U.S. retail sales down, jobless claims up

Less than 24 hours after the Federal Reserve proclaimed the recession to be easing, the United States has been hit with a quadruple batch of somber economic news, with retail sales down, business inventories cut, jobless claims up and home foreclosures hitting a new record high.

B92


There are no surprises here.
Financial capitalism with all its glory.Boom & bust.

The boom came to an end in the 1970s and since then stagnation has been the norm.
We've had the 1987 stock market crash in US,the Asian financial crisis,stagnation in Japan ,the dot-com swindle
and the present credit crunch.

After the Dot com bom the US was mainly dependent on artificially low interest rates and booming credit which in turn fuelled house speculation that came to an end in 2007.

The present crisis is more severe than anything in the past.With falling incomes in US,massive unemployment and state indebtness there is nothing that can lead the economy out of recession.

Looking back we can see that the periods of prosperity were aberrations rather than the norm.As corporations try to squeeze wages to increase their profits falling demand will lead to further stagnation.

The message here is that capitalism doesn't work.It is just an iniquitus and unsustainable economic system ,artificially maintained by a set of rules devised by capitalists.

Iam afraid it is a bit too late to save the Wizard of Oz
but its about time for humanity to clean up the mess
and democratically change the capitalist rules.Now its time for those changes.

Hello Attamn

Likewise with your postings.
What iam talking about is changing the rules not system.

Iam talking about more democratic control over the economy.Abolition of banking secrecy and safe heavens.Taking away the righr of the Wall Street and the City of London crooks to hold the rest of the world into ransome.

Where were rhe US financial authorities when the Lehman Brothers were running their Ponzi scheme? It nearly crashed the world economy and triggered multimillion bailouts which will have to be paid by present and future generations for years to come.

Mantoff didn't pull off the scam alone so why there are no other indictments?
My guess is that there were no more indictments because Mantoff didn't sing.Had there
been more arrests it would have cemented the failure of liberal economics.

Bottom line is the functioning of the system cannot be left in the hands of Greenspans and Paulsons of the world.Peoples livehoods are at stake here .

Joe,

Exactly.Once a cure proved to be a total disaster there is no need to force it again.It is not comrade Bástya who should decide when and who can use the swimming pool.The game needs better referees and the hospital better experts.Something between french model and total capitalism would be advisable leading to a digestable development.Of course it is up to individual countries based on their habits and cultural background what is controled and what is not.By no means should hungarian model "let the multis govern everthing even what your mother wears" be implemented anywhere.

Leonidas,

I tend to agree with most of your posts - but here I do not see anything TODAY, what could in practice replace the "capitalism".

If you talking about the "capitalism" as it is in the States, than it's an other matter, here I agree. But I would call it "capitalism", not capitalism (without ""). More proper name would be "woo-doo mystery economics" tough: only woo-doo is good at defying basic principles known to humans (but for how long?).

I stand corrected: it can be called "woo-doo mystery politics", too. :(

Leonidas,

This time I agree with most of your assesment. Yes the situation is not rosy. I am sorry for young people in the US, who try to find a good job (sometimes any job)and start a family. There is nothing that would indicate that things would turn around soon.
Where I get sceptical is the kind of therapy proposed.
If the changes are too drastic (communist "therapy")it kills the patient or puts it on life support. If it is the French way called dirigism, a kind of controled capitalism or "etatism" with too much government intervention than it leads to stady stagnation.

It’s unfettered “Free Markets” and speculation that cause all the trouble.

Just one example.

Stock was created so that investors could get a share of the profit of a company but protect themselves from liability and risk.

Now days, stock is traded like baseball trading cards and their value is determined by how trendy the stock is and not the profit generated by those companies. Who buys stock for dividends anymore? Internet Swap Land anyone?

Same thing with housing. You buy a house to live in, not to sell in a couple of years for a profit. The Housing boom\bust was a pretty clear Ponzi scheme.

We should be making money by building things, not by buying and then artificially inflating the prices on things.

Where I get sceptical is the kind of therapy proposed.
If the changes are too drastic (communist "therapy")it kills the patient or puts it on life support. If it is the French way called dirigism, a kind of controled capitalism or "etatism" with too much government intervention than it leads to stady stagnation.
(Joe, 14 August 2009 15:32)

"Etatism"? Not English.
I only know "Eta" which is a letter of the Greek alphabet.

Both the German and the French have managed to cope with the financial crisis because they have better regulated financial systems and their economy is based on
productive capitalism-iron & steel- whereas the US and UK based their economies on subprime mortgages,collaterised debt and other lottery products.

BTW I haven't seen any French
people living on $80 monthly food coupons yet as the 40 million of your fellow Americans do.

Leonidas,

Sorry for "adopting" the French "etatisme" into English. It comes from "etat" (state) and means dirigism by the state (etat).
As for the monthly $80 food coupons do you think people can live on it? It is given as a supplement. I didn't know about the exact numbers. It looks like some Europeans are more informed about it and one day they will open there valets to help us. That would be really nice after all those generous shipments provided by the US to Europe following WWII.

BTW I haven't seen any French
people living on $80 monthly food coupons yet as the 40 million of your fellow Americans do.
(Leonidas, 14 August 2009 20:33)

It even goes beyond that, Schwarzeneger proudly declared today that they will start paying with real money some time in september, it says all...

You have a pretty good analysis! There aren't any miracle solutions to what happend apart from drastic regulations in the finance system and "forced" responsibility of the financial institutions and a more social approach in the relations between the race to the profits and the "price" the employees have to take.

I have been active more than 20 years in the banking and private equity business and quited just a few years back when the new wave "how to make quick money made in USA" started!

It was just unbelievable at which speed the financial instruments were created without any controls and logic, (a little bit of this, a little bit of that, put a triple A stamp on it and here you have the perfect bundle of crap to sell) and all this just for the sake of posting enormous profits that had no connection whatsover with the economical reality!

Today we are all paying a heavy price for this blindness of grid, but the question remains, are we going to learn the lesson.... doubtfully!!

The stock exchange went up already 50% since march based on an eventual, to come, eventually, soon to come, end of the tunnel, on the way to recovery, blablabla bla type of comments, like the Fed just had a few days ago before this "real" datas came out.

Germans are definitely way ahead in the structure of their industry and finance tools.
France remains very state oriented, which during this crisis certainly helped!

I can't say I am surprised at the news. But what I have noticed quite a bit lately is the desire either by the media or the government to quash good news with a comment that "we have far to go". Things are not as bad as they seem and I am starting to think that the media and the government are both trying to manipulate the economy for their own reasons. Most people that I know have a job. Jobs are available if you are willing to take them. The housing market is not a lottery. You buy a house to live in. People are starting to save and suddenly that is not good for the economy. It is good for my personal economy. Too bad if it is not for Walmart.

Leonidas,

This time I agree with most of your assesment. Yes the situation is not rosy. I am sorry for young people in the US, who try to find a good job (sometimes any job)and start a family. There is nothing that would indicate that things would turn around soon.
Where I get sceptical is the kind of therapy proposed.
If the changes are too drastic (communist "therapy")it kills the patient or puts it on life support. If it is the French way called dirigism, a kind of controled capitalism or "etatism" with too much government intervention than it leads to stady stagnation.

Leonidas,

Sorry for "adopting" the French "etatisme" into English. It comes from "etat" (state) and means dirigism by the state (etat).
As for the monthly $80 food coupons do you think people can live on it? It is given as a supplement. I didn't know about the exact numbers. It looks like some Europeans are more informed about it and one day they will open there valets to help us. That would be really nice after all those generous shipments provided by the US to Europe following WWII.

Less than 24 hours after the Federal Reserve proclaimed the recession to be easing, the United States has been hit with a quadruple batch of somber economic news, with retail sales down, business inventories cut, jobless claims up and home foreclosures hitting a new record high.

B92


There are no surprises here.
Financial capitalism with all its glory.Boom & bust.

The boom came to an end in the 1970s and since then stagnation has been the norm.
We've had the 1987 stock market crash in US,the Asian financial crisis,stagnation in Japan ,the dot-com swindle
and the present credit crunch.

After the Dot com bom the US was mainly dependent on artificially low interest rates and booming credit which in turn fuelled house speculation that came to an end in 2007.

The present crisis is more severe than anything in the past.With falling incomes in US,massive unemployment and state indebtness there is nothing that can lead the economy out of recession.

Looking back we can see that the periods of prosperity were aberrations rather than the norm.As corporations try to squeeze wages to increase their profits falling demand will lead to further stagnation.

The message here is that capitalism doesn't work.It is just an iniquitus and unsustainable economic system ,artificially maintained by a set of rules devised by capitalists.

Iam afraid it is a bit too late to save the Wizard of Oz
but its about time for humanity to clean up the mess
and democratically change the capitalist rules.Now its time for those changes.

Leonidas,

I tend to agree with most of your posts - but here I do not see anything TODAY, what could in practice replace the "capitalism".

If you talking about the "capitalism" as it is in the States, than it's an other matter, here I agree. But I would call it "capitalism", not capitalism (without ""). More proper name would be "woo-doo mystery economics" tough: only woo-doo is good at defying basic principles known to humans (but for how long?).

I stand corrected: it can be called "woo-doo mystery politics", too. :(

Hello Attamn

Likewise with your postings.
What iam talking about is changing the rules not system.

Iam talking about more democratic control over the economy.Abolition of banking secrecy and safe heavens.Taking away the righr of the Wall Street and the City of London crooks to hold the rest of the world into ransome.

Where were rhe US financial authorities when the Lehman Brothers were running their Ponzi scheme? It nearly crashed the world economy and triggered multimillion bailouts which will have to be paid by present and future generations for years to come.

Mantoff didn't pull off the scam alone so why there are no other indictments?
My guess is that there were no more indictments because Mantoff didn't sing.Had there
been more arrests it would have cemented the failure of liberal economics.

Bottom line is the functioning of the system cannot be left in the hands of Greenspans and Paulsons of the world.Peoples livehoods are at stake here .

Joe,

Exactly.Once a cure proved to be a total disaster there is no need to force it again.It is not comrade Bástya who should decide when and who can use the swimming pool.The game needs better referees and the hospital better experts.Something between french model and total capitalism would be advisable leading to a digestable development.Of course it is up to individual countries based on their habits and cultural background what is controled and what is not.By no means should hungarian model "let the multis govern everthing even what your mother wears" be implemented anywhere.

It’s unfettered “Free Markets” and speculation that cause all the trouble.

Just one example.

Stock was created so that investors could get a share of the profit of a company but protect themselves from liability and risk.

Now days, stock is traded like baseball trading cards and their value is determined by how trendy the stock is and not the profit generated by those companies. Who buys stock for dividends anymore? Internet Swap Land anyone?

Same thing with housing. You buy a house to live in, not to sell in a couple of years for a profit. The Housing boom\bust was a pretty clear Ponzi scheme.

We should be making money by building things, not by buying and then artificially inflating the prices on things.

Where I get sceptical is the kind of therapy proposed.
If the changes are too drastic (communist "therapy")it kills the patient or puts it on life support. If it is the French way called dirigism, a kind of controled capitalism or "etatism" with too much government intervention than it leads to stady stagnation.
(Joe, 14 August 2009 15:32)

"Etatism"? Not English.
I only know "Eta" which is a letter of the Greek alphabet.

Both the German and the French have managed to cope with the financial crisis because they have better regulated financial systems and their economy is based on
productive capitalism-iron & steel- whereas the US and UK based their economies on subprime mortgages,collaterised debt and other lottery products.

BTW I haven't seen any French
people living on $80 monthly food coupons yet as the 40 million of your fellow Americans do.

I can't say I am surprised at the news. But what I have noticed quite a bit lately is the desire either by the media or the government to quash good news with a comment that "we have far to go". Things are not as bad as they seem and I am starting to think that the media and the government are both trying to manipulate the economy for their own reasons. Most people that I know have a job. Jobs are available if you are willing to take them. The housing market is not a lottery. You buy a house to live in. People are starting to save and suddenly that is not good for the economy. It is good for my personal economy. Too bad if it is not for Walmart.

BTW I haven't seen any French
people living on $80 monthly food coupons yet as the 40 million of your fellow Americans do.
(Leonidas, 14 August 2009 20:33)

It even goes beyond that, Schwarzeneger proudly declared today that they will start paying with real money some time in september, it says all...

You have a pretty good analysis! There aren't any miracle solutions to what happend apart from drastic regulations in the finance system and "forced" responsibility of the financial institutions and a more social approach in the relations between the race to the profits and the "price" the employees have to take.

I have been active more than 20 years in the banking and private equity business and quited just a few years back when the new wave "how to make quick money made in USA" started!

It was just unbelievable at which speed the financial instruments were created without any controls and logic, (a little bit of this, a little bit of that, put a triple A stamp on it and here you have the perfect bundle of crap to sell) and all this just for the sake of posting enormous profits that had no connection whatsover with the economical reality!

Today we are all paying a heavy price for this blindness of grid, but the question remains, are we going to learn the lesson.... doubtfully!!

The stock exchange went up already 50% since march based on an eventual, to come, eventually, soon to come, end of the tunnel, on the way to recovery, blablabla bla type of comments, like the Fed just had a few days ago before this "real" datas came out.

Germans are definitely way ahead in the structure of their industry and finance tools.
France remains very state oriented, which during this crisis certainly helped!