So Shos, before I reply to most of your points,
give me an example of what and when you felt the economy was good?
Hi Haggis. I say the economy APPEARS to be robust because the stock markets have good numbers, and we have been accustomed to believing that as the most important indicator of the economy. The 6 items that started the thread tend to keep those numbers healthy. I really believe the economy is a fiction of our collective imagination, and operates mainly on faith. Fear makes the market drop. Faith keeps it steady. With about 40% of our national debt owed outside of our country, we may not be able to continue counting on the kindness (cooperation) of strangers. If that scares investors, the economy will appear to slacken.
Since we have no gold (or other) standard by which to measure wealth, it consists of property and numbers in computers and on paper. A dollar bill, a paycheck or a bank statement has numbers. As long as we have faith in those numbers our economy can work.
By the way, I have no training in economics, which may be obvious to some. My analysis is based on the simplest of facts and some assumptions.
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Incidently,
The unemployement rate for Jan. stands at 5.2%. That is .4% lower than it was at this point in Bill Clinton's second term.
Just thought you'd like to know.
V/R
Shapley
Hi Shap. To evaluate the statistic I think we need to know how many of the unemployed have jobs substantially lower in quality than what they lost, how many are temp that were permanent, and how many people have exhausted their unemployment compensation or have stopped looking (and are no longer counted). You know how skeptical I am. And you know I wouldn't give Bush the right ime for anything he's done, anyway.
Oops. Just noticed OT addressed some of this.
Or this by Shap:
All the new jobs cannot be flipping burgers, since burger flippers are not building new houses, and new housing starts continue to climb. Nor are the new houses being built to house those who cannot afford them. I have customers across the nation in the construction field, and most are operating at full capacity and continuing to add more capacity. They service both the contractor and end-user markets, and both are swamped by the demand. There may be pockets in the nation we're not hearing from that aren't busy, but I don't know where they are.
Some of these are no doubt first homes, but I think we are in a period of people adding to their homes or building second or third homes because they can. It is probably an investment move, as property is real and money is iffy. Certainly they keep construction workers in business.
What I would like to see (and never will) is to have those rich enough for obscenely large or multiple homes get their asses taxed off so that housing for the (deserving) poor (nothing fancy) could be considered (employing all them construction workers).
Hopeless Pessimist (with a touch of cynicism here)
