Winners are Losers and Left is Right
- This topic has 9 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
MarcRiboud Sur les Quais de Paris 1953 The Dutch elections on Wednesday have provided a whole bunch of Orwellian narratives. PM Mark Rutte’s ri
[See the full post at: Winners are Losers and Left is Right]Orwell never sleeps. You see the Fed decision? After 8 years of positive growth…which was false; and a 4% unemployment rate…which was false; we coincidentally had Obama’s GDP miraculously rise to +3% so he wouldn’t be the foremost failure ever…which was false.
So now that we had +3% (false) GDP, the Fed’s own GDP is falling, to .9%…which is also, of course, false. It’s been years since it’s even been above 0% by any normal measure. Also unemployment is rising, but collapsing taxes, collapsing retail, ever-worsening wages, employment, loan paybacks, and GDP are actually signs of a STRENGTHENING economy, which is why they hiked. Who knew? …Which is false. This is because the Fed is not politicized…which is false, and is very careful to prevent bubbles and not fall behind the curve…which is false.
So the Fed, who had already raised interest rates for the first time in a decade…which is false, they claimed to raise rates but 10-year rates were unchanged last rate ‘hike’ … raised them again yesterday, which is false. Rates dropped sharply. This rate hike will of course cool off the US$ and stock market…which is false: both US$ and US stocks rose, and look to continue to do so.
Okay then, understand? You got it? Because they’ve given it to all us Americans doubleplus good.
Dr. Diablo,
I enjoyed what Michael Hudson recently had to say about the calculation of GDP in the United States. He suggested that a lot of the “growth” stated in the number is shuffling of money in the financial (aka gambling) sectors and all the paper pushing that goes with it.
I would really enjoy a treatise here about how that hallowed number is really calculated.
That’s so cute; Reuters just said what I said earlier:
Dutch voters snubbed the far-right, but analysts think France might be a different case
That craziest thing about the Yellen and Fed rate hike is that they say it’s to FIGHT inflation. After they spent years trying to CREATE inflation. And it’s still not there, but they don’t know how to define inflation, they simply don’t know what it is. Orwell’s everywhere these days.
“That craziest thing about the Yellen and Fed rate hike is that they say it’s to FIGHT inflation.”
That is a laugh, isn’t it. I mean, they have claimed inflation has been too low all the while people have gotten much higher power bills, water bills, home & land tax bills, annual extra bill for the fire dept., so on and so forth until most people are pulling their hair out every time a new and much bigger bill hits the mailbox, yet just now they are intending to fight inflation? I’m so confused by their machinations of what they intend to do without actually doing much except watch and wait, that I now have no confidence in the Fed. All the GDP, Unemployment and other stats are faked now, cherry picking one’s that suit their agenda and creatively churning them to spit out a number that fits their agenda, whatever the heck that is. Seems like end game, but how knows how long this travesty can be kicked down ‘The Road’ (which is also a movie).
To Protect Climate Money, Obama Stashed It Where It’s Hard to Find
You can buy an awful lot of good publicity – media plus scientists – for $77bn. When you think of the trivial sums that Exxon was supposed to have spent on influencing the debate.
Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years
The article does not mention how much they spent, but I doubt if it was 1% of what Obama alone spent.
ExpAbs
Higher prices do not equal inflation. And you give a good example of why that is, by mentioning taxes. Which should never be included in any calculation of inflation, because it would mean a government can induce higher or lower inflation simply by raising or lowering taxes. We all know that’s not true; if it were, all inflation issues would be solved. It’s velocity of money (spending) that is the missing ingredient in most inflation discussions.
Just for a rough estimate — and being completely generous — the % of U.S. GDP taken by Wall St. has doubled from 10 to 20% since 1947. Assuming the laughable notion that Wall St. wasn’t taking more than a required in order to smooth and facilitate commerce, we have 10% of U.S. GDP created then funneled directly to Wall St. paychecks. With a supposed $15T economy, that’s $1.5T a year in straight waste. Think we can fill a budget gap with that?
But that’s not all: Since Greenspan, GDP has been made up of some very questionable parts. Government spending is a prime example. Who really believes that government spending on pork, or bombs, bases, and silos that sit, rust, and are later decommissioned and sold at a loss to the lowest bidder are measuring “productiveness”? Or the implication, that GDP measures an increase in the quality of life? At $6.66T (sic) we can either remove all of it as necessary/unnecessary overhead, But let’s be generous and knock out half, not 90%. $3 Trillion.
But wait, there’s more! While we’re including wasted military GDP in the regular numbers, the Iraq-Afghanistan and other wars are off-budget. While it is purposefully hard to get an accurate handle on this, recent estimates put it at $6T over the last +10 years, or let’s be generous and make it a rough $400B/year.
But that’s not all you’re getting! If you order now, we’ll remove the fraud from the U.S. inflation numbers, and thereby adjust the GDP correctly! There are deep issues with John Williams’ numbers, but we know the official are an admitted fraud because the U.S. itself does not use their official inflation rate to adjust GDP…they use a better, even more fraudulent number, the “GDP deflator”. But Williams has the inflation rate at 6%, which is pretty plausible depending what you put in it (health care and taxes are rising +10%, easily) https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts The official deflator is around 1.6% https://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-deflator for a +4% difference. 4% of $15T = $600B
Speaking of Health Care, spending in the U.S. has skyrocketed since the Government started getting involved in the 90’s. The U.S. now spends more per capita than France while getting as close to zero health care as can be measured without special equipment. https://www.mercatus.org/publication/us-health-care-spending-more-twice-average-developed-countries Taking the incredible assumption that health care in 1980 was appropriate when we sharply diverged from RoW –and not including Obamacare, which raised costs and cut services sharply — the U.S. now spends roughly 20% on health care instead of 10%, for a 10% overcharge. 10% of $15T is $1.5T.
This is not counting the budget deficit, by which we print $1.5T and receive real goods from the world, nor many Trillions in bond and derivative rigging, nor HFT skims that add to GDP by cross-selling the same digital widget back and forth between two owners. It also doesn’t remove the “Goodwill” value of multi-trillion in stocks like Apple, or removing the clearly illusionary value of many Trillions of Silicon Valley stocks that have never turned a profit, ever, like Amazon, Facebook, or arguably Netflix — the FANG value that upholds the entire U.S., and therefore world, stock markets. No, we’re being generous here.
Putting it together, we have $1.5T + $3T + 0.4T + $0.6T + $1.5T = $6.6T subtracted from $15T = $8Trillion.
From living here, I’d be surprised if the U.S. had 40% of $15T, or around $7 Trillion, which matches pretty well the envelope numbers above. Which is exactly how much they’re going to devalue the US$ to once the reserve currency ends. Gas at $5.50 anyone? It’s not that the U.S. isn’t powerful or we don’t make anything. It’s just that we’re really more the size of Brazil or Japan, and should take our place among the many nations, as we are — and probably never were — a hyperpower.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.