Saturday, May 1, 2010

GD What?

Greetings good citizen,

With, er, ‘eye-popping’ boldness the MSM, (reinforced by their main ‘meat puppet’, the POTUS) broke the news that the very ugly economy ‘expanded’ at a 3.2% clip during the first quarter of 2010.

The very first sentence of this article states that, according to the Commerce Department, the economy has ‘expanded’ for three-quarters in a row.

Naturally good citizen, we, the average idiot, have absolutely no clue as to what, specifically, has expanded? The only thing that is apparent is whatever it is they are measuring has no bearing on the true ‘state of the economy’.

Understand, these are the same people that allow the bankrupt banking system to mark three quarters of the contents of their balance sheets to ‘fantasy’ so they can pretend to be solvent.

If the government can let the banking system ‘pretend’ it is healthy, why not apply the same ‘fuzzy logic’ to the rest of the economy?

If we simply ‘pretend’ that everything is all right, it will be, won’t it?

Sadly, no.

Well, good citizen, when the lies become too blatant, the seeds of revolution are sown.

Hopefully you don’t need me to tell you that most people aren’t buying this nonsense. There’s ‘happy talk’ and there are lies…

Well, guess which one we have here?


Consumers Help Drive U.S. Economy to 3.2% Growth Rate

By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: April 30, 2010

The United States economy has expanded for three-quarters in a row, the Commerce Department said on Friday, helped along by consumer spending. Now the question is, Will the jobs follow? [Capitalist dynamics clearly state there has to be an uptick in demand to justify hiring of more ‘overhead’. So the ‘mystery’ is how can a tapped out consumer be driving demand for more products/services? Short answer, they can’t…so what is the Department of Commerce looking at? (you know the answer good citizen and it’s NOT ‘good news’.)]

The broadest measure of the overall economy grew at an inflation-adjusted annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010, the Commerce Department reported. It had expanded 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.2 percent in the third quarter. [The ‘bad news’ here good citizen is these so-called ‘gains’ are directly tied to the government ‘stimulus’ program…so these figures do not show ‘economic expansion’ as much as they indicate ‘fiscal dilution’. Plain English: The economy isn’t growing, the value of your money is ‘shrinking’!

While the expansion is welcome, it has not delivered the level of hiring needed to recover the ground lost during the recession. [Nor will it, it’s simply not there.]

Speaking in the Rose Garden on Friday, President Obama acknowledged that many Americans might find little comfort in the numbers because “ ‘you’re hired’ is the only economic news they’re waiting to hear.” [Bizarrely, ‘you’re hired’ (for wages you can’t live on) are NOT the words we’re all longing to hear! But, since the average worker has ‘zero leverage’ in a global economy, they’ll take the job and shut up.]

Still, economists are hopeful that news of solid, continued growth may bolster business confidence and persuade more companies to expand. [Ah! Would that it were ‘genuine’, solid economic growth…but it’s not. It is economic shrinkage dressed up to mimic growth!]

“It’s been a case of, when will they stop worrying and learn to love the boom?” said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at ITG, who added that many analysts and companies had underestimated the economic turnaround. [There ain’t no ‘boom’ to love, stupid! Just as there’s no ‘turnaround’ to underestimate, unless you’re talking about that tiny thing in your head…]

After dragging their heels for many months, consumers were at last a major contributor to economic growth in the first quarter. Consumer spending grew at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, a big gain from the 1.6 percent rate of the previous three months. Purchases of durable goods like cars led the way. [I wouldn’t be cheering if I were you good citizen, the foreclosure rate is still rocketing skyward, driving up the housing ‘backlog’ as well as the number of ‘walk aways’.]

Whether Americans might retrench for the long haul after seeing their homes lose value has been one of the biggest questions about the aftermath of the Great Recession. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy, and it usually drives growth during economic recoveries. [When the uptick in spending is due to the decrease in your purchasing power…it is NOT an economic recovery, it’s rape!]

Economists are hopeful that families will continue to pick up the pace of purchasing and make the recovery more sustainable, although consumers may remain cautious about spending given the tepid growth in job creation and personal income. [Try ‘non-existent’] Consumer sentiment dipped slightly in April, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index released on Friday. [Gee, ya don’t suppose it could be due to the FUCKING LIES the government/media is spreading about the economy, could it?]

“We haven’t had consumer spending growth this strong in three years,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. “But the caveat is that with real disposable incomes not growing, this was all done through the saving rate. We cannot rely on consumers continually driving down their savings. They need income support from hiring.” [But since there is no demand, companies aren’t going to hire, especially here in the ‘expensive’ U.S.A. How do these LYING FUCKS get away with denying the ‘chicken or the egg circle? Without payroll growth there can be no demand growth! And payrolls aren’t growing. There is NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC! Worse, it is this kind of moronic logic that put us where we are in the first place!]

Small businesses say Americans are loosening up a little after a bewildering period of debt reduction and uncertainty. [More ‘fucking lies’…Joe consumer has whipped out his credit card again, because he is both desperate AND hopelessly stupid!]

Nate Evans, who owns a pottery-making business with his wife, Hallie, in New Albin, Iowa, said sales in 2009 were the worst ever but that business was just starting to pick up. The Evanses sell their wares from their Allamakee Wood-Fired Pottery home studio as well as in galleries in nearby states, and at craft shows in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

“I felt like the energy of the crowd was better,” Mr. Evans said of the first fair this year, in Minnesota, adding that other craft sellers seemed to agree. “Most of the people we talked to said it was better than last year. Hey, it’s not great, but it’s better than last year.”

Just as Americans stepped up their purchases of autos and other products in the first quarter, companies invested more in capital goods. Business purchases of equipment and software, for example, grew at an annual rate of 13.4 percent, building on a 19 percent increase in the final quarter of 2009. [Um, the only ‘positive sales’ data we have to go by is Intel’s reported uptick in chip sales. Could this ‘expansion’ be driven by the surge in start up collection agencies?]

For the first time in two years, businesses started increasing their stockpiles of goods. This inventory growth accounted for about half of the expansion in the first quarter. In the previous quarter, about two-thirds of economic growth resulted from a decision by companies to draw down their inventories more slowly — that is, not clearing their stockroom shelves so quickly but still not adding to them. [It helps to remember that both ‘expansions’ are essentially ‘accounting tricks’…barely discernable from fraud.]

Additional spending by companies “is very good news, since it indicates businesses are feeling more confident about the expansion to start spending some of their cash,” Mr. Gault said. “If businesses are spending more on equipment, usually that would go along with more hiring, too.” [But that’s not happening as the unemployment numbers remain negative.]

Federal government spending, including some remaining money from stimulus programs, grew at an annualized rate of 1.4 percent in the first quarter. But this was more than offset by continued cuts by state and local governments, whose spending decreased 3.8 percent. It was the third consecutive quarterly decline for state and local spending. [Whoa Baby! Don’t you love how they slip this sort of ‘bad news’ in with the baseless cheerleading?]

“Government spending contracted, for all the ballyhoo about stimulus,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “This recovery is going to have to stand on the backs of private-sector demand, not on government demand, given all the current fiscal challenges.” [Do you hear that? Don’t expect the government to give you a job, you’re gonna be forced to accept what the capitalists offer, even if you can’t live on it!]

Modest expansion in business activity may not be enough to ease the lasting pain of the recession, many economists say. [Say What? You mean this ISN’T the ‘all clear’?!!!] You know and I know that most people’s eyes have glazed over by this point in the article and they have stopped reading several paragraphs ago.]

Hiring only recently began to materialize, with the economy adding 162,000 jobs in March, of which 48,000 were temporary Census-related positions. The economy had shed about eight million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. [What’s this, more ‘creative accounting?’ Supposing it is true, 162,000 is an abysmally low number and it obviously isn’t going to be sustained.]

Job growth hasn’t been as strong as economic growth for several reasons, economists say. Businesses have found ways to make more with fewer resources, meaning that they have been able to meet additional demand for their products without bringing on many new workers. And companies are sitting on a tremendous amount of cash and appear unwilling to spend it. [Try rampant off-shoring, fucking lying reporters!]

“Companies may be reluctant to invest because there’s an enormous amount of uncertainty ahead for them, not just in health care policy but tax policy,” said Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist at Capital Economics. “This isn’t just about the sustainability of the recovery itself.” [What! Didn’t they just crow about increased business investment? Obviously, not all of these so-called ‘experts’ are on the same page!]

Mr. Obama, in his remarks on Friday morning, rejected criticisms that his policies were bad for hiring by talking about tax cuts for small businesses, loans backed by the government and investments in areas like clean energy — policies intended in part to encourage job creation. [In China!]

Even if hiring does finally start to grow at the same rate with demand, the economy is simply not growing fast enough to make a big dent in unemployment, economists say. [What the lying fucks mean is hiring here isn’t going to happen and US workers are basically fucked!]

The nation’s gross domestic product — a broad measure of goods and services produced in the country — is far below its potential, according to projections of where the economy would have been had it followed its long-term trend. [Bizarrely, the ‘long term trend’ is right where it should be given how much of our economy has been/continues to be ‘off-shored’.]

Output would need to grow at least 5 percent annually for several years to get back on track — and perhaps what is more important, to stimulate enough job creation to employ the 15 million Americans already out of work and the 100,000 new workers joining the labor force each month. [Um, did a bunch of people die? Because before a couple of months ago the economy needed to produce 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with new entries into the workforce…just saying, ya know? Ah, what the hell…’statistics’ are ‘flexible’ anyway…what’s 50,000 jobs when you know they’re NEVER COMING BACK.]

Right now, many economists expect the nation’s output to expand 2.5 to 3.5 percent this year. [And I expect it to snow chocolate chip Ice Cream this winter (since we’re talking about totally irrational ‘expectations’…I have as good a chance as they do of being ‘correct.’)]

“Unless the pace of growth picks up significantly, we will see high unemployment rates for years to come,” said Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization in Washington.


Damn those ‘libruls’, always crying about the economy! What they aren’t telling you is Josh means the economy needs to grow ‘exponentially’ if we are ever to see hiring return to ‘prosperous levels’.

But, if you follow capitalist dynamics, the economy doesn’t grow when workers aren’t paid more than sustenance wages. Only the rich get richer and that doesn’t do a fucking thing for the rest of the economy!

Which brings us ‘full circle’ with the current unsustainable debt driven social model.

Quiz me this good citizen, if someone were to devise a way out of this mess, would you follow?

Yeah, I’m looking at you.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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