News Recession: NBER says what all Americans knew

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You know there's something wrong when gas is 85.9.
 
Well it does not take an economic expert to figure out the economy is not so good right now.
 
And all this due to the absolute idiocy of subprime mortgages.

Did you know that hedge funds in the UK were still making money out of the tumbling stock market? There are talks to make short selling illegal now.
 
Did you know that hedge funds in the UK were still making money out of the tumbling stock market? There are talks to make short selling illegal now.

I think they are already illegal in Germany, but not by legislation, only by the stock exchange changing it's local trading rules in the wake of the Volkswagen share anomaly (The prices for the Volkswagen shares sky rocketed to over 1000 €, making Volkswagen for a few hours the company with the highest value in the world. Was caused by speculative traders suddenly realizing, that only 5% of Volkswagen had been on the market, while they short-traded with over 25% - with the effect that they had to buy Volkswagen shares at any costs to match their accounts.)
 
And all this due to the absolute idiocy of subprime mortgages.

Nope. Indeed what left US without liquidity was trade deficit which leaks currency out of US and caused inflation in the rest of the world. At some point you could expect that such lack of liquidity would show up somewhere. It showed up in the subprime mortgages.

The problem is that trade deficit continues, so it is like a body that is bleeding, and bleeding is not being stopped. So you may expect worse liquidity problems in the near future.

Government is procrastinating, lowering rates so people can have debt to consume, but that is refinancing US economy...
 
I guess you pretty much need to wait 2 quarters until you can really declare a recession. Mostly because the definition is a reduction in the GDP for 2 quarters.

Maybe there's a problem with using definitions that use 20/20 hindsight as criteria.
 
I wonder how much hard data and how long does it take to acknowledge officially that we are in free fall??

freefall.jpg


German car downturn 'worst ever'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7762709.stm
Eurozone retail sales slump 2.1%
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7762385.stm
Fears grow for US service sector
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7763198.stm

This economic rollercoaster videogame seems to have a lost dungeon master.


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How deep the rabbit hole goes??

US economy 'weaker in all areas'
The Federal Reserve Board has painted a bleak picture of the US economy in its influential Beige Book, a report used to help determine US interest rates.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7763953.stm
 
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US job losses surge in November
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7767326.stm
US employers axed 533,000 jobs in November, the biggest monthly cut since 1974, the US Labor Department said.
In a dramatic indication of the worsening economic situation, the US jobless rate rose to a 15-year high of 6.7% from 6.5% in October.
Recent data has fuelled fears that the world's biggest economy is set for a deep, long downturn.
_45271768_us_unemployment_466gr.gif


Companies do not understand.
If all companies cut a 10% of employees, unemployment will be at least 10%.
It means 10% less of market and smaller economic size of market.
It means destruction of the market.

The more jobs cut, the more sunk US will be.
In an attempt to keep profit levels, market is destroyed.
It is just like killing the cow that gave you milk to eat the meat, then you have no milk.
 
Companies do not understand.
If all companies cut a 10% of employees, unemployment will be at least 10%.
It means 10% less of market and smaller economic size of market.
It means destruction of the market.

The more jobs cut, the more sunk US will be.
In an attempt to keep profit levels, market is destroyed.
It is just like killing the cow that gave you milk to eat the meat, then you have no milk.

I am astonished that you have overlooked the obvious solution!

It's so simple:

Start a company
Hire everybody
100% employment achieved
Market perfected

And yet, instead of saving the U.S. economy, by this easy method, you persist in merely complaining to Orbiter-Forum members. Please explain your reticence.
 
US job losses surge in November
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7767326.stmCompanies do not understand.
If all companies cut a 10% of employees, unemployment will be at least 10%.
It means 10% less of market and smaller economic size of market.
It means destruction of the market.

No, it doesn't work like that.

Not at all.

Jobs are cut because they are not profitable--in other words, more money is spent on the employee and the capital and other inputs he uses, than is made by selling whatever the employee produces.

Clearly, this is unsustainable behavior. The presence of the job, in this case, is a net loss to the economy that, in some cases, can only be corrected by eliminating it altogether.


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And all this due to the absolute idiocy of subprime mortgages.

Did you know that hedge funds in the UK were still making money out of the tumbling stock market? There are talks to make short selling illegal now.

Not smart.

In the long term, short-selling provides an important check against fraudulent accounting practices that works in concert with regulatory checks (which by their nature are generally reactive, rather than proactive, measures) to help ensure that market values reflect the actual worth of a firm--as well as securities that may be overpriced by the market for other reasons unrelated to fraud on the part of the firm.
 
One less poor is one more customer.
A bigger market is better than a smaller market.
People are the market and market is funded with salaries of people

I wonder what is more efficient to produce jobs... to directly pay new employees, or let government to do it while it spends a percentage of such taxpayer money in administrative expenses.

If neither option works, then market will shrink and no one will stop that fall.

You are seeing profit as the corner stone of US economy. But companies need customers with buying power. Less people with jobs means a smaller market that reduce profit.

So for every employee that is fired, supply-demand curve pushes salaries lower and that not only reduces the amount of customers, but also the economical size of market a gradient caused by supply-demand elasticity. So for every job you cut, other companies and US citizens will pay the price in reduced market and reduced profit. It becomes a "what was first, chicken or egg" dilemma.
 
No, no, no.

You're taking a shortcut through reason here.

Would you agree that if consumption is not backed up by an equal or greater amount of production, eventually everything will run dry?
 
Let's say you have 10 people, making $1000 a month and the spend all the money.
The whole size of your market is $10,000.
One of them is fired.
The whole size of the market is $9,000.
But due to fear of unemployment, people start to save money, and instead of $1000 that spend $900, so the overall size of the market is $8,100.

In such environment 2 things could happen:
1.People buy the same amount of items, but prices are forced down (deflation) because of reduced economic size of market (reduced liquidity).
2.People buy less items, forcing a reduction of production.

With job cuts not only the economic size of market is being reduced because of jobs that have been lost, but also production, as people with fear unemployment and buy less items.

Let's say that people have been buying stuff with credit card in the past, so today they need to pay $50 per individual to the bank as interests. It means a reduction of $450, so instead of $8,100 you have a market that is worth $7,650. So the artificial inflation caused by credit cards will be reflected as deflation and/or less items being consumed in the future.

Lowering interest rates encourages people to use credit cards, creating artificial inflation today, and forcing a future deflation and future job cuts tomorrow. In other words, Bush administration is procrastinating the disaster of deflation and more job cuts. That's in my opinion why why Obama said it is going to get worse before it gets better.

The more job cuts, the more pressure is added to the consumer to reduce monthly consumption, reducing the amount of money being spent and the amount of items being sold.
 
Let's say you have 10 people, making $1000 a month and the spend all the money.
The whole size of your market is $10,000.
One of them is fired.
[...]
The more job cuts, the more pressure is added to the consumer to reduce monthly consumption, reducing the amount of money being spent and the amount of items being sold.
Well there are some problems with your model. I can't quite justify its Ceteris Paribus either.

There's an instability in your logic there. Spending goes down to $7,650 so there's enough rationale to fire a second person, dropping it to ~$6,900. Then everyone still working gets their hourly time reduced, further reducing their salaries, which reduces the time they work which reduces their salaries. etc.

The problem is its important to consider the bank as part of the economy, otherwise both the savings and interest payments are reducing the economy by ~10% at every iteration.

Another stable solution is that production and prices remain at a certain constant level and excess goods pile up in the stores and excess money piles up in the bank(production constant, consumption is not). If savings is continued and both prices and salaries are reduced (production and consumption constant), this is not stable as a larger amount of the money supply gets banked.

So the money in the bank has to go somewhere, and banks don't earn interest magically, they have to make loans. Either the company could take a loan and invest it directly into meeting its short term production costs (or changing some aspect about its production, we'll ignore it as it violates Ceteris Paribus) or an unemployed worker could take a loan to meet his consumption requirements. If all workers are equal it would be possible to rotate the unemployed worker and nobody's debt or bank account would pile up.
 
Well there are some problems with your model. I can't quite justify its Ceteris Paribus either.

There's an instability in your logic there. Spending goes down to $7,650 so there's enough rationale to fire a second person, dropping it to ~$6,900. Then everyone still working gets their hourly time reduced, further reducing their salaries, which reduces the time they work which reduces their salaries. etc.

The problem is its important to consider the bank as part of the economy, otherwise both the savings and interest payments are reducing the economy by ~10% at every iteration.

Yes, it is part of the economy, but some of the money will not reach the consumer or may reach him after a series of iterations and transactions that slow down the flow of money until it reaches consumer, which is the equivalent of liquidity reduction for the economy.

Such credit money may become dividends paid to shareholders (rich people may not spend the money in your country, and if they do, they will not pay consumers directly, but he would pay people who will pay employees after some time).

Such credit might be invested somewhere, it may be used in multiple ways that slow down flow of money.

So what I did here is a simplification of the reduction of liquidity, caused by banks.

Another stable solution is that production and prices remain at a certain constant level and excess goods pile up in the stores and excess money piles up in the bank(production constant, consumption is not). If savings is continued and both prices and salaries are reduced (production and consumption constant), this is not stable as a larger amount of the money supply gets banked.

In theory it sounds good, but keeping inventory means financial cost of opportunity, and goods could get deteriorated, and also you have costs for just keeping them (warehouse costs, handling costs, refrigeration, heating, air conditioning, etc). Somebody will have to pay for this.

So the money in the bank has to go somewhere, and banks don't earn interest magically, they have to make loans. Either the company could take a loan and invest it directly into meeting its short term production costs (or changing some aspect about its production, we'll ignore it as it violates Ceteris Paribus) or an unemployed worker could take a loan to meet his consumption requirements. If all workers are equal it would be possible to rotate the unemployed worker and nobody's debt or bank account would pile up.

Yes, they make loans. I worked for a bank. Bank services are always designed to make you lose. It is like a casino. With their financial games they always win with every move.

If you put their money there, they will invest it and they will gain higher profitability with investments than the interest that is paid to you. Some banks pay you an interest that is lower than the sum of devaluation and inflation, so indeed your money is losing value and they make money with your gap.

With credit it works this way. Someone puts his savings in your bank, lets say you pay 1% interest rate. You lend money with a 3% interest rate, and then you won 2% out of nothing. Some lending comissions, legal fees and some extra costs are paid by customer. That 2%+ is your profit, while your administrative costs are reduced as you increase the scale of the operation.

Another trick is to design products that collect interests over interests. For example, you have a credit card in your bank. Commerce pay 7% of their revenue to you for the sole fact of having customers using your card in their transactions. It is evidently being paid by the customer.

As customer find a very expensive good, bank decided to create a certain type of "loan" using credit card, so you buy the good, and the payments of that loan (which already has interests) is charged to your credit card. If you get delayed in paying your credit card, it will collect interest on the payment that already include interests.

I learned something. Banks never lose. You do. They design things so you lose, and you can't possibly win.

Banks are known for taking money out of economy, like a leech, and as money does not turn so fast into salaries, they reduce liquidity.
 
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