Tuesday, August 18, 2015

The Washington Post Accuses Congress Of Covering Up The True State Of The US Economy

  

Barack Obama

The Washington Post published an interesting piece on the U.S. Congress hiding the true state of the economy in America and the Judiciary Report agrees with their assessment. For years the Judiciary Report has stated the government is hiding from the American people and the world how bad the economy has become since the 2008 financial crisis (U.S. Foreclosures Spike Again Indicating Trouble In The Financial Sector).  It's a deck of cards. Government reports have been altered and facts omitted to present a rosy picture, only for them to resurface later painting a grim picture of unemployment, real estate and exports - three important components of a healthy, stable economy.

From the beginning, the Judiciary Report emphasized austerity. It has been the consistent message of this website for years regarding the economy. Historically, austerity is the only thing proven to work during a financial crisis. Other nations have employed austerity over the past several years, since the global economic crisis began in America and spread to other nations. Those nations are doing much better financially for it and have past the worst. However, the Obama Administration chose wild, unruly spending and it has put America much further into debt and not created sustainable, lasting job growth.

The national debt is at an all time high and manufacturing is at the lowest levels it has been in decades. A nation cannot produce less goods and spend more money via the government and expect it will all balance out. It just doesn't work that way. It has not and further will not add up. It is an economic recipe for disaster.

The Obama Administration has also exhibited a negative attitude towards some American companies, saying very unflattering, undeserved things that did not help the situation. For example, Obama insulted Apple as a company making another gadget that people do not need, when it is a company with great products many people appreciate. When you buy a good piece of electronics (laptop, tablet ect) it can increase your productivity at work and after you get off the job, bring many hours of entertainment and education at home.

The Obama Administration has squashed trade deals and massive business projects, such as the Keystone Pipeline, costing America billions of dollars in revenues. How is impeding trade, which creates jobs, a good thing. America was at its most prosperous when the nation created and exported products at a greater rate and signed large business and trade deals.

The Obama Administration also has uneducated, unqualified celebrities serving as advisors, which is unwise
and dangerous. Why take advice from fools. The president and his wife are highly educated lawyers, who are ivy league graduates, but are taking professional advice from idiots in Hollywood whose claim to fame is showing their private bits on screen and making foul music, much of which contains copyright infringement.

These days it doesn't take talent or intelligence to become famous, just a willingness to be a degenerate.
Therefore, why is he listening to them. Good fruit will not come from a rotten tree. You think about that.
Wouldn't it make sense to take advice from people with a proven track record for financial success such as Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Michael Dell (Dell), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Bob Johnson (BET) and Linda Johnson-Rice (Johnson Publishing Company).

STORY SOURCE

Congress is trying to make it harder to know how the economy is doing

Cutting funding for the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be penny wise and pound foolish. Are we really all becoming Uber drivers and “gig economy” freelancers? Without good economic data, there’s no way to know. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Confusion about today’s labor market, anxiety about the future of jobs, a rapidly evolving economy and so many other reasons make now exactly the wrong time to diminish the government’s ability to collect and construct labor market data. But that is exactly what is happening, and may continue to happen.
Jonathan Schwabish at the Urban Institute catalogues the damage: In 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the principal agency charged with producing information on the labor market, received $41 million less from Congress than the president requested. Statistics on mass layoffs — an important source of information about the behavior of businesses facing sharp reductions in demand — were eliminated.

In 2014, facing a gap of nearly $22 million, BLS pulled back on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, a vital pillar supporting our ability to know detailed information on how many jobs and businesses the economy is supporting and how much workers are earning. The same year, BLS continued to produce information on import and export prices — from which we know how the United States is performing in international markets — by the skin of its teeth.

For fiscal 2016, which begins in October, the Senate wants to cut BLS’s budget. In a letter sent last month to the chairman of the Senate Appropriates Committee, the director of the Office of Management and Budget laid out the consequences: “Under the bill BLS would have difficulty continuing to operate its core programs and would need to permanently eliminate surveys as a result.”

“Permanently eliminate surveys.” That’s a big step in the wrong direction. Instead of cutting funding and cutting surveys, Congress should appropriate funds sufficient for BLS to expand its existing operations.
Why? The Federal Reserve needs high-quality information on prices, jobs and wages to set interest rates, which affect the decisions of businesses and households throughout the economy. (For example, I bought a house not too long ago, in part because interest rates were so low.) The Fed has to make economy-influencing decisions regardless of the quality of the labor market information it receives, so let’s err on the side of high-quality statistics.

Are we becoming a nation of freelancers, living in a new “gig economy?” Data on the share of workers who are self-employed and who hold multiple jobs suggests no, but those of us in major cities see Uber-type businesses springing up all around us. We need better information on all the ways workers earn a buck. Such information would help policymakers decide whether it’s really necessary to create new safety net structures that don’t run through employers for health care, retirement and unemployment. And if you’re deciding whether to turn your car into a cab for the weekend, being able to log on to BLS.gov and see why, when, where and how others have done that — and how much money they made doing it — would be very helpful...


RELATED ARTICLES