The oppression/suppression by the oil companies doesn't seem to have affected the ingenuity of Japanese auto makers. Query why it seems to have affected primarily/only American companies. Moreover, as you later note,

I couldn't have said it any better.

As a matter of history, this is simply wrong. I point you to the following post by one of my favorite bloggers who points this out. In case you miss it, the following graphic should be instructive:




Actually, financial innovation is only one of many ingenious things that we have come up with. In many areas (most of which involve higher-value activities than low-skill manufacturing), the United States continues to be a leading producer of technology and innovation. Moreover, it's easy to dismiss the benefits of financial innovation when you take those benefits for granted. Financial innovation is part of what makes the United States economy so resilient.

Your references to the United States as being in a "hole" and our economy "blowing up in our faces" seem more like hyperbole than robust analysis. You might consider looking at our current economic conditions with a bit of historical perspective, and you'll realize that our current economic slowdown has actually been fairly mild. So far as I'm aware, growth in GDP has yet to turn negative, and 5.5% unemployment, though higher than recent memory, is still fairly low by any historical standard, and continues to be much lower than many other developed countries (especially in Europe).

Doom and gloom may be the mother's milk of news and politics; but it doesn't mean that its proponents are correct.

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

Please refer to the below graph and web source....it seems you are the one engaging in Peter Pan hyperbole and your analysis is massively flawed. We will see in the coming months how resilient this economy really is...

In the meantime, in reference to your first statement in bold..please explain why investment banks are continuing to write down the value of their assets and why they have lost nearly half their profits if financial "innovation" and structured finance has been so beneficial to these same banks and the general economy? Financial innovation I would argue was faux growth hence the continued writedowns and injections of liquidity by the Fed to prop up the overleveraged investment banks. Why did Bear Stearns fail if structured finance was such an ingenious innovation? Why do they have to build a new business model as Mr Bove states in the article if the structured finance model is so great?

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/bus...fits-gone.html


Related:

Citi warns of further large writedowns

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de5de2e4-3...0779fd2ac.html


As far as my rebuttal to your second statement in bold...I'm glad you have such high expectations....











Source: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data

Hmmm... "Peter Pan" hyperbole. You know, I'm not even sure what that means.

On more substantive matters, perhaps you can point me to something at that website that you think demonstrates how "[my] analysis is massively flawed". Simply pointing to a website and saying, "see, something in here shows you're wrong," isn't terribly persuasive. Unless you can actually interpret the sources on which you are relying and explain their significance, those sources carry about as much weight as, well, Peter Pan.

Perhaps we will see "in the coming months" how resilient the economy is; but, as you correctly note, we really should be thinking about economic concerns in terms of quarter centuries rather than fiscal quarters. I prefer to think about what happens over the course of years and decades, not what happens over a three- or six-month period.

In the late 19th century, investors and economists said "this time it's different," only to get hammered by the panics of 1893 and 1907. In the 1920s, investors and economists said, "this time it's different," only to get hammered by the Great Depression. In the 1960s, investors and economists said, "this time it's different," only to get hammered by the staflation of the 1970s. In the late 1990s, investors and economists said, "this time it's different," only to get hammered by the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

Of course, on the inverse side, plenty of people thought the U.S. was in permanent decline in various times during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Why should the 2000s be any different?

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

If I went out on a limb, I would guess "think happy thoughts" hyperbole.

Well, I didn't get past "shadow government".

__________________
Czar of the 26th Ward.

You apparently missed my update.

Days turn into weeks and weeks into months and Months turn into years the last time I checked. I did not cite specific quarters. I agree..and have mentioned in previous posts that this downturn will last years not months. If we want to parse words we can do that all night.

Raider Adam's definition of Peter Pan hyperbole is accurate..also known as little orphan annie hyperbole...

I didn't think you would...

________________________________________

Orthodoxy - Not needing to think. A form of unconsciousness

Some perspective if you so choose to consider...

Yes, I now see your update, but there are problems with the graphs you posted. Looking, for example, at the unemployment rate graph, I see two immediate problems.

First, neither you nor the author give sources for the relevant data, in particular, for the "SGS Alternative". Now, I assume this is some metric that the author has devised, but without an explanation of the methodology, it is meaningless. For example, he could be artificially inflating the "unemployment rate" by including some notional number of martians, or perhaps by excluding people named, "Bob," but in the absence of an explanation, we'll never know. As it happens, my guess is that at least one of his sets of unemployment data includes people who are not actively looking for work. Why is this important? Well, as I'm sure you know, official statistics regarding unemployment include in the labor pool only those individuals who are actively looking for work. This is why, both historically and presently, the actual unemployment rate is understated. I'm sure you knew this already, but I figured it was worth spelling out for the less initiated. However, the fact that the unemployment rate is generally understated, both historically and presently, is irrelevant for the following reason...

Second, the chart isn't responsive to the point I was making, which was that, measured against historical standards and measured against other developed countries, unemployment in the United States is still historically low. To understand why this is significant, you need to understand that measures of "good" and "bad" economic times are relative concepts; and given that neither you nor the author actually present any comparative data against which to compare today's (or projections of tomorrow's) economic climate, you really haven't shown anything that rebuts, or is even responsive to, my point.

I'm always willing to consider perspective, but I have to admit some skepticism when economic perspective comes from a "political analyst" who is "viewed as one of the GOP’s top theoreticians and electoral analysts" and is "considered one of the leading critics of US political culture." Hmmm... a leading critic of political culture talking economics. I'm all ears. Let's take a look at a couple of his claims to see if he knows what he's talking about.

Well, if you read the blog post that I posted before, you'll see that an actual economist rebuts this point pretty succinctly, to wit:

Coupled with the chart I showed before, data that is used by real economists to analyze the economy suggests that it's not that manufacturing is getting smaller; it's that other areas of the economy are getting bigger. If that's the curse of success, I'll take it (and so probably will the millions of other people who benefit directly and indirectly from it).

In another spot, our intrepid analyst-turned-economist notes:

Of course, rising oil prices are not a sign of economic weakness. In fact, as many professional economists have noted, rising oil prices are due, in significant part, to rising demand from developing economies (i.e., India and China). And, of course the development of those countries creates new markets for American goods and services and also produces higher-value goods and services that we Americans like to consume, but at a lower-cost than can be obtained here in the U.S.

Moreover, it's not clear that high oil prices are necessarily a "bad" thing, given that such prices will simply encourage people to curtail their consumption of oil, which ostensibly will be good for both the environment and our geopolitical interests. Is there short-run pain? Certainly, and I don't mean to minimize it. But if we are interested in the long-run health of the economic (and the planet), then perhaps high oil prices are a blessing, because they will encourage changes in behavior that, if I understand your feeling towards the oil industry correctly, will make us less dependent on those evil oil producers who apparently have forced many Americans, of all income levels, to live in the suburbs and drive enormous SUVs.

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

Ah, looking more closely at the tin-foil hats, er, Shadow Stats website, I see the author's explanation, which is generally similar to what I suggested earlier:

Of course, I have no idea how he does his "estimates"; but I suppose that's neither here nor there, because these graphs still are not responsive to the issue which is how the current economic climate compares to other times and other countries.

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

What we need is for Apple to make an icar.

I don't understand why everyone loves to canonize the Japanese. They attacked us in 1941 because we cut off their oil; we are late to the party in the scarce oil game, and we need to adapt, quickly. However, the Japanese haven't advanced the auto industry at a pace anywhere close to the advancement of the computer industry; in other words, Toyota and Honda are themselves backwards. New Toyotas aren't all that different from a 1913 Lancia (or was it the Alfa of that year); pneumatic tires, runs on gasoline, internal combustion engine, made of steel, etc. I think it even had disc brakes and fuel injection. Now compare your cellphone to a 1913 phone. In 95 years we have barely refined the automobile. Even buildings are much more advanced now than then; automatic heat, insulated, much taller skyscrapers, poured-in-place basements, low-e glass, central air, multiple bathrooms, dishwashers. NOW STOP CANONIZING TOYOTA - it is a backwards company. When I was in grade school I read a textbook (in 1979, but written 20 years before) that talked about how by 1980 cars probably would no longer have tires. Needless to say I found it amusing. Detroit has let a proud legacy down, but it is only in comparison that the Japanese seem so progressive. They are actually retrograde. There will be a game-changer, and I don't expect Honda or Toyota to deliver it, only to copy it.

By the way, Mars is a wild-eyed fear-monger. I expect he has most of his wealth stashed in gold or diamonds so that when the end comes he can use them to barter in the new post-apocalyptic world he envisions.