The Nation's Financial Condition

[youthathletics]

You are really searching the bottom of the barrel . Of course the numbers are slowing, we are damned near at max capacity. Best in 50 years. It's really unfortunate that you can't find anything positive to say.

I guess you are also upset that more women have been hired over men under Trump and wages are rising. But hey, Trump tweets too much.

[Trinity]

We are nowhere near max capacity. Want to see max capacity? Let’s build some new roads, bridges and airports. Let’s firm up our cyber defenses. Trump can sign his name to it.

Meanwhile, Farm loan delinquencies are at a record high at Wisconsin community banks. Delinquencies have more than doubled in Wisconsin since January 2017 and are higher than in any of the top 10 farm states.

[youthathletics]

Stay on topic, the job employment % numbers look fabulous, employment by race and gender are better than ever, more money in overall pay, we are spending (both sides love spending btw). Speed Kills...stay optimistic and not so darned negative. Turn that frown upside down.

[MDlaxfan76]

This is a tale of two cities.

We have a terrific service and high tech economy in which well educated, particularly urban/suburban educated, workers are thriving but less educated workers remain left behind, whether urban or rural.

youth,
We're no where near 'max capacity'.

If so, why all the stress over a path to citizenship and opening up the spigot for workers from abroad?

Putting that potential growth driver aside, we remain at historically poor participation rates, and even these are bolstered/masked by wage stagnation and underemployment (two jobs, Uber, etc). Large swaths of workers have given up on finding employment comparable to their prior jobs and earnings.

Unfortunately, whatever the best hopes might have been for tariffs (assuming they were ever intended to have a positive effect), the trade war is having the opposite of a positive effect on the economy, especially for those otherwise already left behind. It's an enormous tax on American consumers and retaliation is badly damaging producers in all sorts of sectors.

The coming economic slowdown was easily predicted. Instead of investing in infrastructure that has long term economic efficiency and competitiveness benefits and shorter term blue collar employment growth, the current Administration chose to to deliver a tax cut benefiting the upper income folks the most and producing a temporary sugar high stimulus. And, in parallel instigating a trade war with both allies and strategic competitors, totally disrupting worldwide confidence in stability of trading systems. Add to that the total disruption in confidence in America's continued international leadership, indeed even mental stability of the world's most powerful leader, and it's been a heck of recipe for a global turndown. We're far from immune, though our stock market is currently benefiting from global capital flight from other markets in greater distress than we are.

This is a lose-lose-lose formula.

[a fan]

Stay on topic, the job employment % numbers look fabulous, employment by race and gender are better than ever, more money in overall pay, we are spending (both sides love spending btw). Speed Kills...stay optimistic and not so darned negative. Turn that frown upside down.

Remember the workforce participation rates that FoxNation hammered Obama for 8 years?

Wanna guess where that number is?

[Trinity]

20 thousand of the jobs are temporary census workers. June and July numbers revised down. The Obama recovery was gonna peter out some time.

[a fan]

Stay on topic, the job employment % numbers look fabulous, employment by race and gender are better than ever, more money in overall pay, we are spending (both sides love spending btw). Speed Kills...stay optimistic and not so darned negative. Turn that frown upside down.

Where was this attitude during the Obama recovery?

[CU88]

Stay on topic, the job employment % numbers look fabulous, employment by race and gender are better than ever, more money in overall pay, we are spending (both sides love spending btw). Speed Kills...stay optimistic and not so darned negative. Turn that frown upside down.

Now the r's are calling for everyone to display some of that old fashion "Irrational exuberance”!

BUY BUY BUY

[youthathletics]

Stay on topic, the job employment % numbers look fabulous, employment by race and gender are better than ever, more money in overall pay, we are spending (both sides love spending btw). Speed Kills...stay optimistic and not so darned negative. Turn that frown upside down.

Where was this attitude during the Obama recovery?

I am on record, a few times I may add, acknowledging that BHO's unemployment trend line was moving in the right direction quite a few times.

[a fan]

Fair enough.

[HooDat]

youth,
We're no where near 'max capacity'.

thank you increased minimum wage....

Want to see max capacity? Let’s build some new roads, bridges and airports. Let’s firm up our cyber defenses. Trump can sign his name to it.

I really can't believe he has missed this idea. Like all the great populists and back-country "emperors" before him (Huey Long comes to mind) - he is missing his change for the Trump High Speed Railway, the Trump Cross-Country Highway, His name on every bridge in every state....

someone whisper THAT in his ear and see how quickly we get some infrastructure investment....

[a fan]

Brilliant. That would totally work.

He has to do that bill fairly soon to keep the party going.

[MDlaxfan76]

Stay on topic, the job employment % numbers look fabulous, employment by race and gender are better than ever, more money in overall pay, we are spending (both sides love spending btw). Speed Kills...stay optimistic and not so darned negative. Turn that frown upside down.

Remember the workforce participation rates that FoxNation hammered Obama for 8 years?

Wanna guess where that number is?

Roughly 63%.

[HooDat]

One thing to keep an eye on is the manner of participation as well. Under the Obama recovery, (and we were recovering, and still in the recovery) the participation rate was ticking up, but people were working but were UNDER employed. I think the uptick in consumer confidence we seem to be experiencing is because people are in jobs that better match their experience/skill level.

That mismatch between qualification and job is a BIG part of why Trump beat Hillary.

[HooDat]

Great article worth a read:https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... servative/

But Packard was no communist, nor was he a gross hypocrite. He did not exhort people to leave their Levittown homes and boat-sized automobiles behind and go live in the wilderness, nor did he ever appear to have any real sympathies for the Soviet system of central planning. He simply noticed that people were replacing instead of repairing, and buying two when one would do, all on money they didn’t have thanks to the exploding consumer credit market. Much of the criticism directed his way seems to have been a case of projection; was it not the consumerists who were the revolutionaries, remaking American life and the American economy overnight? It was Packard who wondered whether we shouldn’t talk about this first. He was a conservative in the temperamental sense, in the sense that he believed the status quo deserved the benefit of the doubt.

[Farfromgeneva]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/budget- ... years.html

[foreverlax]

The legacy of RR's party, especially the recent crop of the "Tea Party Caucus", will forever be labeled as hypocrites they are...

[Farfromgeneva]

Anyone paying attention to the repo market issues lately? This is a huge deal. This afternoons FOMC statement could be very interesting but the fact that the Fed has had to inject liquidity into the markets this week is not good at all.

This is non partisan and everyone should be concerned with where we are heading with the fiscal side. Another tax cut, the last one was bad but so were things like cash for clunkers, TALF, etc, will crush our health as the fiat currency of the world worse than anything else our president can do that would be harmful.

[Trinity]

They don’t care.

[Farfromgeneva]

7-3 vote to cut a quarter, that’s significant dissent.

Anyone who’s an isolationist or xenophobic should want our full faith and credit to be supreme, not that I want to be either but like our status and don’t get why these clowns believe otherwise