Recent comments

  • I think Bernie is somewhere on the left and he certainly opposed the TPP and other job killing trade treaties. Despite the right’s attempts to characterize Obama and Hillary as leftists they were in effect card carrying centrists, the same corporate stooges that are found deep in Republican land. There is a difference between social policies and economic policies on the left. You can be socially liberal and a corporate stooge. These were once called liberal Republicans who became extinct with the advent of the Southern Strategy. Also to compete with corporate Republicans many Democrats take the money, throw working Americans under the bus and support Gay rights.

    The problem on the left is not being against working Americans its being too consumed in taking care of every wet puppy on the political spectrum. They’ve forgotten that FDR created the Democratic base by putting working Americans first. They need to figure out how to dry their puppies, save the Planet and protect the American workers that voted for their Grandfathers.

    Reply to: Trump's Third Day   7 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Recent terror attacks in the US have been formulated by US citizens and long term US residents not recent immigrants. Travel would seem to be incidental. The 9 11 terrorists were not from the Nations on Trump’s list however most were from Nations where Trump does business and are excluded. Trump’s policy is certainly not well thought out as even the Iraqi General fighting ISIS in Mosul was barred from entering the US to visit his family who were relocated here for their safety. His policy is however a direct affront to over a billion people who, given our past inane foreign policies, don’t need a lot of coaxing to become radicalized. So basically this policy amounts to kicking a hornet’s nest to keep from being stung. If it doesn’t work I’m sure the next step will be to kick it harder.

    Reply to: The President’s Latest Controversy   7 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • didn't quite get it this time.

    Reply to: Using December CPI to compute real PCE shows a 138 basis point boost to 4th qtr GDP   7 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Wow, I would have never considered this, very glad you wrote about it. Oh yes, they are stifling cross border capital, the Chinese most fabulous game.

    Reply to: China Moves to Curb Bitcoin following Capital Flight   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • On one hand we have him cancelling TPP and considering currency manipulation, VAT style taxes which both the left and right have been crying for a long time. Yet, he is putting some of the worse scumbags responsible for the housing crisis in charge and denying a government break on housing. Maybe it is simply to undo whatever Obama did, regardless of policy. ;)

    Reply to: Forgotten Again   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • national media, emanating from the coasts, fail to see how well Trump's intitial moves are playing in the Midwest...the border tax is one thing, but he's also managed to get GM, Ford and Chrysler to reverse planned outsourcing and commit to expanding US plants, and has forced at least a dozen other companies to rethink their outsourcing plans with simple twitter threats...and Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire who runs Alibaba, promised an unrealistic million new jobs in the US after meeting with Trump...so making a NAFTA rollback his first priority is just icing on the cake for the Great Lakes states most effected by it...there's no doubt that were another vote taken today, he would win Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and PA by much larger margins than he did in November...

    Reply to: Using December CPI to compute real PCE shows a 138 basis point boost to 4th qtr GDP   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • If trump manages to get a VAT, i.e. a border tax enacted, it will be a strange and wild inflation ride. I'm for this as a tool to balance the trade deficit but exports will go dramatically down, it might deflate the dollar while import prices will soar. I'm not a Trump fan but we have promoted that very policy on this site ages ago. Glad to see some positives coming out of his administration so fast.

    Reply to: Using December CPI to compute real PCE shows a 138 basis point boost to 4th qtr GDP   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Here comes inflation to eat up any gains in wages and income. It is good you are covering oil. Has to be *the* biggest factor in prices and even the economy, yet almost no one on economic sites talks about it.

    Reply to: Producer Prices Up 0.3% in December, Unprocessed Goods Spike 8.3%   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • meta tags need to be separated by commas in order to work. Consider editing and putting commas inbetween.

    My drumming circle just said "anyone xenophobic" need not be here, we are about stopping xenophobia at every turn. Unreal, there goes the entire purpose, which was simply to have fun, be spiritual and drum together. Nope, turned that into a political rant and wrecked it.

    Reply to: Hollywood Liberals, Would You Please Shut Up!   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • almost any data that the commerce department publishes is nearly impossible to figure accurately unless it's accompanied by inflation adjusted data...ive got lucky a few times doing retail with CPI, but for the most part i figure my numbers are plus or minus 10%...for instance, construction spending was also out this week, and the NIPA handbook specifies use of at least a dozen different price indexes, most of which are privately published...so i just estimate with the producer price index for final demand construction and hope for the best...with oil and other price volatile commodities in trade, you wouldnt want to use just one index, and figuring the real value of every line item would be next to impossible without the program the govt uses...i actually tried that a few times, years ago, before i found that all that was already done in Table 10 of the full pdf...

    Reply to: Further Deterioration of Trade Deficit in November Means A Bigger Hit to 4th Quarter GDP   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • I've attempted to calculate GDP impact with import, export prices and get garbage. I find the mystery and user error on my part is not resolved with reading and phone calls. If you see of anyone who can do this, who isn't being paid $$ with private issue reports, let's find out how they did it.

    I've been shocked at how the trade deficit hasn't pulled too much off of GDP this entire year considering what we know about China trade and other nation's individual deficits. Oil has greatly positively impacted the situation, so the party over on import prices we would assume a return to negative land.

    Reply to: Further Deterioration of Trade Deficit in November Means A Bigger Hit to 4th Quarter GDP   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Treating housing as an investment is artificial, bogus and economically perilous. A privately owned individual housing unit is one each unit of shelter. Its value is determined by its quality and location. It is not a source of income, commodity, stock or bond to be traded for profit. It is an integral part of living in the same category as cars, furniture, tools clothing …………… It may appreciate in price but not in value. It will always be one each unit of shelter yielding a given quality, comfort and use. Borrowing against its price to supplement income is tantamount to spending little Billy’s bedroom. Likewise moving to another equivalent or better unit of shelter and keeping out price appreciated monies is living off debt. This in reality puts one behind not ahead. Any price appreciation greater than incomes and overall inflation is artificial and built on the debt required to finance it. This has not been sustainable and is one measure of the deviation between economic views and economic realities.

    Reply to: Case-Shiller Shows Housing Unaffordable   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Twenty years ago the Boskin Commission essentially removed inflation from the calculation of inflation. This "calculated" inflation value is not only the basis for COLAs for retirees and workers both Public and Private it is also used to adjust GDP calculations. Inflation is factored out of the GDP calculation thus understating inflation results in an over statement of GDP. So if you think prices are going up faster than 0.23% per year, the economy is growing slower than 2.7% per year and you've been falling behind for twenty years you're right. Now as for the birth death model and seasonal adjustments to the employment numbers............................

    Reply to: Party Over on Cheap Debt   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • This is so bad, the price of gas can really harm the overall economy, as seen in 2008 and other crises.

    Reply to: US gasoline production at record levels, but supplies are still dropping on record exports   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Although now most things adjust for inflation, they often don't adjust enough. We've had years of low inflation and increasing inflation hurts fixed income, seniors.

    Reply to: Party Over on Cheap Debt   7 years 2 months ago
    EPer:
  • Certainly the era of cheap and easy debt fueled bubbles - tech, mortgage as well as encourages leveraging M&A and stock buybacks inflating the stock market and executive pay. It also saddles consumers and students with debt that may never be fully repaid

    cheap interest has also been a disincentive to save and bad news for retirees on fixed incomes. Lack of healthy savings contributed to the slow recovery as well

    Reply to: Party Over on Cheap Debt   7 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • Frankly, the democratic party hanging its hat on the hacking as the primary excuse for losing the election is getting very tiresome. We all know the realities, Clinton was a lousy and flawed candidate that most people simply didn't trust - and for good reason. Did anyone really believe her flip flopping and non committal on TPP?

    It also exposed the disconnect from the people here in flyover country and a woeful lack of a bench for future democratic growth. Democrats spent too much time on national and identity politics rather than the hard work of building for the future - running credible candidates from dog catcher, to school boards, town councils and other local and state levels - which has been a very effective strategy for the right. In my town for example the democrats didn't even bother to put a warm body on the ticket in over half the local races -the republicans were unopposed.

    Assuming for a moment the Russians really did hack the DNC, they did us a favor exposing how corrupt and non democratic our election process has become.

    I agree with Robert - I will be happy if Trump can pull off half of what he promises on our flawed trade regime

    Reply to: Elite Anti-Trump Hysteria is an Act   7 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • i've noticed that 'non-monetary gold' is almost always a big line item in the monthly trade data, as both an export and an import in the industrial supplies and materials category...it seems to me a lot of non-monetary gold is being shipped back and forth as if it were money, but it's still treated as an item of trade...i've asked those who purport to be trade experts, such as Brad Setser at the Council on Foreign Relations, what that's all about, and have yet to get a satifactory explanation...

    Reply to: 3rd Quarter GDP Revised to Indicate Growth at a 3.5% Rate   7 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  • There is another trade report, but often there are other areas, such as gold being exported that rival the nominal value of soybeans. Although soybeans are a huge cash crop. Thanks for the overview. So nice the U.S. became the 3rd world agriculture exporter while we import expensive, completed durable goods.

    Reply to: 3rd Quarter GDP Revised to Indicate Growth at a 3.5% Rate   7 years 3 months ago
    EPer:
  •  Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser has an overview on our trade with China:
    Reply to: The 18% Jump in Our October Trade Deficit Portends a Big Hit to Q4 GDP   7 years 3 months ago
    EPer:

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