US economy set to explode?
 

This years ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) weekly index showed its fastest growth in 20 years.

"It is unambiguous the economy is going to recover" said ECRI director Lakshman Achuthan.

US economy set to roar?

Find out who runs that Think Tank/special interest group and you'll have all the answers you need.

I'm no expert on economics, but I can't help but be skeptical at the moment.

Heard there will be a "boom" in luxury units....

http://www.roaringbranch.com/images/porch.jpg


:Graucho

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

The US economy is gonna explode alright..

http://www.dalitstan.org/journal/images/nuclear1.jpg

The ECRI WLI is an index designed in the mid 1960's. It has an excellent record of forecasting economic turnarounds both locally and abroad. There areother leading economic indicator indexes showing strong signs too. The Conference Board's "Index of Leading Economic Indicators" is another.

Other than your personal hopes and wishes, why would you expect anything different? The last US recession ended almost two years ago now (November, 2001). I believe it was the weakest recession on record. 2002 was about an average year both for GDP growth (>3%) and unemployment (long term average is 6%).

A very weak recession followed by an average year and then a surge in the leading economic indicators as the economy gets rolling again. Pretty normal stuff.

Those numbers don't mean dick, Colin. Any economic expansion we have right now is nothing more than another false boom provided to us courtesy of the Fed's monetary expansion. You can't create wealth by creating money out of thin air and pumping it into the economy.

In the short run, you'll get a false boom. Right after that, you'll get a nice bust. We haven't even bled all the bad money out of the economy from the 95-99 expansion we had.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, go to: this link, and look at the money stock since 1995.

Here's the graph:

http://askbuff.com/money.gif

That's a recipe for disaster.

almost got an erection

i read USA to explode

:glugglug

even if it does, any terrorist activities will send ur markets down.

ECRI Website :thumbsup

I actually spoke with Lakshman about the time they were 'calling' the 2001 recession. Everyone else was calling for continued growth or 'recession lite'.

Things are definitely looking good for 6 months or so down the road.

What you're saying is not born out by the numbers you showed me. In fact, just the opposite.

Consider the July 1990-March 1991 contraction. The annual change in MZM was ACCELERATING throughout the entire recession and continued to increase until 1994 as the economy was gaining steam.

Year MZM
1990 +3.7%
1991 +6%
1992 +10.5%
1993 +11.2%

For that matter, the MZM increased 15% during the 1981/1982 recession, a recession that lasted 16 months. In the 16 months after the recession the MZM exploded another 25% as the recovery was under way.

i hope you're right. that would be great.

however, i have seen plenty of other analysis that seems to indicate that we're just at the beginning of some nasty economic shit coming down the road.

i'm hoping for the best and planning for the worst.

take it easy,
eatapeach

Check out the supermarket tabloids. The next depression is always right around the corner. Every decade has it's share of sensationalistic books with titles like"How to Survive the Coming Bad Times" and "The Coming Economic Earthquake".

Recessions were much more frequent and much deeper in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The late 20th century has been rather smooth.

:thumbsup

more informed ppl will mean more informed decisions


hahahahahahahah

that's not nice, colin. i'd never presume the depth of your knowledge was from tabloids, why do that to me?

anyway, that being said, a good source of financial information that isn't being hyped like cable financial shows or some guy trying to sell you stocks is http://www.financialsense.com/index.htm

HaHa. ;-) No, I wasn't saying that at all. I apologize if I gave that impression. I'm just saying that there is a general fear people seem to have about the economy in all times.

Just consider last year. It was a very average sort of year. Average GDP growth, average unemployment. Yet some people made it sound like the end of the world was coming. Even now, some people think there is a US recession and yet there hasn't been since late 2001.

Be more accurate to say it was accelerating coming out of the recession.

i keep waiting for the end of the united states, but it never comes. every year it's the end, everyone says the country will implode and become a 3rd world state, and it never happens. probably has something to do with the stubborn nature of americans to keep on moving. every time i talk to someone supposedly in the financial know that the US is going to crash soon. i've been waiting for this crash for years now.

i've also been waiting for that big earthquake that's going to happen. i think it was supposed to happen a few years back, never did. it was supposed to turn western nebraska into beachfront property. and my grandparents have the earthquake insurance to prevent a loss. :warning

Colin, it takes time for the effects of monetary policy to take effect.

Wait and see what happens.

The value of our money is gonna plummet, interest rates are gonna skyrocket, regardless of what the fed does. Unemployment is gonna spike up.

When was the last time the US economy had zero, or near zero, growth???

:1orglaugh

This is not an ordinary recession. I know a welder who has been unemployed for over a year. He is not counted in the stats, like other long term unemployed.

A programmer I laid off 2 years ago is still unemployed. He does small contract jobs for a fraction of his old pay, I don't consider that "employed."

A webmaster I laid off 2 years ago just now is making enough money to pay his bills, but he's still 6 months behind on his mortgage. That's employed, but hurting.

I think we're seeing a Fed induced economic bubble. The Fed is pumping money into the economy so that the economy will appear to be gaining during the elections. Right after that, if not before, I bet it will all collapse again, because the Fed just doesn't have the muscle to keep it going.

It is my understanding that the government considers anyone that is working 20 hours per week as being among the employed...and if this is true...it skews the unemployed figures...in my opinion.

yeah, the jobs are hard to come by right now. i have a friend of mine that's rather disillusioned pretty bad. she's going to college, but she thinks because of her degree she's going to get an awesome job and be rich. she's got about a year left, and hasn't even started looking for work. but, daddy pays for everything, and has agreed to get her an apartment in nyc after she graduates. good luck to her, she has no exp. in the real world, and doesn't understand it takes a lot more than a college degree to be successful in life :(

A friend that I made when I was attending college...had a Political Science major. I bumped into him years later and he was an RN...I asked him why he was working as a nurse...he said that he had to go back to college and get a Degree in something that he could earn a living at. Moral of the story...it all depends upon what one gets a Degree in.

Well holy shit, someone else gets it!

There is no recession. What recession? What are you talking about?

Why would the FED care about elections? The FED is an independent branch of government. By design it makes it's decisions independently of the executive branch of government.

well..a recession is defined as 2 consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth

It's difficult to put any faith into the predictions of an economist, but let's hope this one comes to fruition.

"negative" growth? When was the last time there was "negative" growth...if you know...or someone else knows?

Who cares about the definition. My friends are losing jobs left and right and the 'unofficial' unemployment rate is more like 20% than the 6.x% the 'official' rate.

Unless this trend reverses there will be explosions allright.

why don't you explain this to the 8% unemployed here in Miami?

If this is not a recession -don't care what the books say- it must be an expansion where all jobs go to the Philipines/India and China?

OK. So if the unemployment rate is 4% - about the best it has ever been - and you know 200 people, you will tell me the story of your 8 unemployed friends. If it is 6%, you'll tell me about your 12 unemployed friends. No matter what, you will be able to story about your handfulof friends that are unemployed. That's the problem with personal stories like this. Everyone always knows someone unemployed. That's why statistics are more important than personal stories.

I don't know a single unemployed person AND July, 2003 was a record month for Pleasure Labs. There's MY story.

20%?! Are 20% of the people you know unemployed? I don't know a single unemployed person.

I seriously hope you don't count the 10s of millions of people on the Federal and State and local government payrolls as employed, Colin -- they're glorified welfare recipients.

The underlying economy is nothing close to what you think it is. There is a disaster looming and nothing short of electing Libertarians to every office is going to help at all.

Figures like these are manipulated

We lost a half a million jobs last year.
Unemployment has surged to it's highest point in almost a decade.
Interest rates are going backup.
Consumer confidence is still WAY down (latest poll just released).
We were supposed to MAKE 10,000 new jobs last month, but instead, lost over 20,000.
The number of people below the "poverty line" continues to increase at a dramatic pace.
Many economists are saying we could drop into a "double dip" recession this year.
Many middle income folks have practically been wiped out of their life savings from the slump in the stock market.
Our deficit has ballooned to the largest ever!

And you call this an "average" year? Or that last year was even an "average" year?

The economy is still in the toliet and there are no consistent credible signs of any turn around in fiscal 2003.

Yes, but Halliburton is doing better than ever!

And GDP is the highest it's ever been too. That's why you have to look at economic numbers like unemployment relative to the full size of the economy and not by themselves. Population grows, you know. ;-)

The average unemployment rate since 1970 is 6.0%. It's about that right now.

Average GDP growth the past year, average unemployment, very low inflation.

Clinton bashers said the economic figures were manipulated during his administration to make them look better than they were. Bush bashers say the same thing.

It's all relative.

Unemployment rate is about 6%. If it's 8% in Miami it is lower than 6% somewhere else or else it couldn't average to 6%. What's your question? Why is the rate higher in some places and lower in others? I think you can figure that out.

also, you have to realize that productivity gains lead to unemployment.

in the book "The End Of Work" by Jeremy Rifkin he details how computers and machines that make production more efficient invariably lead to higher unemployment. unless new or growing industries require workers and employs the unemployed these numbers only grow.

also, some statistics to think about:

US Average Unemployment by decade:

1950s - 4.5%
1960s - 4.8%
1970s - 6.2%
1980s - 7.3%
1990 - 1993 - 6.6%

these figures show that the current situation is not an abnormal amount of unemployed.

one thing about the current numbers is how the bush administration is constantly revising the numbers downward through manipulation of the methodology of the count.

if the methodology for counting the unemployed in the past was used today the percentage would be much higher.

like what....like this?



:1orglaugh http://xxx.ixadv.com/src_sh.gif

how did you get that screenshot of my stats?

that was my best day ever! :tongue:

BOOM!

Are you asking me if I am counting government employees in my evaluation that 2002 was a basically average year? Seems like a silly question.

Has there been a surge relative to the entire workforce in government employment or are you just stating your philosophical preference?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think it's a STRONG economy. I think it's average - even a little below average (but within a standard deviation) with a high probability of being better in the mid-term.

Take away the government spending (deficit) and we would have been in a recession this year.

That is the name of the game though. Keynes again ;-)