Zero Jobs, Another Recession and Economic Terrorists

The greatest domestic threats America has ever faced are the economic terrorists of Wall Street and Washington DC who have successfully driven the US into zero job growth and yet another recession!

What I read in recent news only makes my jaded cynicism even more acidic.

The end-of-month BLS's (Bureau of Labor Statistics) NFP (Non-Farm Payroll) figures came out and the "official" number of jobs created in the month of August - ZERO!

Despite all of the government's manipulated, fudged and fluffed-up numbers to make things look better than they really are the best they could come up with is zero!?!

Each and every month at least 100,000-150,000 new jobs must be created just to keep up with population growth. With zero job growth... that means the real job losses for last month were in the hundreds of thousands!!

And then there's this little nugget of information that makes the chances of finding a job even worse.

The "official" rate of inflation is around 3.6% (the real rate of inflation is around 11%). The "official" rates of GDP growth for the first quarter and second quarter of 2011 are 1.9% and 1%, respectively. Subtract the "official" rate of inflation from each of the two quarters' "official" rate of GDP growth and you have two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth - the very definition of a recession!

Take a closer look at these charts in USInflationCalculator.com, BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) and even including the White House's own figures and it looks very possible the recession may have started in the third quarter of 2010!

But you won't "officially" hear anything about the US being in another recession, especially not from the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), until after the election because it's just too damned politically inconvenient!

For the past three years the politicians have only paid lip-service to the jobs issue - the core structural problem of the US economy!

Oh, but now that it's an election year the jobs issue has suddenly become the campaign holy grail.

Obama's campaign speech - sorry, "bold jobs plan", later this week had to be rescheduled because the Republicans threw a hissy-fit!?

(It seems the Republicans would feel threatened if the President made his speech same night that wanted to have their presidential-candidate debate. Yet again, making it painfully obvious that there are absolutely no statesmen left in the US government.)

Now the big, stinking conflict is Obama's speech has been rescheduled to be on at the same time as the NFL's New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers season-opener.

Whoa, whoa. Wait.

A sitting President of the United States, supposedly the world's most powerful man, is allowing himself to be pushed around by a bunch of campaigning wannabes and a stupid football game!?

Excuse me if I have absolutely no confidence in whatever "bold plan" this kind of president may have!

Geesh! These are the bozos that have been entrusted with the stability and well-being of the United States of America!?!

Here's a simple jobs/consumer-driven-economy truth that seems to escape all the highly educated and overpaid policymakers in DC: consumers are people who have jobs - people who have jobs are consumers. But these DC clowns just don't get it!

We're so screwed.

Washington DC and Wall Street seem hell-bent to make things worse for the rest of us.

The government is starting to sue the big banks for damages caused during the mortgage meltdown. If the government sues for too much then the banks will need another bailout.

Do you see the perverse irony in this?

First, the US taxpayer has been stuck with bailing out the banks since 2008. Now if the government sues the banks too much then:

1. the banks will pass the lawsuit costs onto their US-taxpayer customers and...
2. the US taxpayer will be stuck with bailing-out the banks again and...
3. the politicians will vote and approve pay raises for themselves; the banksters will pay themselves outrageous bonuses; both politicians and banksters richly rewarding themselves for screwing over the US taxpayer with this colossal, catch-22 clusterfart!

The banks have also made it clear to their bought-and-paid-for political puppets that the US government is not to pursue any criminal prosecutions of the "too big to fail" banks or else the banksters will crash the entire US economy into oblivion.

What do the banksters care? The entire US could burn to the ground but the banksters will be fat and happy because they have all their fortunes stashed away in offshore accounts.

Folks, we've been sold a load of crap. The biggest terrorist threats to America aren't radical Muslims, "towel-heads" or "hay-rabs".

The biggest terrorist threats to America are the Wall Street slimeballs and their political lackeys who, in one hand, are holding a financial gun to the head of every man, woman and child in this country while, in the other hand, they have a tight grip on a noose around our necks! If we don't let them do as they damn well please they'll pull the trigger. If we do let them have their way they'll slowly strangle us till none are left!

Here's a short, recent history lesson on how to handle banksters.

Back around 2007-2008 when things were starting to go to hell here in the US, Iceland was having similar problems with their banks. The US coddled and rewarded the banksters while the people and government of Iceland told the banksters to kiss off!

The Icelandic banks failed, the country defaulted, and now, three years later, Iceland's economy is recovering and has healthy economic growth. The US, once you get past all the bravado and BS, during the same period of time has been sliding into an intentionally prolonged economic depression!

Zero job growth in spite of spin and manipulated employment numbers; most likely the US is well into another recession (as if we ever got out of the first one) and the perpetrators of all of this, the economic terrorists of Wall Street and Washington DC, are the greatest domestic threats America has ever faced.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.


Related Links:
US Inflation Calculator - Current Inflation Rates: 2011-2011

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

John Williams' Shadow Government Statistics - Alternate Inflation Charts

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

Eye On Housing - Real GDP Growth – 2011 First Quarter, Third Estimate: Revised Slightly Higher, But Still Weak

http://eyeonhousing.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/real-gdp-growth-2011-first-quarter-third-estimate-revised-slightly-higher-but-still-weak/

BEA Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce - GDP GROWS 1.0 PERCENT IN SECOND QUARTER

Second Estimate of GDP

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdphighlights.pdf

WhiteHouse.gov - Advance Estimate of GDP for the First Quarter of 2011

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/28/advance-estimate-gdp-first-quarter-2011

About.com - Recession

http://economics.about.com/od/economicsglossary/g/recession.htm

Wikipedia - Recession

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession

About.com - What Is an Economic Recession?

http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/f/Recession.htm

NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research

Bloomberg - Iceland Is No Ireland as State Free of Bank Debt, Grimsson Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-26/iceland-faring-much-better-after-permitting-banks-to-fail-grimsson-says.html

Seeking Alpha - Ireland, Iceland and Letting Banks Fail

http://seekingalpha.com/article/240617-ireland-iceland-and-letting-banks-fail

Bloomberg - Iceland Shows Ireland Did ‘Wrong Things’ Saving Banks

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/iceland-proves-ireland-did-wrong-things-saving-banks-instead-of-taxpayer.html

Help Wanted - Active DoD Top Secret Clearance Required

When reading through help-wanted ads sometimes I shake my head in wonder at the job requirements listed.

From an actual help-wanted ad:

(In hind sight I should have taken a screenshot of the help-wanted ad because the online link would eventually be replaced with current help-wanted ads. The best I could find now is an expired Google search result. "Expired" because the Google link went to the updated page where the ad had since been replaced. Oh, well. Blog and learn.)

"IT Specialist Position. Active DoD Top Secret Clearance with SCI Eligibility Required. US Citizens Only. EOE. Full Time Position, Immediate opening. Salary Range: Dependant [sic] on Capabilities and Exp. IT Specialist position requires a minimum of 5 years of experience in the following areas: A) Windows 2003/2008; Exchange 2007/2010 C) VM WARE; LINUX/UNIX E) Network Components F) DISA IA Compliance Abilities which are a plus: A) Former Military Experience B) CISSP; Security+ D) Training and other certifications..."

"Active DoD Top Secret Clearance" is required?

Really?

Why is a job that requires "Active DoD (Department of Defense) Top Secret Clearance" posted on a local rag's help-wanted page with all the less-than-top-secret job postings?

Wouldn't the "Active Department of Defense Top Secret Clearance" database contain, oh, I don't know, all conceivable and inconceivable background information (including job qualifications way beyond what are normally posted in help-wanted ads) on each and every person who is in the Active Department of Defense Top Secret Clearance database?

Why would some one even bother posting a help-wanted ad for any job that requires "Top Secret Clearance"? Just pick the job candidates from the Active DoD Top Secret Clearance list. Wouldn't people in the position of hiring top secret clearance personnel have access to such a list of prospective job candidates?

Given the job's "Active Department of Defense Top Secret Clearance" nature, wouldn't that sort of thing be something that's promoted from within those types of organizations? You know - a closed network of who's-who in the clandestine world of "on a need to know only basis" type of jobs.

Top secret clearance, eh?

Is there on-the-job training for that and does it come with a dental plan?



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.


Related:
A screenshot of the Google search result. I was hoping Google had cached the page but that turns out to not be the case.

Eliminating Redundant Regulations and Job Growth

The Obama administration wants to eliminate redundant regulations to improve job creation.

Seems to be a bit of a long-shot to me.

Eliminating redundant regulations to spur job growth is sort of like the picking out a few grains of sand will turn the Sahara Desert into fertile farm land.

Eliminating redundant regulations is a good start in any bureaucracy but don't be so naive to think by eliminating some redundant regulations job growth will be greatly improved. The structural problems this country has are just too messed up.

Don't be fooled into believing the only reason businesses aren't hiring is because of too many regulations. Businesses may complain about regulations but the bottom line is that they just don't have enough customers. Whatever regulatory concerns businesses may have would be overcome if businesses were more worried about keeping up with customer demand and the resulting increased positive cash-flow.

(Below is a comment I posted on a related, Marketplace.org news article with a few, afterthought revisions)

Equating the elimination of redundant regulations to an increase in job creation is a stretch. Just like giving multinational corporations tax breaks for bringing their foreign profits back to the US was supposed to spur job growth. The corporations claimed they would use the repatriated money to create more jobs but instead they funneled most of the money back into their own company stock.

Setting that aside, eliminating redundant regulations to reduce paperwork and confusion is a good thing so long as it doesn't weaken the protections and safe guards those redundant regulations provide.

Redundant regulations were built into our property rights laws as fail-safe measures to ensure the protection of our property rights. The banks by-passed some of those redundant regulations resulting bank perpetrated foreclosure fraud and perjury, bank perpetrated mortgage fraud and perjury, and bank robo-signer scams (more bank perpetrated fraud and perjury).

Banks aren't the only guilty parties but they are among the biggest of the crooks.

Other redundant regulations that are involved with safety measures are also a good idea. Eliminating some redundant regulations may actually increase hazards and safety concerns.

Yes, common sense would prevent a lot of accidents but humans have proven too many times not to have common sense. As a former employer told me once, "You gotta make it idiot proof."

Eliminating the redundant regulations that require gas vapor valves on fuel pumps may work with modern cars but not everyone is driving a car made within the last five years, let alone the last fifty years. (Four-on-the-floor, suicide-doors, classic, hot-rod, muscle-cars come to mind.)

I originally come from fly-over country. There, twenty and thirty year old vehicles are not uncommon. (My dad just recently upgraded from a beat-up, 1984, straight-6, 4x4, F-150 with 2-50 air-conditioning - 2 windows rolled down while going 50mph - to a 1992, F350 diesel, 4x4, dually, flat-bed with real air-conditioning.)

Not all farm equipment is diesel powered; cars and trucks are not the only vehicles used. (Tricked-out, rider-lawn-mower races and dear ol' Dad frequents the local eateries by pulling into the parking lots on his gas powered, 1940's Farmall B tractor. They're a different breed out there in fly-over country.)

Not all fuel pumps are at convenience stores (500gal fuel tanks are not uncommon on farms) and not all things filled with gas have any equipment more sophisticated than a tank and a cap - and even a cap may be optional.

Here's a little secret. A lot of equipment "modifications" are made by the people who own or operate the equipment.

That vehicle, at one time, may have had a feature required by redundant regulations but that particular feature has long since been by-passed, cut out, torched off, smashed in, rerouted or re-purposed. Never underestimate the ingenuity of people with tools.

So even as redundant as it may seem to have a gas vapor valve on fuel pumps, those fuel pump valves are a safety precaution against un-safe (and all too frequent) "custom modifications". Sometimes redundant regulations are put in place to protect ourselves from ourselves. ("You gotta make it idiot proof.")

The Obama administration should eliminate regulation redundancies where it won't open up loop holes to be exploited and where no safety measures will be compromised. But don't be fooled into believing the BS that eliminating these redundant regulations will increase job growth by any significant amount. The structural problems of this country are too great and too unstable to create any real job growth anytime soon.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.



Related Links:

Marketplace.org: White House says removing redundant regulations will grow jobs

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/08/23/am-white-house-says-removing-redundant-regulations-will-grow-jobs/

TractorData.com - Farmall B

http://www.tractordata.com/farm-tractors/000/2/8/286-farmall-b.html

Why is Gold the Standard for Money

Dollars. iPads. Gold.

You can't eat dollars or iPads and you can't eat gold.

Well, actually... some people do eat gold.

Huh. Maybe they also ate lead-based paint chips when they were kids.

Back to the post topic...

You can trade dollars for a hamburger at McDonalds.

You might be able to trade an iPad for several hamburgers at McDonalds (if you're trading with one of the better paid higher-ups).

You won't be able to trade gold for a hamburger at McDonalds. Most people working at McDonalds (and most people in America, for that matter) don't understand the value of gold as wealth protection nor the purchasing power of gold.

Why is gold worth anything anyway?

After all it's just another metal that's dug out of the ground. Right?

The answer lies in history.

Lots of history.

Over two thousand years of history.

I'm talking before the Bible, before the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks.

For thousands of years gold has been accepted, all over the known, civilized world, as a form of currency; as a medium of trade.

I say "known, civilized world" because over thousands of years man discovered more and more unknown parts of the world (known versus the unknown and undiscovered) and because the less civilized parts of the world valued other things more highly than gold. (Imagine trading your iPad for fur pelts and a mate.)

No one, single, government, nation, or people made gold important or valuable. But, strangely enough, the majority of people in all the corners of the known, civilized world, considered gold to be important and valuable. Some traded with it; others fought wars over it.

So gold, a shiny yellow metal dug up from the ground, is valuable and universally accepted as currency just because that's the way it's been for thousands of years.

Now other things are considered valuable and are used in trade but none have had the universal acceptance for so many thousands of years as gold has.

Who knows, maybe in the future something else will become more valued than gold. What ever it is, gold already has a head start of a couple thousand years of proven acceptance.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.



Related Links:

Can You Eat Gold?

http://quezi.com/14485

Askville: Is Gold Toxic As a Heavy Metal?

http://askville.amazon.com/gold-toxic-heavy-metal/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=1526589

Fact-Checking Links Conundrum

I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to include fact-checking links in posts.

One thought is to use the relevant words in the posts as the thing to click on to go to where ever I found the information I'm referring to. But I've noticed a lot of websites use this for ads instead of fact-checking.

(You know - you move your mouse pointer over the different colored words in the paragraph you are reading and up pops an ad for something that may or may not even be relevant. Those ads annoy me so I avoid them. Unless I'm fact-checking, then I'll hover over the link to see what happens.)

There are a couple web sites that I frequent that actually use the linked words for fact-checking or as links to other related posts on their web site. Because I frequent those web sites so often I know what to expect.

On the other hand, someone new to the web site (or blog in this case) may have the same aversion I have to the ad word links. They might not click on the link words to continue learning by reading the linked-to related posts, news articles or documents (pdf files, images, charts, graphs, etc).

Another thought is to just dump all the fact-checking links at the bottom of the page and have a number assigned to them that matches the numbers scattered throughout the blog post. Kind of like footnotes in a reference book.

I hate footnotes. I'm constantly going back and forth between what I was reading and the footnotes clear at the bottom of the page (or worse, at the back of the book). But then, other folks may prefer this.

Before I click on a link I check out it's URL to see where it comes from. If the URL has "wsj", or "reuters" in the beginning I know it comes from a big-name news source. If the URL begins with a web site or blog I frequent I'm even more likely to click-through (actually, open in another web browser tab for later).

Not everyone who uses the Internet may be savvy enough to know how to check the URL without actually clicking through. Having fact-checking and/or topic related links listed at the bottom, in full-length, may prove useful, maybe even desirable, to some because then they can see where that link may take them before clicking on it.

So a link dump at the bottom of the page could be useful to some.

Hmm...

Maybe... some combination of both ideas?

I could put a short message near the end of each post saying something like, "The colored words in the above post are links to related news articles, posts or documents. They are not ads.".

That would let new or infrequent visitors know, in general, what those colored words are linked to.

Instead of just dumping a bunch of links at the bottom I could put a meaningful description next to each one.

That might help folks determine if the link is interesting enough to investigate further or not.

Hmm...




Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.