The first paragraph seems to be missing something. "recovery" maybe?

This around the

Oh cmon Steve LIESman is a great guy who is a true gov't fed koolaide drinker...yes, as steve says the gov't and the fed WILL make it better...rock on LIESman you sr. economic douche with a degree in journalism and a minor in social douchebaggery...a salute to the man who never met a FED or GOV't spending program he didn't like!

Was it not worth it, 30 years of good times and strengthening as a superpower?

Typo

We are we replacing good jobs with "McJobs"....

There are no decent, high paying jobs out there.

The Bush Administration at some point classified cooking jobs as "manufacturing" in a fraudulent effort to make it seem like there was an increase in manufacturing jobs.

It's all a lie. Everything that comes out of D.C. and the State-run media is a bald-faced lie.

this is simply because liesman isn't an economist but is cnbc's "chief economics reporter."

in other words, a propagandist.

CNBC: we put the 'Anal' in analysis

I like the term "pulling forward" demand. It is more business-oriented then saying consumers are "living outside their means." Why would a business care about you spending too much?

Because people who live outside their means have less "means" later. It is great way to show business people that there is no free lunch.

Liesman ****ed up this morning and, for the first time that I've ever seen, had to back out and admit he was wrong.

It was halarious.

Sometime around 9:05est. I posted this when it happened.

Asimov wrote..

LIESman just had a real "stupid" moment on cnbc. You say, "so what else is new?"

Well, he had to back down and ADMIT he was wrong! I can't remember ever seeing that before.

He squirmed too.

Quote:

Because people who live outside their means have less "means" later. It is great way to show business people that there is no free lunch.

ideally, a business wants you to live above your means but not so much that you blow yourself up; they want you barely being able to keep your head above water so you can continue to service your debt to them.

Never commented here before but would like to hear Mr. Deninger's take on this problem in terms of our busted consumer. Zero Hedge ran a column Aug. 15 entitled the 'Stratified US Consumer'. In this column it was noted that the bottom 40% of US consumers comprise only 12% of consumption, the top 10 percent 42% and the middle 50% of the population the remainder or 46%. We don't even want to discuss the top one percent's share.

So isn't the problem as much the decline in top incomes as it is a problem of too much consumer debt hampering consumption. Afterall, if your basic hedge fund manager, bank exec or Morgan Stanley trader is hurting their pain is going to be far more widely felt than if Joe McJob has his credit card limit cut back
a couple of thousand dollars?

Then there is the problem of raising taxes on upper income levels to finance this that or the other thing. Given the tapped out nature of those lower on the income ladder seems to me this would be the final nail in the coffin of our economy.

Retitle that Baby and Pin It. It's not focused just on CNBS ... it goes very deep into giving and understandable explanation for why we're hosed.

Ok

Sangell, you still have the same problem: it is not only "poor" people who have overextended themselves.

In fact there are a LOT of people who are debt slaves. It might surprise you to know that McCain - yes, JOHN MCCAIN - declared over $500,000 in CREDIT CARD DEBT during his campaign.

Someone really needs to update this chart. I don't have the skill set to do so, but here is the data set used originally....



and the source dataset with three quarters additional numbers...

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z....

Use chart D.3

Therein too lies the question ... why has it taken so much more debt, with every cycle, just to clawback the jobs that were lost. Why, as a matter of social policy, is this allowed and condoned?

Because you allow it Widg. (Collectively, not just individually)

Mainstream (Keynesian) economic analysis seems to me to be full of these kinds of unexamined assertions; actual analysis of why the economy does what it does seems not to even be contemplated, in favor of "consumer confidence" this, "animal spirits" that, never recognizing that those wrinkles in the sheets are caused by the dead body underneath - this from the school of economics that holds that government intervention and planning are essential to stability...

...I dunno, I rant sometimes...

How much longer? Seems like every month there's new information to suggest the "crunch" is due any time, yet things continue to move along almost normally.

John

OK, I got a better chart to show what is ahead with ALT-A.

Quote:

It might surprise you to know that McCain - yes, JOHN MCCAIN - declared over $500,000 in CREDIT CARD DEBT during his campaign

I also recall seeing a report on TV about how Joe Biden is absolutely buried in debt.

I was half-listening to FOX news while doing other things this afternoon, and some brainiac on Neil Cavoto's show stated that the recession ended in June!

What planet are these people living on?????