Obama and Bernanke are economic fools

[gwb72tii]

and they're taking us down with them
consider the latest great news from team Obama
Q4 GDP was negative, the economy contracted.
So, after 3 years of quantitative easing, 6 trillion in new debt, the fed buying nearly 2 trillion in US debt,we are left with an economy that is negative.
Bernanke (the guy who missed seeing a 1 in 1200 year bubble) promised back in 2010 that because of the fed buying US treasuries and mortgage back bonds we would have 4% GDP in 2012.
And now that we've borrowed as much as we have, future growth is going to be low because the debt has to be repaid, or the fed has to print greenbacks, pick your poison.
this is why elections matter.

[z31maniac]

Didn't Brave already point out in a different thread it was due to a dramatic reduction in Defense Spending and when accounted for, the economy still grew at 1% (not impressive, but not a reduction)

[Farbin Kaiber]

Well, maybe Jack Lew can resolve all of this.

[herbivor]

Bernanke (the guy who missed seeing a 1 in 1200 year bubble) promised back in 2010 that because of the fed buying US treasuries and mortgage back bonds we would have 4% GDP in 2012.

I think he was also probably assuming the GOP wasn't going to try and intentionally ruin the economy out of spite. Guess he was wrong there too.

[tjts1]

Oh no, this sounds super serial you guys.

[evandael]

huurr durr derp herp blah blah tinfoil hat wee snawww.
this is why elections matter.

i agree.

[rwh11385]

and they're taking us down with them
consider the latest great news from team Obama
Q4 GDP was negative, the economy contracted.
So, after 3 years of quantitative easing, 6 trillion in new debt, the fed buying nearly 2 trillion in US debt,we are left with an economy that is negative.
Bernanke (the guy who missed seeing a 1 in 1200 year bubble) promised back in 2010 that because of the fed buying US treasuries and mortgage back bonds we would have 4% GDP in 2012.
And now that we've borrowed as much as we have, future growth is going to be low because the debt has to be repaid, or the fed has to print greenbacks, pick your poison.
this is why elections matter.

Don't you read WSJ? Or just Zero Hedge?

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/01/30/economists-react-best-looking-contraction-in-gdp/?mod=wsj_nview_latest

–We advise fading the headline number given distortions in the data. Growth was dragged down by a sharp contraction in government defense spending and inventory accumulation, which combined subtracted 2.6 percentage point from growth. Outside of these two very volatile components, underlying growth improved with a solid gain in business investment. We believe today’s report suggests upside risk to our forecast of 1.0% for Q1 GDP. … The economy is not exactly robust, but it is certainly not contracting as today’s data would otherwise suggest. --Michelle Meyer, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research

– Frankly, this is the best looking contraction in GDP you’ll ever see. Stripping out defense and inventories, GDP growth accelerated to 2.6%, from 1.8%. Admittedly, if you strip out enough of the falling components, then obviously what’s left went up. But in this case these are one-offs. If this really was the start of a new recession, like the ones in 2001 and 2008, then we would expect to see GDP excluding defense and inventories falling too. Instead, the growth rate is accelerating. –Paul Ashworth, Capital Economics

–The contraction of the U.S. economy came clearly as a negative surprise. We would, however, like to emphasize that this is not the beginning of a recession. It is important to stress that the weakness came exclusively from three components: inventories, net exports, and government spending. While we expected slowdowns in the first two components (reversing the strength seen in 3Q12) the degree of the slump in government spending was a surprise. … Overall, the details of today’s GDP report are clearly better than the unpleasant headline figure suggests. This view is shared by financial markets (equity futures, bonds), which – after an initial shock – pared their losses. –Harm Bandholz, UniCredit Research

–My first response to the GDP report was ‘holy cow!– it’s not often that the US economy contracts, and the headline says that this just happened in the final quarter of 2012. Many had expected weak growth; none had seen a contraction coming. But once you take a deep breath, read past the headline, and delve into the numbers, you’ll see that this is actually a pretty good (though not great) report. The internals are much better than the top-line belies. Under the hood, we see solid growth in both consumption and investment and as a result, private spending was humming along. Last quarter’s decline in US GDP was all about inventories (which subtracted 1.3 percentage points from growth), as well as sharp cuts in defense spending. Neither of these are expected to persist. And let’s not forget that this is the “advance” GDP estimate, which is only an early (an often inaccurate) guess as to what was happening. Typically, this estimate misses the mark by a full 1.3 percentage points. –Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan and Brookings Institution

–Hurricane Sandy clearly had an impact on activity in Q4, but the BEA had no way to break it out in the data and therefore was unable to quantify the effect. As it turns out, my read is that the impact was surprisingly muted, as consumer spending pretty much fully recovered for what was lost early in the period. Housing also showed no ill effects for the quarter as whole. Ironically, the one place where the storm’s impact seems most evident is a surprising one: trade. Even here, I suspect that the effects would have been mostly unwound by the end of the quarter if not for the labor issues at key ports on both coasts. –Stephen Stanley, Pierpont Securities

You attacked Q3 growth because of government spending and inventories, but now you use those items to chicken little? You want high government spending? No? Then accept its negative contribution to GDP as separate from the economy's strength. PCE is up, disposable income up, business investment up. Add in Sandy effects on exports and also fiscal cliffs on not restocking and adding uncertainty... And it only remains bad to those who want to think the economy is bad and are biased permabears.

How's your permabear ways treating you George?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-ends-above-14000-for-lst-time-since-oct-2007-2013-02-01-16911122?siteid=yhoof2

Dow ends above 14,000 for lst time since Oct. 2007

I'm pretty sure you've proven time and again that you are an economic fool.

If Obama had his jobs bill way and Keynesian economics to increase government spending, you'd see Q4 growth. But it was the GOP who stopped that as well as made the fiscal cliff drag out so far, and the uncompromising nature of Tea Baggers created the budget crisis and remaining spending cut concern. If people could be intelligent and mature in Congress, they could have a logical and practical means to slowly curb deficits and keep economic growth in tack by means of R&D investment and healthy supply-side economics with lower corporate tax rate so all the money sitting could be re-patriated. But instead we talk about the ending of a pointless payroll tax holiday and fight for the resolution and compromise to fix the inability to come together for a permanent and stable policy.

[Morrison]

It's the republican controlled congress that has tried to stifle the economy as best they can. At every turn they've chosen to make Obama look like a failure by purposely running the economy into the ground. And that is why we need to get more of them elected out of office in 2014.

[mar1t1me]

It's the republican controlled congress that has tried to stifle the economy as best they can. At every turn they've chosen to make Obama look like a failure by purposely running the economy into the ground. And that is why we need to get more of them elected out of office in 2014.

Well.....it's not like they didn't tell us that's exactly what they were going to do! This 8 second clip sums it up nicely....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-A09a_gHJc

[Q5Quint]

This is why none of my friends will ever buy a house on credit, work a traditional full-time job, or go into any kind of debt.

They saw what happened to their parents, and their country, when the no-cash-but-still-spending-shit-show ended.

I've seen enough old men cry that I shudder whenever people talk about 'the economy'. How about the guy who just lost 80k out of his retirement because the stock market dropped.... is it his fault for (his investment portfolio) investing in things that could crash, or his fault for having a portfolio to begin with? Or the builder who is still sitting on a million dollar spec home, making huge payments with no work, because people arn't buying Mc Mansions like they used to. His fault for doing it or the economy's fault for 'change'?

That guy that was selling electric cars in 1910. His fault for doing it or the economy's fault for change?



I think most politicians have a 'back of the shaft' drive too, and dearest obamma is no different than the rest of them.

That said we are seeing a lot of new home starts and a good bit of construction work so people are still spending in our sector. Not that anything about most construction is sustainable~ don't spend it unless you know you'll have it.

[tjts1]

This is why none of my friends will ever buy a house on credit, work a traditional full-time job, or go into any kind of debt.

They saw what happened to their parents, and their country, when the no-cash-but-still-spending-shit-show ended.

I've seen enough old men cry that I shudder whenever people talk about 'the economy'. How about the guy who just lost 80k out of his retirement because the stock market dropped.... is it his fault for (his investment portfolio) investing in things that could crash, or his fault for having a portfolio to begin with? Or the builder who is still sitting on a million dollar spec home, making huge payments with no work, because people arn't buying Mc Mansions like they used to. His fault for doing it or the economy's fault for 'change'?

That guy that was selling electric cars in 1910. His fault for doing it or the economy's fault for change?



I think most politicians have a 'back of the shaft' drive too, and dearest obamma is no different than the rest of them.

That said we are seeing a lot of new home starts and a good bit of construction work so people are still spending in our sector. Not that anything about most construction is sustainable~ don't spend it unless you know you'll have it.

In all your examples they only have themselves to blame for not recognizing change was on its way, not diversifying, being greedy.

[Q5Quint]

In all your examples they only have themselves to blame for not recognizing change was on its way, not diversifying, being greedy.

Yep.

However the people that worked for them.... woops.

[tjts1]

Yep.

However the people that worked for them.... woops.

The people that work for them are also just as responsible to use some fucking brain power to look beyond the next pay check.

[Wiglaf]

...this is why elections matter.

The only candidates that mentioned doing anything about the fed had no chance of being elected. Dems and Repubs both the same here, just going to keep letting bernanke print as much money as he wants while China collects enough gold to put themselves onto a gold standard.

We're going to be #2 soon, get ready to hear a lot more butthurt from the rich peoples. There's no way to stop the trainwreck in motion, our bankers have blinders on. A bunch of self important assholes just getting what they can before it all goes south.

For anyone in gov to fix this will take something dramatic, and the ones making $$ off the setup right now (including themselves) will never let it happen.

[z31maniac]

We don't need the Gold standard, we just need to control the printing of our own money without paying interest on it.

It blows me away how many Americans don't get how bad the Federal Reserve is. Why in the hell do we pay interest to a bank for money that we can issue ourselves?