Poverty is only going to get worse

Posted on September 22, 2016 by lawofmarkets

It’s not just that public spending creates no jobs, it is that it also savages our standard of living. It takes a while for the results to become apparent, but the depletion of our capital base must have its effect. GDP data tells you almost nothing, but this is the very thing you must expect:

Americans ditching houses to live in vans, save money...

Terrifying signs of looming housing crisis…

Young adults ‘worn down and worried about the future’…

The young are the ones most affected since they are finding the cost of even buying into the most rudimentary standards at the bottom of the pile are disappearing before their eyes. I will only quote from the last of the articles but it is a problem that is only going to get worse. The story is mainly about young women, but it really is a general issue for the millennial generation who are being shafted left and right.

The younger generation are “despairing and worn out” as they struggle with financial and work problems, a study shows.

Research among 4,000 people aged between 18 and 30 revealed that women are worst affected as they are particularly hit by workplace discrimination.

The Young Women’s Trust said young people are having to “suspend” adulthood, often moving back in with their parents because of low pay.

Huge numbers say they are worn out, lack self confidence and are worried about the future.

The charity called on the Government to appoint a minister for young people, extend the national living wage to younger workers, and do more to help young women cope with work.

I particularly like the bit about “extend[ing] the national living wage to younger workers”. They see the problem but cannot even begin to understand what the actual problem is.

The nightmare scenario

Posted on September 22, 2016 by lawofmarkets

Two articles of the highest importance on the same theme.

The first is Yellen helps Clinton dodge a bullet which comes with the sub-head: “Federal Reserve policymakers keep their key interest rate steady, putting the central bank on the sidelines until after Election Day.” The first sentence of the article is merely about politics. The economics is about what lies in wait. But first that opening sentence:

Scratch one big economic worry off the list for Hillary Clinton.

The worry being scratched off is that interest rates will be raised before the election. Trump knows what a problem this would be for the Democrats better than anyone. Yellen knows exactly what Trump knows, but lies like the rest of her leftist tribe:

Fed Chair Janet Yellen also strongly rejected claims lobbed at her by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump that she is keeping rates artificially low to boost stock prices and aid Democrats.

“I can say emphatically that partisan politics plays no role in our decisions about the appropriate stance of monetary policy,” Yellen said at a news conference after the Fed announced its decision. “We do not discuss politics at our meetings and we do not take politics into account in our decisions.” . . .

“The Federal Reserve is not politically compromised,” she said. “I can’t recall any meeting that I have ever attended where politics has been a matter of discussion. I think the public if they had been watching our meeting on TV today would have felt that we had a rich, deep, serious, intellectual debate about the risks and the forecasts for the economy.”

Since she cannot say otherwise, that was the pre-fab answer. But they of course do think politically 100% of the time, and know full well what will happen when rates start to rise, or even if they hinted that they would rise. It will happen immediately if it’s Trump, more slowly if it’s Hillary, but up they will go. As noted at the end of the article:

The decision [to leave rates where they are] should be a bit of a boost for Clinton, more because it avoids a nightmare scenario than does much to strengthen the economy.

“Nightmare scenario”? What could they possibly mean?

There is then this second article dealing with the same issues: Yellen rejects Trump charges that Fed plays politics. Shorter and again outlines Trump’s complaints in the company of Yellen’s untruths. But it ends with this:

By statute, the Fed is an independent body intended to be shielded from political pressure and whose operations are not funded by the US Congress.

But Fed governors are nominated by the White House and approved by the Senate.

You can see the cynicism in the article but there is even more in the comments to the story. I will just list one, which is like most of the others, and which follows more or less my own sentiments about all of it:

Her denial proves the point. Yellen is a marxist who does Obama’s bidding. If Trump wins in November this fool will raise interest rates in December. Bet the farm on it.

For all that, the sad fact is that the only way our economies can ever get on track is for rates to rise. It will be a rough ride, but without the redirection of savings in productive directions, there is no chance of a recovery either short term or long.

One of the many many many things she doesn’t understand

Posted on September 22, 2016 by lawofmarkets

I often ask the same question, but with the names reversed:
Clinton asks why she isn’t beating Trump by 50 points. “Fierce”, by the way, is apparently the new word for “stupid”.

Hillary Clinton gave voice Wednesday to a question on the minds of many of her fiercest advocates in her race against the controversy-prone Donald Trump: Why isn’t she way, way ahead?

The Democratic nominee raised the issue here during an address via video conference to a gathering in Las Vegas of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.

The former secretary of state ticked off her pro-union positions, including investing in infrastructure, raising the minimum wage and supporting collective bargaining.

“Having said all this, ‘Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?’ you might ask?” Clinton said. “Well, the choice for working families has never been clearer. I need your help to get Donald Trump’s record out to everybody. Nobody should be fooled.”

“Nobody should be fooled”! That’s my wish as well, but with the media the way it is, not much hope of that.

What a surprise: “use of heavy monetary weapons have failed to have the desired impact”

Posted on September 22, 2016 by lawofmarkets

Although the headline reads After years of failed efforts to pull Japan out of deflation, the country’s central bank is trying something different it is really the same old same old. They are trying a Keynesian low-interest prescription which will work as well as the Keynesian expenditure program. Here’s the story:

The Bank of Japan said Wednesday that it’s introducing a new long-term interest rate target of around zero.

The bank has already gone to extreme lengths in its attempts to stimulate the country’s stagnating economy in recent years, gobbling huge amounts of Japanese government bonds and taking a key interest rate into negative territory.

But its use of heavy monetary weapons has failed to have the desired impact, raising questions over whether it’s running out of ammunition. Inflation remains far below the bank’s target and the country’s currency, the yen, has strengthened significantly against the dollar this year, hurting exporters.

And etc. Completely clueless.

The Skittles analogy

Posted on September 21, 2016 by lawofmarkets

The Skittles analogy brought to you by Mark Steyn.

Diversity is our weakness

Posted on September 21, 2016 by lawofmarkets

The video is from London and this is the note that comes with it:

Published on Sep 17, 2016

Footage of a flashmob dancing on Park Lane, central London, in front of a group of refugees who have arrived in the UK. Part of the Welcome Refugees campaign. **NB: Unable to play on some devices due to music copyright claim**

Thousands of protesters marched on Downing Street to demand the British Government takes in more refugees as thousands of men, women and children continue to drown in desperate attempts to reach Europe. #refugeeswelcome

This is the post I took the video from, with the quite interesting title, How Did it Happen?. And here is the para that the video was mentioned in which is about our attitudes to immigration in the wake of the bombings and various attacks in the US:

Now, obviously we’re angry at the Muslims responsible. Dahir Adan was the Somalian who did the stabbings in Minnesota, while Afghan Ahmad Khan Rahami appears to be responsible for the ten bombs surrounding NYC. They were both immigrants who became even more radical after moving here, and their shitty culture is what drove them to attack ours. I’ve hated their kind since 9/11, but I have a new enemy: us. We keep inviting this terror by pretending it’s not there. While we were at the game, infantile ethnomasochists in London were holding a parade to welcome refugees. They danced to babysitter music, chanting “I really, really, really like you” while hideously twerking sideways and pointing to a crowd of refugees holding the Syrian flag. To call the footage of this cringefest the gayest thing imaginable is an insult to gays everywhere. It is miles below faggoty. It is willfully naive virtue-signaling that haplessly gyrates through the victims of Britain’s numerous child prostitution rings, honor killings, genital mutilation, and Sharia horror. Despite this, London elected a Muslim mayor with ties to radicalism and David Cameron committed to 20,000 more refugees (a number the castrated dancers claim is way too low). Let’s reserve some of our hatred for the Westerners who enable Middle Eastern violence.

Anyone who thinks diversity is our strength is a fool. Here’s the last para that wraps it up:

Like Britain, we assume everyone will eventually become Western and enjoy the same liberties we do if we can just get through this rough patch. The time for this level of naïveté has passed. We are no longer importing “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” We are importing people who want to choke us to death. As Sadiq Khan himself proudly stated, “Social integration does not work.” To hell with them for coming here with that attitude—but to hell with us, too, for allowing them.

Now go read it all.

Is Obama the biggest jerk ever to be president?

Posted on September 21, 2016 by lawofmarkets

If he isn’t the dumbest, least informed, least capable president in history, he must come close. Reading almost anything he says or does is a trial on the nerves. How do others take it? A sample from today:

Obama at U.N.: A walled-off nation ‘imprisons itself’

At United Nations, Globalist Obama Condemns ‘Crude Populism’ Sweeping the Planet

Obama won’t acknowledge terrorism — and it’s great news for Trump

Days after attacks, Obama pitches more refugees

Obama led the world downward into chaos

88 senators press Obama to uphold US policy to veto one-sided UN resolutions

White House: ISIS Doesn’t Represent Islam In Fight Against West

Armed forces chiefs confirm sense of Obama distrust

Obama Admin ‘Laundered’ U.S. Cash to Iran Via N.Y. Fed, Euro Banks

It’s hard to work out whether his ignorance is more significant than his lack of intelligence, or whether it is the other way round. But whichever it is, he cannot be gone soon enough. In ’08 I thought anyone but Hillary, so this was the answer and I learned my lesson. Although not much better, she would have been better. That he is still the apple in the eye of the media is all you need to know about the American media, which is as ignorant and unintelligent as Obama.

I HAVE RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING COMMENT ON THIS POST: Source unknown, but entirely apt:

“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president.”

In the never never

Posted on September 21, 2016 by lawofmarkets

Victor Davis Hanson, writing in the #NeverTrump National Review, puts his own point of view in an article titled, Never NeverTrump. Note the double negative. Here’s the point, but it is worth reading end to end:

In sum, if Trump’s D-11 bulldozer blade did not exist, it would have to be invented. He is Obama’s nemesis, Hillary’s worst nightmare, and a vampire’s mirror of the Republican establishment. Before November’s election, his next outburst or reinvention will once again sorely embarrass his supporters, but perhaps not to the degree that Clinton’s erudite callousness should repel her own.

In farming, I learned there is no good harvest, only each year one that’s 51 percent preferable to the alternative, which in 2016 is a likely 16-year Obama-Clinton hailstorm.

It may be discomforting for some conservatives to vote for the Republican party’s duly nominated candidate, but as this Manichean two-person race ends, it is now becoming suicidal not to.

I don’t think he could be more clear.

The American labour market has been dead for eight years

Posted on September 18, 2016 by lawofmarkets

I am periodically sent junk mail by an old high school friend who now lives in California. His latest is an article on Still the economy, stupid? about how household incomes have just shot up, proving how great the American economy is going. So I went and did some minor investigation on non-farm seasonally adjusted employment, and the data may be found below. Start in 2008 which was the annual peak in 2008 as the GFC hit, and compare it with the level in 2016. Eight years later, in 2016, employment levels are 4.9% higher than they were then.

Let’s do another. The data are seasonally adjusted so we can compare different months in different years. The high point in employment occurs in the month of January 2008. Employment continues to fall until March 2010 when it begins to pick up again. The growth in non-farm employee numbers between the month of January 2008 and the latest figure in August 2016 is 4.5%. This is an average annual growth rate of 0.5% a year. It took six years – not until May 2014 – before employment had finally passed the level it had been at its previous peak. The labour market has been dead, an absolutely abysmal recovery. It’s pathetic for these people to pretend otherwise, and if he really is this clueless about labour market conditions, he really should not be writing stories about recovery and why has no one noticed. No one has noticed because there has been nothing to see.

Here is the series, and you can look up the numbers here.

Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)
Original Data Value

Series Id: CES0000000001
Seasonally Adjusted
Series Title: All employees, thousands, total nonfarm, seasonally adjusted
Super Sector: Total nonfarm
Industry: Total nonfarm
NAICS Code: –
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS
Years: 2006 to 2016