The Recession..Is...Almost...Over. Or is it?

The Commerce Department are revising last quarter's growth downward from 2.4% to 1.4%.

Not an inspiring message.

Ah, there you have the answer, get rid of the commerce dep't tha'll save money and also stop 'em revising stuff downwards

No, no, they INCREASED it from 2.4% to 1.4%!

Not sure we can take many more increases like that.

Obama spent a year talking down the economy when he was trying to get elected. Now he is finding it much more difficult to talk it back up.

The 'stimulus' that was not a stimulus but a large pork barrel has helped little. If you want instant stimulus why in the world to finance projects that will happen in years to come. As far as I know the total amount has yet to be doled out.

I guess that is just the way 'community organizers' work and think.

GA from me. I hope for the rest of the world that you are wrong, but I somehow doubt it. The world needs a strong US economy and form what you have described we are not going to get that for a number of years.

Thank you. Love your signature!

It will just take time, unfortunately. We could do a better job of priming the economic pump if the debt and tax burdens were lighter, but I don't see that happening, so we just have to ride it out.

Yeah, but the bigwigs are the same bigwigs who didn't predict it in the first place.
They couldn't predict a (Insert your own example here...mine was far too vulgar)
Their hindsight is always 20-20. Damn economists always predict stuff retrospectively.

Del

What is the scuttle butt around your water cooler?

The water cooler's butt scuttlers (is that what you call the perveyors of scuttlebutt?) Express guarded excitement at the new contracts we've landed. There is excitement because of the quantity of contracts, but it is guarded because they are all small quantity and short-term. The general expectation is that the increase in work force will be laid off in 6 - 12 months, that we are likely to lose benefits when health care's new requirements kick in, but that losing benefits is better than losing a pay check which many employees (per the butt scuttlers) are likely to do.

...but the bigwigs that monitor recessions haven't pointed to the fat lady and said, "Sing!"

If ending the mess is a simple as getting some bigwigs to point at a big lady and say, "Sing," let's start electing Taft clones.

I just had to lay off permanent (not temp agency) employees at the company I work for.

This is the first time anyone at this company has been layed off in 30 years.

Getting better? not from my point of view.

That Sucks.

You tried the duct tape, right?

I couldn't agree more. The only short term prospect for a 'recovery' is another asset bubble. I blame economists. They are overly concerned with interest rates, taxes, velocity, etc. This is probably because these are the aspects of the economy that they have learned to tweak over the years, to get slightly better economic performance. The problem as I see it is the tendency to confuse economic policy with the economy. The economy is about things you eat, things you wear, tools and toys. Its about bricks and steel, power plants and barber shops. It is just too easy for people who don't really make things (like economists) to forget this, and to believe that you can have an economy based on management alone. You get folks in other countries to mine the ore, make and ship the products, while you just watch tax and interest rates, and collect fat fees. All the tools that economists now use were developed over time as ways to wring slightly more out of a functioning economy. They don't work in a vacuum.

(I do disagree as to who is doing the screwing. I think at this point government is the tool of Wall Street, and not the other way around.)

The recession IS over! Now comes the deepest and longest depression ever.....

The General opinion is down turn, And I have seen where even if every thing was working that if the expectation was bad it became a self fullfiling professy. The long term numbers are bad, we dont have enough money to cover our retirement promises and we are catching up to that long term, there just isnt enough time left to open the parachute before the crash.

I blame liberal republicans and democrats that started this back in the 80s with the fair housing act, this act didnt get any teeth until the 90s the Acorn was given the tools to sue banks into making stupid loans to people of any Race that could not afford a home.

I blame all ploiticians for allowing the Glass-Steegle Act to be overturned, this act was put thru in the 30s to keep commercial banks from doing dangerous things like performing the functions of investment banks, this allowed them to take mortgages and rebundle them for sale to ususpecting people. ( I may have that backwards investment banks to act as commercial banks)( you know who I mean the big wall street ones that failed).

I blame the courts for not seriously punishing big companies and management for do ing wrong things, like doing financial deals with countries on the banned list, yes big fines were leveled ($300 Million), the the out fit made 2 billion on the deal its a wrist slap.

There is no equity.

There is no sanity.

Our leaders either dont understand reality or dont give a $#*!.

Good luck to All of you my friends

Posting Annonomous

The age of prosperity may be closing due to the effect of a huge population on a finite planet. In that respect, it might not really be a depression, but rather a long decline that might last more than few decades.

Actually in industrialized nations the population is in fairly steep decline. it is in emerging nations where the population is still growing like mad.

"Actually in industrialized nations the population is in fairly steep decline."

Not true. Developed nations tend to have a slower growth rate than undeveloped nations, but they are still growing. Underdeveloped nations have a disparity between the populations of the very young, the young adults, and the elderly and have population explosions. Stable societies have a more evenly distributed population through the age groups.

Few nations are experiencing steep decline as can be seen in the following link:

World Population Growth

Virtually all of that growth is coming from immigration, not from birth rates. birth rates in all industrialized countries are at or below replacement rate.

I see my link failed!

World Population Growth

No AH, you still don't get that what little growth there is in Europe and the US is from immigration from other countries, not from native births. if you subtract out the immigration numbers you'll find that the population is actually shrinking otherwise. And within a generation, the birth rates of those immigrants falls to match native births.

So, what does that have to do with anything? Both births and immigration contribute. I understand that people immigrate, but the net population increase is the final word here when you look at the aggregate of the world and all its countries.

At first blush you'd think it would be a bonus to help feed money into the bottom of the ponzi schemes, but most of those immigrants, at least in the US, (the lion's share if truth be known) are illegal which means that most of the money they make is under the table, or worse, reported using someone else's SSN. They fill out the W4's such that they show umpteen jillion dependents such that they pay little to no withholding, report the remainder under someone else's SSN, then the other person gets the tax bill at the end of the year. meanwhile they can and do use emergency rooms to have their anchor babies and then can't be deported even if they are illegal. Europe has a similar problem with illegal arab immigrants.

Ponzi scheme, ahh! The economic system in the world is an ecological Ponzi scheme. It depends on an ever-increasing input of resources to keep the growth going!

So what exactly is your answer? Human extinction? You first.

No man, think. The attitude of every man for himself and dog-eat-dog is an old way of looking at the world's problems.

The population of the planet can get together and work synergistically instead of using the grief-causing social Darwinism methods that are stuck in so many minds.

One possible way is to just stop producing human embryos for up to several decades, done on a curve so that the population settles down to about 50 million. Then, no active violence has to be carried out on anyone. As the population declines, there is plenty of stuff already in existence to keep supplying the needs of the people who haven't yet died of old age.

Humans are smart enough to do a program like this. Humanity just has to know it should be done.

So who would you appoint to enforce this? and what do you do if someone chooses not to abide by your rule? Who would decide what the optimum population would be? who would chose who got to reproduce? and under what circumstances?

Socialism is fundamentally wrong. Forcing your ideas on others is fundamentally wrong. You are fundamentally wrong.

I have no tolerance for totalitarian dictators such as yourself. Bugger off!

Solcar doesn't seem to be suggesting that we approach limiting births by force. He suggests that people could do this voluntarily through enlightened self interest. You may think this is so naive as to be laughable. You may believe that the only viable model for this would be something like China's one child policy (enforced by a totalitarian Communist state), and you may find that unacceptable. But these are your thoughts, not Solcar's. I tend to agree with you that a voluntary program doesn't stand much of a chance, but I think you go too far in assuming that he wants to force these ideas on others rather than using persuasion.

Such a voluntary system has been in place since the 1960's. Birth control has been available since the 1960's but it is only the developed world that has taken part. The undeveloped world has chosen not to. The developed world is choosing to breed themselves into irrelevancy. When the developed world collapses from the weight of it's lack of fecundity, what will the undeveloped world do then?

That however is the logical extension of his statement, just like the statements of Bill Ayres of the Weathermen fame.

"I asked, "well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?" and the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated.

And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.

And when I say "eliminate," I mean "kill."

Twenty-five million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

And they were dead serious."

That was the testimony of FBI informant Larry Grathwohl, explaining Weather Underground's plans in the 1982 documentary No Place to Hide. The group's plan for taking care of those who would stick to the American way of life was to eliminate them — as many as 25 million.

Well let's see - Bill Ayres is probably a socialist (I think he claims to be), and he may agree with Solcar that reducing the human population is a good thing. If Solcar agrees with the argument that we will need to kill 25 million die hard capitalists because they can't be 're-educated' then I would probably agree with your condemnation. I didn't get that from his (or her) posts here, so I'm not ready to make that leap.

Ideology, on both the liberal and conservative side, has a way of blinding even intelligent well educated people, and it is clear that ideologues on both sides often say crazy things in service of their ideologies. I've been there myself. Distasteful as it is, I don't find it surprising, and I don't think they are now or will ever be in a position to act out their fantasies.

I think both the communists and the die hard capitalists are hopeless romantics. People working together to solve problems is pragmatism, a political attitude that avoids the extremes. Our growing human population appears to be a problem. If you believe it is impossible to solve this problem because the only possible solution will lead to totalitarian communism, then that kind of puts you in a bind. But if you are wrong about this then you are rejecting a possible solution because it offends your ideological sensibilities. The extreme left wing may have spoken on overpopulation, but that doesn't mean they own it. To bring this down to the level of absurdity, if I heard that Mr. Ayres had come out in favor of sex, I would not become celibate just to make sure nobody thought I was associated with him.

My point is that a decision to control our population could be made voluntarily, maybe as a result of careful thought and education, or maybe because a new 'messiah' comes along and convinces people in their hearts that this is what 'god' wants. More likely we will argue and dither for a while longer, and then nature will 'solve' the problem for us. From my perspective as a practicing capitalist I don't think running the world into the ground is going to be good for business.

By the way, John Galt is a fictional character in an implausible fictional world found in a smutty little book written several generations ago. This book has been a big part of the romanticizing of capitalism. The problems we are facing now as a species are real and serious and are killing actual people right now, and call for clear headed pragmatic solutions. Romantic notions about fictional kings and queens of industry may tend to get in the way.

Unfortunately, we humans have demonstrated all too clearly that "from each according to his capabilities, to each according to his needs" ultimately devolves into a group of people claiming "Special Needs" while denigrating their own capabilities, resulting in a population of the needy, supported by the incapable...Many of the philosophers who support the ideal of the socialist/communal model (and I do not confuse this with modern totalitarian states that claim to be socialist to justify totalitarian policies). Those of us who can claim actual living experience with the communal model realize that, although it can be effective for insuring basic survival needs (i.e., food and shelter), it begins to break down very quickly thereafter. One always has some members that are "more equal" than others...

The only social organization that has actually withstood the forces of history for thousands of years appears (from the outside) to be based on heredity and a form of meritocracy. The patriarch of the clan assigns roles to his various sons, and one must prove one's hereditary claim as well as one's personal ability in order to progress up the hierarchy of the social group. Outsiders need not apply. This does not sound like a system that would be easily defensible philosophically, but it seems to have worked for something on the order of 3000 to 5000 years in the face of persecution, war, famine and success...

I have actually seen (again, from the outside) a microcosm of this system at work in certain aristocratic families- the Family pays for the basic education, perhaps provides seed money to get you started, but then you are on your own. If you can build a successful business or pursue a successful career, demonstrating an ability to function on your own within the broader social order, you gain the right in later years to assume the reins of the family fortune...Again, from the outside, it works.

What makes me nervous about these approaches is that I have very limited information regarding my own ancestry, which pretty much precludes participating in any of the existing groups, so my best chance is a free-for-all capitalist system where my capabilities and efforts are rewarded on the basis of society's perception of their worth. I have a much better chance of satisfying my personal needs (be they real or imagined) than in a system where I have to wait in line until those who think their needs have higher priority than mine are satisfied...

Thanks for that perspective on socialism. It's my view that even though the equality in the system degrades in cases where it has been tried, we shouldn't give up trying to learn how it can work successfully. I don't think that is your intended point, however. One study that ought to encourage our not giving up is that people are really much more creative and effective if they aren't under the pressure of loss in case of failure. Individual financial security would tend toward smoothing out macro-economics and discouraging boom-bust cycles.

That story of yours indicates why an economic system largely based on the family unit seems innately unfair to me. Remedies like foster care and adoption have helped some. But the feuding attitude that is so common is a big negative. The competition within family units encourages aggressive social behavior which causes problems in the world, even ones as bad as warfare. It has been proposed that the Iraq War has at least some roots in the former President's desire to address feelings of inadequacy in his family.

John has understood what I mean. Once a person sees what it means to have human qualities instead of just being another animal surviving by trying to be the fittest instead of a humane sentient who realizes that no man is an island, then the strength of cooperation becomes apparent. That is in contrast to a precarious, lonely existence like http://www.slate.com/id/2264478/pagenum/2 .

Actually, there are two basic paradigms one can decide will be a model for a future world. The old primitive natural selection way set by nature over the millennia, or the new sentience-oriented way of humaneness. I desire the new way and the whole point of it is to be voluntary. Otherwise the result of process is disaster because it turned out to just be the "kill your opponent" strategy all over again, which never gives the result insanely hoped for by so many past revolutionaries.

To say the uneducated masses of the undeveloped world reject birth control is disingenuous, at best. Those people haven't the wide perception to choose based on a view of the planet, overall.

The protection that I see you craving from the barbaric hoards, as you apparently consider them, is for the ones that have established advanced civilization to defend it with what it is: being civilized. Forget about a future civilization except the past miserable warring clans embodied in modern times by the present day nation states if fighting to destroy opponents is the modus operandi. Abraham Lincoln said it is best to make enemies into friends. Emotions which short out the understanding capability of the brain is what perpetuates strife in the world. That's not to discount prudent self-defense, however.

You sir are an idiot. You never answered the question what happens when the rest of the planet does not go along with your idea?

typical teleology, it feels like how I think it ought to be so it must be that way.

I sir live in the real world where every person IS an island and always will be.

When you voluntarily give up your right to procreate forever, then we'll talk, until then you are full of it.

Just like pacifists that believe that violence is never the answer. Just punch them in the mouth and see if they still feel the same way.

Your pathetic ad hominens don't help your position at all.

[quote]You never answered the question what happens when the rest of the planet does not go along with your idea?[/quote]

What answer do you expect other than what I am already doing by trying to expand the perception of the unaware? It doesn't help to jump to conclusions about what people believe if they haven't disclosed it already.

I was fortunate that I never produced a child and see no reason to do so. But that is irrelevant in the exchange of ideas that should stand on their merit alone. So we might talk if you can be civil.

No it is not irrelevant, it is precisely the point. All you can and will do is talk. The simple fact of the matter is that your talking doesn't do crap. You can wish in one hand and crap in the other and I can tell you which hand will fill up first.

Therefore YOU sir are irrelevant. Your plan is not a plan at all because human nature is not compatible with it. It is merely wishful thinking and wishful thinking has precisely zero value.

deleted double post

I'm done talking to you. You are clearly too ignorant to grasp just how ignorant you are.

Speak for yourself about ignorance please. I'm surprised that you got so bent out of shape in the first place. It's tragic how unthinking people can be when deep thought is what sets them apart from most other animals.

We have tried in the past solcar, at least once or twice I tried to argue points with the gentleman. Rest assured I get your drift. Trying to transplant a spiritual, humanistic view point into a barren land is a fruitless exercise. That seed will not grow, ever.

BTW, we are not talking about a mental recession here, are we?

Welcome to CR4, Ky.

Thank you kindly, Ky. I'm not really new here though, but figured that since I was having trouble with my Electrone ID, I would just drop that one and use a new one that better represents me.

Indeed, this is way more than a mental recession.

True too, the barren mental landscape comes close to home in the form of my sister.

I'd like to think you are right about people being smart enough, but it seems to me that as things get worse we will be seeing more of the 'dog eat dog' behavior and less altruism. Things seem to be changing fast, change leads to uncertainty, uncertainty to fear, fear to anger, and anger leads to stupid.

Let's try an experiment. I'll suggest that some of the human misery and death that we are seeing around the world is a result of overpopulation, and that anthropogenic global warming is one of the main side effects of that overpopulation. The result that I would expect is a number of posts suggesting that AGW is junk science, and a socialist plot to destroy western civilization (or what's left of it). The battle lines are drawn on this and many of the other environmental issues which we would need to confront if people are to 'get together and work synergistically', and the winner is likely to be inertia.

"No man, think. The attitude of every man for himself and dog-eat-dog is an old way of looking at the world's problems."

I am curious as to what you think is the new way looking at the world's problem?

Perhaps we could just say: to each according to their needs from each according to their ability.

It's yours and my choice to select which way is better for humans, then. That way, or "Annie get your gun."

Let me repeat my question; I am curious as to what you think is the new way of looking at the world's problem?

Can you be more specific?

It is to understand that we have the innate capability of making a civilization based not on competition against others, but rather on cooperation. We can still compete with ourselves in regard to past achievements, but we don't have to do things in a way that tends to be zero-sum, one person's gain is another's loss.

The change that the world could really use is a change in attitude from competition against others to one of cooperation or at least competition with others if we are slow in the transition.

Then we would be addressing problems that things like excessive personal power due to extreme wealth maldistribution cause. One view is such accumulations of riches is one major cause of economic depressions. The idea of penalizing those who presently hold a lot of wealth isn't a worthy goal of a new paradigm, however. That would be reviving the same old attitude of competition against others.

Equal wealth distribution isn't practical anytime soon. I'd like to see humans evolve to a higher mental level, though, when satisfying the thirst for knowledge, truth and understanding is the most rewarding of undertakings.

Also, I haven't mentioned being in favor of wealth redistribution, but discouraging greed in society certainly is a good thing. I think Warren Buffet has the wise and right attitude toward family wealth. I don't have a need to live on a high income. But I don't expect anyone else to not have trouble if they had to do the same.

Life could just have a lot less of the hassles that suck away so much of our time. Coping with the competition against us wastes a whole lot of our energy. In severe cases it leads people to socially destructive despair.

If is true that cooperation is in no way innate, what is the brain's use for sympathy and compassion? One forming factor in an individual's general bent toward life and, economics specifically, is natural personality. Nurture also plays a big role.

It is generally the case that those who have prevailed in conflicts and have the philosophical motivation to compete are usually in favor of the status quo and the present system. A prime example is Charles and David Koch. They desire to institute an almost pure dog-eat-dog system without a government safety net. But they are also exhibit A showing how power corrupts.

One finds far more greed on the lower end of the economic scale than on the upper end, when one considers all of those people demanding their "entitlements" from society. Compare this attitude to those of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Andrew Carnegie, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, The Mellon Family...

People at the low end of the economic scale could tend to display more stress while trying to meet basic survival needs. Later in life successful, wealthy people may already have gone through their economically belligerent phase and can coast under less pressures.

A.H. - I think you are dead wrong about this. Competition and cooperation are both deeply rooted parts of human nature. They are both innate to our species. We are mammals, and mammals care for their young. Social mammals such as ourselves extend this caring to other members of their social group, even to other adults, even to the weak and infirm. As mammals we also compete with each other both within our social group and with outsiders. We compete to see who can grow the best tomato, run the fastest, have the most friends, etc..

In these competitions we mostly all gain: the higher quality of tomatoes improve our diets, running makes us physically stronger, and having more friends speaks for itself. But some of us will loose. The person who grows bad tomatoes, can't run, and has no friends may decide to try harder, or they may try their luck at hiding out and nursing a bad attitude. The person who wins all may decide to teach others how they do it, or they may get a swollen head and become a bully. It's not a perfect system - the gifts that nature gives us rarely are. They just work well enough that we haven't died off yet.

Cooperation and competition are both absolutely required for our physical, emotional, and economic survival. Finding the balance between them is the fundamental trick to a successful individual life, and to a lasting civilization. To me it seems that the question here is 'who is a member of our social group and therefore eligible for participation in the cooperation side of the equation?'. For some people this group may be very small, and in sociopatinc cases may include just one individual. For others the group may be very large - for a patriot one's entire nation - for the visionary even the whole of humanity. People who cooperate and find it rewarding probably tend to be more trusting and therefore open to still more cooperation with still larger groups. People who feel they have been 'burned' by such activities will be less open, and the size of their group will shrink. Some people lead charmed lives and some seem to have been severely burned.

Maybe part of the confusion is that one person can decide on their own to be competitive (for example to take a gun down to the liquor store and 'compete' with the clerk for the money in the register), but it takes at least two people to decide to cooperate. Cooperation almost always involves some compromises, maybe even painful ones. Getting our economy going again may require some cooperation and compromise here at home so that we can compete globally.

I agree with you on much of this, but it is precisely because or 'fight or flight' is hard wired, while our cognitive abilities are not that we need to consciously work on the latter. Our competitive/aggressive side served us well when our greatest threats were unfriendly tribes or fierce animals. It's not much help when neither standing and fighting nor running away is the solution. Adrenalin and rational thought don't mix well, and our current political/economic problems (if they are solvable at all) will require a lot of thought.

We can't ignore or escape our animal nature, and I don't mean to suggest that. We could however avoid treating our inherited instincts as virtues to be praised and nurtured. Our animal nature doesn't need cheerleaders. To be proud of an instinct is as foolish as being proud of your hair color or some other physical attribute over which you have no control. To occasionally rise above instinct might be something that imperfect beings such as ourselves, the products of unthinking evolution, could take a little pride in. We all tend to get a warm fuzzy feeling when some poor sucker who has been dealt a bad hand manages to overcome their handicap and accomplish great things. That is the situation I think we now face as a species. Our animal nature has been good to us, and has brought us a long way. But it is now in many ways a handicap. We can't cure the handicap (nor should we - it may come in handy again some day), but we do need to find some way to work around it.

Indeed. We do need to embrace our instincts, but that does not mean that we must succumb to them. They are part of who we are.

In general, behavioral sciences are a fascinating field, no?

Interesting yes, but very difficult for me. It's hard for me to think and write clearly about things that can't be measured, where the terminology is so ill defined as to invite confusion, and the subject matter is fraught with emotion and political implications. Even if you and I often disagree about the conclusions, I think we are at least starting in similar places, use similar language, and agree on most of the basics - for example the idea that we are not immune to our biological heritage, but essentially just wimpy apes with better hands and minds than our more robust simian relatives. An appropriate level of humility is a good thing.

Just to add more confusion, women's order of precedence between competition and cooperation is reversed compared to men. ;-)

It doesn't stop them from being argumentative and putting up a fight when need be

In general, behavioral sciences are a fascinating field, no?

They certainly are. Maybe it's only me but I can see many parallels to engineering in general. Take certain chemicals for example, they either mix or not or need a catalyst to do what they are supposed to do.

The dangers of combining 2 different metals in the construction of what ever unit or the mixing or placing of colors or musical notes can be and have, contain the same difficulties as social human engineering.

Although we are dealing with imponderable "parts" when it comes to the human psyche we are still ruled or can rely on our instincts and know from experience that I would not stand a chance in a bar in Texas. (Sorry Rohrschach) Common sense prevails.

I find it very uplifting to see such a high quality of argument being placed here and hope that the mix will stay at a low combustible state. Practicing what I read here is not going to be a challenge for me and if it is for others....?????

Hope has a huge amount of potential energy although it is hard to verify, quantify or substantiate as a true component of our lives, Ky.

I think Solcar has a good point in suggesting that this 'recession' is rooted more in biology than in economics. Whether or not the global population is still growing (which it clearly is although the rate even in poor countries is slowing) is not really the issue. We may have already passed the Earth's carrying capacity (based on current technology), which would mean that we are now living off stored fat, or starving. There is no way for us to 'know' this, because environmental issues are so hot politically that even serious scientific findings are routinely discounted. In this political climate the concept of 'knowledge' becomes meaningless, and we are left to face this unknown with slogans instead of ideas.

What we are going through seems to me a lot like what John B. Calhoun found in his studies with confined mice back in the 50's and 60's. The link below gives some sense of what he observed.

(I apologize in advance for what I see as a grossly offensive anti-Islamic slant in this article. Maybe it's just an example of the type of bad behavior due to population stresses that Calhoun found in his studies. Clearly good ideas can be pressed into service for bad causes. Unfortunately this was the first link I found. I'm lazy and in a hurry to get to work this morning, and don't have time to search further.)

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2010/05/circling-behavioral-drain.html