criticized The Forgotten Man.”
And you consider Krugman and authority?
getalife
February 2nd, 2013
12:52 pm
“you have to get up every day and work to do best you can and communicate that to the vast majority of fair-minded Americans whether they’re in Congress, in the press or in the public.” Hillary Clinton.
President Obama saved the Dow from the collapse of 6500 to 14,000.
Yes, the wealthy will always be fine so the new majority switched focus to the middle class.
This is a no brainer and our new focus for the new majority.
JDW
February 2nd, 2013
12:54 pm
@Rafe….”Amity Shlaes ”
O’dear another “unbiased” source from the Right…what is her day job…hummmm….thats right she is director of the 4% Growth Project at the George W. Bush Institute.
I will stick with the definitive study of fiscal policy in the 1930s, by the MIT economist E. Cary Brown, who reached a very different conclusion…surprise..surprise:
“Fiscal stimulus was unsuccessful ‘not because it does not work, but because it was not tried’.”[
Michael H. Smith
February 2nd, 2013
1:00 pm
Think any of these Socialist Libs have figured out why the man made global warming cause will do very little to actually stop greenhouse gases from being produced and released into the atmosphere?
Okay it’s time for these child geniuses to give us a logical oratory on how the use of “carbon credits” will put the man caused climate change into remission.
Calling all charlatans.
td
February 2nd, 2013
1:00 pm
getalife
February 2nd, 2013
12:52 pm
.
“President Obama saved the Dow from the collapse of 6500 to 14,000.”
That is the most ridiculous thing I think I have ever seen written. The President did not save the stock market. Free enterprise (Greed in you leftest terms) saved the stock market. When the stock market fell low enough then the people started investing in the market to maximize their return on investment (greed).
Michael H. Smith
February 2nd, 2013
1:09 pm
Good afternoon Comrades. Time to find the hiding boogieman of Socialism.
The Fallacy of Redistribution
By Thomas Sowell
The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to Joe the Plumber four years ago. But the surfacing of this tape may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to thinking about what the consequences of redistribution are. [a.k.a. "the boogieman"]
Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design. But if human beings have their own responses to government policies, then we cannot blithely assume that government policies will have the effect intended.
The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler’s Holocaust in the 1940s.
How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/09/20/the_fallacy_of_redistribution/page/full/
MrLiberty
February 2nd, 2013
1:15 pm
The last time the stock market was at 14,000, gold was only at $700 an ounce. Today it is nearly $1700 an ounce. To reflect the same devaluation of the dollar that the price of gold clearly shows, the Dow would need to reach nearly 34,000. So why the big deal. The economy is in the toilet and the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies are only making it far, far worse. Wake up people. You know that you can’t buy what you bought back when the Dow was at 14000 for what you can today. Why are you so easily deceived by the jerks in the main stream media?
Both Bush and Obama are to blame for this disasterous situation. They both supported the Federal Reserve policies, the bank bailouts, the unnecessary and costly wars for oil and empire, the massive spending at home of domestic welfare (including the prescription drug benefit), the trillion dollar police state, etc. And both parties in congress supported all of these criminal wastes of OUR money.
Michael H. Smith
February 2nd, 2013
1:20 pm
Now wait a minute Mr. Liberty, you can’t use real term empirical reality based logic to confound the confused liberals.
getalife
February 2nd, 2013
1:22 pm
The bailouts and stimulus saved the markets but that is known history.
If we are going to cut, do not expect job growth.
Your minority leader said we are recovered but that is only the markets and that is the only thing the gop care about.
Congrats on keeping the blog open and think Kyle is making another smart move by focusing on State politics until his party is “fixed”.
getalife
February 2nd, 2013
1:26 pm
BTW, the costs of gop obstruction is running into the hundreds of billions because the Fed will not stop easing until we return to full employment.
indigo
February 2nd, 2013
1:36 pm
Michael H. Smith – 1:09
You don’t have to tell us.
We know your preference.
http://jamesjcrook.hubpages.com/hub/PREDATORY-CAPITALISM-Economic-Fascism-Dictating-Foreign-Policy
getalife
February 2nd, 2013
1:41 pm
Yes, a gigantic thank you for some profit taking on some of my AR’s, ammo and gold.
Appreciate it.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
February 2nd, 2013
1:54 pm
Ain’t that the truth, I paid $225 for a gun that’s worth over $1200 now, well, it isn’t “worth” that much, but that’s what people are paying for them because of the obozogoons and their silly attempts to brutalize the Constitution.
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
February 2nd, 2013
2:03 pm
Ben Stein on gun violence in America, good perspective on lack of leadership from Obama.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/01/hes-the-biggest-celebrity-in-t
MarkV
February 2nd, 2013
2:56 pm
Here comes again MHS (@ 1:09 pm), with his cut-and-paste contribution, to scare us with a description of the horrors of the early 20th century Russia. Which were, both after and before the revolution, much worse than the redistribution of wealth,
But calm down, MHS. Nobody is going to confiscate your wealth, or the wealth of anybody else. The policies and plans of Barrack Obama have nothing in common with the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” What liberals mean by redistribution is a long overdue change in the distribution of income in this country, which already has reached an income inequality hardly matched among other developed, industrialized nations.