Arkansas Blog

Recessions are determined by several things. Obviously, ArkRed is in favor of making the call using the Index of Leading Economic Indicators. So, keeping that in mind, here are all 10:

The 10 components of the Index include:

Average weekly hours worked by manufacturing workers
Average number of initial applications for unemployment insurance
Number of manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials
Speed of delivery of new merchandise to vendors from suppliers
Amount of new orders for capital goods unrelated to defense
Amount of new building permits for residential buildings
The S&P 500 stock index
Inflation-adjusted monetary supply (M2)
Spread between long and short interest rates (the yield curve)
Consumer sentiment

It's gonna be a hard sell to suggest that a 0.6% increase in GDP is a clear sign that the recession is over....

Red and the Bushies can crow all they want, but any person who can remember yesterday knows that in about a month the Commerce Department will 'revise down' the numbers in this report. So, it's all a bunch of lies to feed the gullible, including the media who dutifully report it as if it were true.

I've never been so proud.

"never been so proud"?

President Poo-for-brains has not YET killed the US economy but it is critical and the only idea they have is a political vote buying stimulis.

Why has no one I have seen calls this "send every voter $600 bucks" a blatant bribe by the White House?

I guess the American citizens will get their little check and forget that the rich got Trillions and the working man gets $600.

Keep the dang money and pay off the debt. That will strengthen the dollar so that we don't get "saved" from a recession by the fact that the US becomes a low wage (comparative to other countries).

An upside of a weak dollar is we can sell more crap overseas and we are unable to buy from overseas so we do end up with higher employment in the US.

Actually, its a bipartisan bribe. In fact, Pelosi want to send more money.

Speaking of Pelosi, on April 24, 2006, she said that "Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices".

I think it would be nice to see some of that plan unveiled, if one actually exists.

Don't forget, Citizen, that both the White House AND Democrat controlled Congress all leaped over themselves to pass out money as quickly as they could get the money borrowed from China. Nobody's watching the stove in Washington. Yet, we continue to borrow and spend like sailors on get-away night. Meanwhile, we go past the 9 trillion debt marker...I'd rather we cut spending across the board, not cut taxes and tell everyone to start living under their means and not expecting Uncle Sugar to bail you out of that house you knew you couldn't afford if the interest rates went up. I knew I couldn't so I locked in. But I get to help pay for others who didn't? Thanks but could I at least get a dance with that?

"While the GDP reading raises questions about the common belief that the economy is already in recession, there is still a chance the number could be revised lower in future readings."

Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said without the strong exports, GDP would have fallen.

"We cannot and should not sugarcoat this number," he said. "It's not a healthy number in terms of the U.S. business cycle. [[The domestic economy actually shrank.]] Exports are just not that central to the U.S. economy."

"The idea that you must have two negative quarters of GDP to have a recession is completely wrong," he said. "By that measure there was no recession in 2001 when we lost millions of jobs and half the value of the stock market. No one denies there was a recession then."

brackets added for emphasis.
all of the above was taken from the article linked by Arkansas Red. proud A-Student of economics.

Neither party has any interest in a balanced budget. The only difference is the spending priorities.

We need a balanced budget amendment because our politicians don't have the backbone to balance taxes and spending. Both Democrat presidential candidates are promising massive new social programs. John McCain will fight against earmarks, but he has said that lowering taxes is more important than balancing the budget right now. When exactly will it be a good time to start balancing the budget - after we've turned Massachussets and South Dakota over to the Chinese?

If George Bush had been forced to raise revenues to pay for the war in Iraq, he might have had second thoughts, particularly if he had to sell a massive tax increase. Congress might not have been so quick to authorize the war, had they been forced to pay for it out of existing revenues or raise taxes. Countries in the European Union are forced to have balanced budgets.

Politicians have considerable pressure to spend money, but there is no pressure to control spending.

As for high gasoline prices, that's exactly what you libs had wanted. Back when gas was cheap, you libs lamented that it was unfair that we paid so little when those in Europe were paying $4 a gallon for gas. You got your wish, why are you complaining.

Nice points, Severus.

Things could be worse. If Al Gore had gotten elected, a gallon of gas would cost six or seven dollars today.

I am more appalled by the day!! We have an idiot in the White House that is spending us into bankrupcy with a war that should have never been declared...and a Congress that is apparently looking out for everyone except the American people.
Gas is approaching 4.00 per gallon and Congress mandated that by 2015 all cars sould get 31 miles to the gallon! That should have been the mandate in 2005!!
Sure, the Europeans have paid a hefty price for gas for years, but look at their public transportation systems, what do we have in the U.S. except for some of the larger cities in the NE and Midwest?? NOTHING..and nothing on th drawing boards.
I remember my Mother telling me about train travel during WW II, every little town in Ar. was connected, you could get any where. What happened? We subsidize the airlines now, and they are in as bad a shape as the rest of us............pretty soon the average guy won't be able to afford a ticket to Dallas!
I'm disgusted!

70% nails it.. Nothing Bushco reports ever reflects the truth.. The GOP Shock Doctors never sleep.

Inside - I don't know of anything beyond discussion in DC of bailing out folks with mortgage problems.. It's the paper pushing scheming millionaire / billionaire lenders who are laughing all the way to their swiss banks with Fed bailout help, again.

There are a number of options congress could choose to enact to help out folks with rising rates which wouldn't cost more than rewriting the language of the loans. But the sharks wont do it unless they are told to do so.

Severus may need a bib for all the "you lib" drool running down his chin as he makes up nasty lib porn out of thin air this morning.

If the liberals you sneer about had their way during the Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton DLC years, taxes on oil would have been raised in order to change our failed ways and avoid the urge to obliterate countries for oil in the future. Now we have murdered millions more, found ourselves about 13 trillion behind (9 to 11 trillion in debt) and with no plan to change our failed ways. Planning ahead for the common good is more foreign to the American GOPer-fascists than speaking Mandarin, I know.

Whether it's karma or the pearly gates, when that time comes, buddy.. it's the blood for oil on your hands, not mine, which you will have to answer for.

Carter was right.. Clinton and Reagan Bushies sold out, to put it nicely.

"Things could be worse. If Al Gore had gotten elected, a gallon of gas would cost six or seven dollars today."--Arkansas Blogger

Ha...says you. If the Supreme Court hadn't chosen Monkeyboy and Gore had taken his rightful place, we wouldn't be fighting a based-on-lies war in Iraq, Afghanistan would be a much more stable country and the economy wouldn't have tanked 'cause Gore would've continued most of Bill Clinton's economic policies...nice things, like a balanced budget. And while we're dreaming...Haliburton wouldn't have been allowed to rape our treasury unscathed, we'd be much closer to universal healthcare, the world wouldn't think our prez is a moron...and us morons for allowing the idiot into the White House, our government would be allowed to negotiate, like every other country, with the pharmaceuticals for REASONABLE drug prices, our environment would be better and on and on...it's nice to dream.

In just one year. Remember the election in 2006?
Thought you might like to read the following:
A little over one year ago:

1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%.

Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen:

1) Consumer confidence plummet;
2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon;
3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase);
4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate (stock and mutual fund losses);
5) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars;
6) 1% of American homes are in foreclosure .

America voted for change in 2006, and we got it!

Rember it's Congress that makes law not the President. He has to work with what's handed to him.

Quote of the Day........"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."
-- Barack Obama

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this:

Boy, am I confused; I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us. I now find that to be RIDICULOUS.

I have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts.

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to
illegal aliens each year by state governments.

Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance
programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for
illegal aliens.
Verify at:
http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and
secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify at:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for
the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
&sp; Verify at
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
Verify at:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
Verify at:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.

Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html/
SPAN>

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.

Verify at:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
Veri fy at:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.

Verify at:
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
Verify at: http://www.ren se.com/general75/niht.htm

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States."
Verify at: http://www.drdsk .com/articleshtml

The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.

Are we THAT stupid?

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain.

>>Meanwhile, we go past the 9 trillion debt marker..<<<

Our national debt is much more than that. The Social Security Trust Fund holds indebtedness of $15 Trillion or more. Currently, contributions to Social Security exceed the amounts of disbursements,
so benefits or disbursements are said to be "solvent" at present.
FIVE presidents (two Demos and Three Republics) have not had the balls to veto spending bills which count Soc.Secur. Contributions as General Fund revenues.

Kennedy/Johnson set up the original theft.
.

Since voting in a Neo-Con government in 2000 we have seen:

Huge deficits, the largest in the history of the U.S.A.

What makes oil and other imports so expensive..deficits which weaken the USD.

Here's a chart for how long it took the Neo Cons to destroy an economy. click on name.

(With regrets to Billary who cannot fathom that it requires more than 13 months to bankrupt what was once a strong economy. You can fool some of the people all of the time, All of the people part of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time).
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"Chakib Khelil does not rule out oil prices reaching $200 a barrel, even though supply is adequate, because the market is driven by the DOLLAR'S slide, Algerian government newspaper El Moudjahid reported on Monday.

"Questioned about a possible rise which would go to $200, the minister did not rule out this eventuality, explaining that this rise is indexed from now on to the FALL IN THE DOLLAR or to the rise in the dollar," El Moudjahid reported.

Khelil, a former World Bank official, is also Algeria's Minister of Energy and Mines.
He added: "The prices are high due to the fact of the recession in the United STates and the economic crisis which has touched several countries, a situation which has an effect on the devaluation of the dollar, and therefore each time the dollar falls one percent, the price of the barrel rises by $4, and of course vice versa," he was quoted as saying in brief remarks to journalists on Sunday.

He added that: "If this (the dollar) strengthens by 10 percent, it is probable that (oil) prices will fall by 40 percent."

Server, this is one AT blogger who fully anticipates gasoline going to $5 gallon or higher and I will rejoice. From that will come alternatives, conservation, car pooling, and if we can get the dinosaurs to turn loose , maybe some mass transportation.

I might learn to love my sporty little number after all.

GOT RICE??????????????

Tough call: Arkansas Red or Warren Buffet?

Call it a hunch, but I'm going with Buffet, who's said on record that not only are we in a recession now, but it will be the most severe recession / depression of our lives.

"Things could be worse. If Al Gore had gotten elected, a gallon of gas would cost six or seven dollars today."

Strange. I recall the pols saying if Saddam had control of the Kuwaiti oil gasoline would probably cost two dollars a gallon. So, up comes Desert Shield and Desert Storm to keep the price from reaching "outrageous" prices. Ho hum.

We are not yet technically in a recession because quarterly GDP has not yet receded. Some say you need two quarters of receding GDP, but you definitely need at least one. So far we haven't had that, BUT I suspect that this quarter we are in right now will show receding GDP but we wont' know that for 3 months.

Even if we are lucky and this recession is not severe, the next one will be. Unless we get our financial house in order, we are headed for a depression. We can argue about how to do it, but we have got to stop spending more than we have. This not only goes for the government but also for consumers.

The Bush tax cuts (without spending cuts) were a disastrous mistake. Since Bush came into office, the national debt has almost doubled. There has never been a more irresponsible US President in history. The congress has been an enabler to his failed leadership too. Both Democrats and Republicans are promising/giving voters what they want and not forcing them to pay for it.

If that doesn't stop very soon our economy will collapse, and I personally think it's too late. I think within the next two years we will at the very least see the worst recession since the great depression, and that's if we are lucky. A total collapse of the US and world economy is very possible if things don't change very soon.

An economist on NPR (SORRY - no name, was around 12:40 I think) said regarding "not technically" a R=word: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck; we are in a recession." He had 3 measures: housing, credit and consumer (durable goods, I think) spending - all down.\|

In know Warren Buffet is not stupid enough to believe figures which pour out of the Bushit Controlled Federal Bureaucracy. When Clinton took office there was way more debt than reported and numbers on our economy had been doctored all to hell.
.

Americans are used to thinking of their country as the most successful on Earth. That's no longer the case: The European Union has grown to become the third-largest governing institution in the world. Though its land mass is half the size of the continental United States, its $10.5-trillion (U.S.) gross domestic product now eclipses the U.S. GDP, making it the world's largest economy. The EU is already the world's leading exporter and largest internal trading market. Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European; only 50 are U.S. companies."
Tuesday, August 17, 2004 by the Globe and Mail / Canada

Isn't it a shame what mass-fear can do to a nation.

.

Dick Cheney agrees with Ark Red. Not

"The Vice-President, meanwhile, is making a big bet on a decline in the dollar and a pickup in inflation - just as he was in 2005 (See Are Dick Cheney's Money Managers Betting on Bad News?). He owns between $5 million and $25 million in American Century International Bond fund, which will benefit handsomely from a continued fall in the value of the greenback.

blue name

Happy Days if we can pull out a Dem win in nov.
Please click and read what LBJ did after hurricane Betsy and compare it to what idiot did,
did not, do after Katrina.
I will never shut up about the injustice to our Queen City of the South.

If you want to have some grins this weekend stop by your local Dillard's store.

First, start in the furniture/appliance department and ask an associate how business is this month vs. last month and also this year vs. last year. Move on down to the men's department. Now let's distinguish between furnishings and tailored clothing. Now, move around the racetrack to the women's departments and start with cosmetics but note foundations and then work up to the department with designer names. I think Arkansas Red will be rather surprised. Cap the tour off with Missy/juniors and then end the tour in the children's department.

Now, you pretty much know, if men are buying socks and ties(not shirts or suits) and women are buying foundations and cosmetics(not designer dresses) how the food chain in retail works.

And for grins are we seeing any drop off in juniors, young men's and children's. Now, when these areas are down you can pretty much assume that we are in a recession. Seen any Dillard's numbers lately? Red, do your homework this weekend and report back in to me on Monday. Have fun on your store tour.

There are not going to be any "happy days" in this country economically for a long time regardless of which party wins in November. This country has benefited from deficit spending for too long and eventually that has to be paid back. That means major sacrifices (tax increases and/or spending cuts) will have to be made eventually.

It amazes me that anyone would want to preside over this country right now.

Wow, L.Wood, sounds like Europe is doing quite well, and actually has a decent social network such as universal health care in all countries to boot. What is wrong with us that we can't manage that? Could it be the greedy good-for-nothings that pass themselves off as Republicans?

People should think about that. NO ONE goes bankrupt because of health care costs, and yet their economy hums right along.

"Eight in 10 Americans believe the U.S. economy is now in recession, fueling unhappiness with President Bush and boosting Democratic hopes in the presidential race despite the party's divisive primary. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey . . . "

Here's a little clue from one of my old history teachers who was not a fan of economists and statistics.
"Recession . . . Depression . . . Boom . . . Panic . . . Bust are descriptions of how consumers feel not abstruse economists' formulae and statistical guesses."

When 8 in 10 people believe we have a recession, we have a recession and it won't go away until they have confidence in the economy, it's growth and their prospects for the future. If depressions and recessions, were only statistically proven, Hoover would have been at least a two term President. But instead the Republican anti-Christ FDR took a lot of Hoover's recovery programs and helped people begin to believe in a brighter future. By 1939 and 1940 or maybe June of 1938, people started to believe that better times were ahead. War II slammed dunked the unemployment rate to 1.9%, but the depression ended before then.

When 6 in 10 Americans begin to believe tomorrow will be better, we will be in recovery whether the Keynesian or Reganomics nerds are in vogue.

Until then click the handle for my view of the current administration and Bush apologists trying desperately to scratch up stats to cover the sight and smells of abject incompetence and fiscal irresponsibility/irrationality by the administration and the legislature that failed in their oversight duties to curb the incompetence/irresponsibility/irrationality.

Whether or not we are in a recession depends on your definition of a recession. Judging from the comments, definitions of recession are like assholes. Everybody has one.

Everyday it's more depressing. Everyday America sinks lower. We look worse, because we are worse. Our leaders are crooks. Our people lulled into non-thinking sheep status. Take a long look and you'll see a whole country riding the short bus....3 hundred million boxy headed faces smiling awkwardly from under their batters helmet.

We ought to be just about ripe for an invasion. Not in my lifetime has America been spread so thin, been so weak, appears so easily taken over. Or maybe we'll just fall apart without the help of those who hate us. I've been saying cancer, perhaps it's leprosy we're suffering from. We're certainly falling apart. We're divided up so thin that Democrats can't stand each other long enough to share a cup of coffee. Fighting over someone's preacher, bored with the endless war to a degree where we've tuned it out. Being robbed blind in all directions. Not lifting a finger in our own defense.

Rove killed truth and facts. He made honesty a sign of weakness. We elect people who fly away to make their personal fortune while we circle the bowl. Look it....everyone elected, everyone selling us something, everyone we see talking and talking on TV....they are or are getting filthy rich while we waste away. They're willing to go for broke, ride the old horse down and when America fails, they'll jet away and leave us sinking into the ooze. There's nothing patriotic or Godly about that. Our choice of a future is between living in the new USSR or revolution and the ruination that will bring for several generations ahead.

If they don't get the handcuffs on us quick, eventually the American sheeple will rise up and blood will run in the streets. But the way things look right now.....get ready for the cuffs, Cheney-Bush haven't been slowed down a bit. I don't know what their score is, but ours is ZERO. Red and the rest are going to be so surprised when they're chained along side the rest of us in the Bush gulag. The look on their faces will be the only brief happy moment we'll have.

Please clue me in, here, guys. I'm just a helpless pre- or post-menopausal woman (hard to tell, yet) relying on you guys to give me my framework for, uh, living.

The "insights" here aren't really very helpful.

"Judging from the comments, definitions of recession are like assholes. Everybody has one." That's a hot one! Cute, clever, until I realize the line is older than Soupy Sales and dates from Vaudeville days. Says absolutely nothing about anything.

Or, "There's nothing patriotic or Godly about that."

Uh, "Godly?" As in stoning disobedient children to death? Stoning adulterers to death? Stoning to death people who eat shrimp cocktails? Stoning to death men who lie with men . . . as in the entire U.S. Congress and Senate (99% men lying to 100% of Americans)? Stoning to death people who wear polyester?

Oh. You mean "lie" in the Biblical sense. Got it. I'm slow. I'm blonde.

Thankfully, women can lie with other women, as we do daily, gossiping over lunch, and THAT'S nowhere mentioned in the, um, Bible.

Just you horny guys.

But, I mean, seriously. This whole "Godly" reference, so casually bandied about by otherwise rational commentators, has my panties in a wad. Like I'm supposed to know what "Godly" means in any given context?

Says absolutely nothing about anything.

Or, "Here's a little clue from one of my old history teachers who was not a fan of economists and statistics."

Please, guys, 'splain to me how a history teacher isn't a fan of facts! Is he (and you KNOW it's a "he") faith-based? ("Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.")

Says absolutely nothing about anything.

Or, "Remember it's Congress that makes law not the President. He has to work with what's handed to him." Except for THIS President, who's declared himself ABOVE the laws and Congress and the Constitution because he's a, you know, "war time President" who's not at war with a country or a specific enemy but with an "idea": Terrorism. In perpetuity. Unilaterally created to skirt the Constitution (pardon the feminist expression).

So that statement doesn't make any sense either.

Says absolutely nothing about anything.

Or, "I've never been so proud."

Proud of what? The worst American President EVER, according to 99% of polled historians? The tanking economy? The global hostility and ridicule of America under Oh-So-Butch Bush making a "tailhook" landing (unfortunate metaphor) in his outsized codpiece and little flight-suit outfit on the USS Abraham Lincoln flight deck, posing prematurely beneath the "Mission Accomplished" P-R banner just prior to ANOTHER 3,900 troops losing their lives in his phony war against a country that had NOTHING to do with 9/11 and had NO WMDs?

Truly, guys. I need your help.

I need facts, not pseudo-clever meaningless rhetoric.

I need truths, not sloganeering.

I'm just a make-nice woman trying to put food on my family and keep my countertops sparkling clean.

If I don't hear some manly male logic soon on this thread, I may burst into girly tears.

And you KNOW how you hate that, Bubba.