Real GDP Grows For 5th Straight month -graph-

[mikekohr]

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mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[dkf]

1. Good thing it popped back up.

That downtrend was not good.

[Schema Thing]

2. nicely understated!

[kestrel91316]

3. I am seeing modest increases in business income myself, on the average,

since about June. The trend is upward.

[dkf]

4. Good to hear.

I think people are beginning to get comfortable with the new normal.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. Does The New Normal Include A Near Twenty Percent Real Unemployment Rate?

~

[Cosmocat]

8. Yes ...

It caught up to us, and business now has no interest in trying to "make american" when there are BIG profits to be made by having people who make 1/4 or less than the average american build shiite ...

It ain't BOs fault, but feel free to join in with the wingers in making it so ...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. Did I Say It Was His Fault?

And twenty percent real unemployment is unacceptable and it's more unacceptable when you, your girlfriend, and your best friend are one of them.

[Cosmocat]

13. again ...

I went into the wind just as the job market crashed and now am underemployed, sent in more resumes than I can keep track of at this point and done dozens of interviews and can't break out for the life of me ... Never thought I would struggle with it the way I have ...

I don't consider it "unacceptable" in that there is nothing that can be done about it at this point short of SIGNFICANT government intervention on business practices that no one has the stomache for ...

It is life moving forward ...

[Saokymo]

17. There's still a glimmer of hope

There is big profit to be made with American-made goods: more and more of us want that and are willing to pay more for something we know was made here at home. Smaller companies in particular have a lot to gain from it.

I work for one such place. We decorate ceramic goods and sell the finished product to retailers. Hands-down, the most popular are American-made down to the very clay and business has only grown for it despite the crippling recession. (Admittedly we do still sell imported ceramic at a lower price, but only a small percentage of our customers get them; I'd say no more than 20%.)

We even have a few designs from Obama's campaign (and run mostly by conservatives), if it matters any.

The point is, people want American goods, and retailers -- even the big ones -- want to sell them. It is a slow movement gaining ground. That's of little comfort when one is just a step away from destitution, but we have to keep going. Business will catch on. Things are changing bit by bit. It's only a matter of time before we start seeing it fully.

[Cosmocat]

24. It is not going to happen "fully" ...

I agree with your general point in this regard ...

We can and SHOULD be the place where things of high quality and importance are built ...

We also SHOULD be the place where modern energy sources are developed and built - but our government has been bought by big oil and we are currently letting India and Asia get out in front of us on this, but that is another discussion ...

But, yeah, the niche can and should be that we do things of quality and importance, because we will remain the people with the innovation and work ethic to do things right ...

BUT, that is niche, not enough to fill the overall industrial void ...

The margins are still going to be a lot cheaper to pay people 50 cents an hour to make sneakers, clothes, mundane items, the day to day kind of stuff, overseas ...

We are in and will remain in a sluglike recovery, and eventually unemployment will creap up a few points ... But, we are never going to see 95% employment with mostly full time employment again ... Our standard of living got too high, and we just can't keep it up at that level for everyone ...

What we are going to see is more of a development where people have more 35 hour a week jobs, more people with more than one part time job, more working from home ... It isn't going to be 9 to 5 in mass again, we are going to look a lot more like Europe moving forward ...

BO and democrats will take a beating for it, it will become the accepted reality when Rs have enough power to not be able to demogogue it anymore ...

[Cosmocat]

7. it is what it is ... A VERY sluglike recovery ..

Has been for some time now, but as long as the right wing wants it to be bad news, it will be ...

[Turbineguy]

5. Better be careful with that

there's a strong "pro-economic collapse" lobby at DU.

[Pirate Smile]

14. No kidding.

Like that wouldn't increase the number of people hurt by the economy exponentially. The rooting for it is what pisses me off.

[rucky]

Remember "jobs are trailing indicator"?

still waiting.

What good is GDP growth when the 2-percenters are the one reaping all the benefits? And if they can do this without hiring, what incentive to they have to hire?

[rucky]

15. dupe

a new mouse is on my x-mas list.

[Imajika]

10. But what happens now that the stimulus is almost dried up...

A large portion of that GDP growth was due to the stimulus.

Also, don't forget, with Republicans controlling the House there will be no more state aid at all. This will mean tens of thousands of public sector workers (mostly teachers) will be laid off.

[Igel]

11. What would normally happen.

We've had recessions for a long, long time. The country's recovered from them. Otherwise we'd expect unemployment to be somewhere in the upper range of 90-99%.

We've had the conscious application of some sort of governmental stimulus for not so very long. Moreover, in all but a very few cases the stimulus was applied after the recession was over; in the case of the recession in the early '90s, the stimulus was passed nearly a year after the recession ended, and most of the stimulus was expended a couple of years after it was ended (still, people assumed that the stimulus ended the recession). It's usually one tacit reason for the urgency of passing a stimulus measure. You can't take credit for what would normally happen if you don't do something before it happens. The early '90s is an exception, just like the stimulus from early 2008--doing something very early--seems to be bathing in the Lethe.

Factor out the stimulus and you see the recovery that would have happened. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster, usually different (well, there's that entire matter of how accurate the models are--we know they're broken in pretty much every case we have data to test them against, but are absolutely confident that they're correct when we lack data).

[MadMaddie]

12. This is good news!

I have come to a conclusion that may not be supported by many but I want everyone to give it some thought.

The existing big businesses WILL NOT bring jobs back to America because their primary goal is maximum profits at any cost.

I say that DU folks and other common sense folks in the U.S need to realize something, we cannot depend on the current corporations or their business models to save this country. It's not going to happen.

I think BuyAmerican is a start we need to support these companies growth which will spur hiring. http://www.buyamerican.com /

I am thinking on a grander scale.

I think we need to identify what we consider primary textile and manufacturing products and we need to create them ourselves and bring manufacturing back to America.

After the Great Depression and WWII many companies were started by military personel coming back to the U.S. What we have in America is a high unemployment rate with qualifed and intelligent people who can start business.

We have been force fed this message that only the corporations can save America, I don't believe it and never have. This is bigger then Democratic or Republican.

We also have to start actively fighting these mega mergers which destroy the smaller companies. We have to stop WalMart from destroying the smaller businesses and then when they don't make enough profit pick up and leave. When they leave they leave a gaping hole in the economy.

These are things we can do. I don't believe this is a pipe dream.

[mikekohr]

16. Every One Should Note That GDP Began To Improve In President Obama's 1st Quarter

It took the President's economic and tax policies 6 month's to return Real GDP into positive territory. But this is the lesson of every recession, Republicans cause them and Democrats clean them up. If we want to avoid the pain of the long climb back from economic pits we have to quit electing the assholes digging the holes.

see History of Recessions: http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com/p/history-of-reces...

mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[KeyserSoze87]

18. The economy will recover and Obama will be reelected in 2012.

[Odin2005]

19. All the growth is going to the Rich.

[Debuttante]

20. Yay the unemployment rate will now go up

Good news.

[mikekohr]

21. Unemployment Only Grows When Republicans Control the White House

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Many Americans are aware that George W. Bush has had the worst job creation record since the government began tracking these figures in 1939. But Bush's colossal failure to manage the economy overshadows a much larger story.



The record shows two unmistakable patterns:
Every time a Republican succeeds a Democrat in the White House, the job creation rate plummets.
Every time a Democrat succeeds a Republican in the White House, the job growth rate soars. Every time! No exceptions!

Considering the steady growth in population of the United States during this time frame the job creation rate should steadily increase each month (currently it must grow by 138,000 per month to keep up with population growth). This trend only manifests itself when examining Democratic administrations:

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By: mike kohr Graphics by: Bonny Kohr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_created_during_U.S._p...

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-... /


mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[Debuttante]

22. Oh I meant unemployment rate will now go down

I meant "up" as a sign of positiveness.

[mikekohr]

23. Welcome to DU nt

mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[mikekohr]

25. More Good News: Unemployment claims drop sharply to 407K

clip from:
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/81... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WASHINGTON – The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to the lowest level since July 2008, a hopeful sign that improvement in the job market is accelerating.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that weekly unemployment claims dropped by 34,000 to a seasonally adjusted 407,000 in the week ending Nov. 20. Wall Street analysts expected a much smaller drop.

A Labor Department analyst said the claims figures are volatile during the week between the Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving holidays. A key question is whether claims will remain this low in future weeks, or bounce back.

Still, applications for jobless aid are steadily moving lower. Claims have fallen in four of the past six weeks.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure, dropped for the third straight week to 436,000, the lowest since August 2008. That's a month before the financial crisis intensified with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, worsening the recession.

"Although weekly claims readings can be volatile, the downward trend over the past three months is too significant to be ignored," Ryan Wang, an economist at HSBC Securities, said.

The stock market responded positively to the jobless claims report and other economic data. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped by 130 points in morning trading, while broader indexes also rose.

The improvement can't come fast enough for frustrated jobseekers. Applications for jobless aid need to stay below 425,000 for several weeks to signal that hiring is accelerating, economists say.

For the first 10 months of this year, claims mostly fluctuated around 450,000 until they began dropping in late October. They fell steadily last year from a peak of 651,000 in March 2009
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Elect a Republican and get a recession, 100% of the time.
Elect a Democrat and start a recovery, 100% of the time.
What's the lesson here? Quit electing Republicans!



mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[mikekohr]

26. MORE GOOD NEWS: CBO: Recovery Act Raised GDP and Lowered Unemployment

but Effects Are 'Expected to Wane'

by: Ben Armbruster

ABC News reports that the Congressional Budget Office this week released its latest report on the effects of the Recovery Act and found that it “raised the GDP, lowered unemployment, and increased the number of people with jobs.” According to the report, CBO estimates that the Recovery Act’s policies in the third quarter of the calendar year 2010 had the following effects (emphasis added):
•They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent,
•Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.8 percentage points and 2.0 percentage points,
•Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.6 million, and,
•Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 5.2 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise (see Table 1). (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers).

read full article: http://www.truth-out.org/cbo-recovery-act-raised-gdp-an...

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Now it's up to the corporations that are sitting on an enormous pile of cash to invest in opportunituy, in America, and in American workers.

mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com