News What are the potential impacts of public confidence on the economy's recovery?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Phrak
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Economic
Click For Summary
The discussion centers on the precarious state of the U.S. economy, emphasizing that restoring public confidence is insufficient for recovery. Critics argue that reliance on cheap credit and government interventions has exacerbated the financial crisis, suggesting that a significant restructuring of the economy is necessary. The conversation highlights the ongoing challenges of rising unemployment, projected to exceed 10%, and the slow pace of economic recovery, with GDP still declining. Various recovery scenarios are debated, including V-shaped, W-shaped, and L-shaped recoveries, with pessimism about the immediate future.The dialogue also touches on the implications of national debt, which is growing rapidly and could lead to a future crisis if not addressed. Participants express skepticism about the effectiveness of government stimulus measures, pointing out that only a fraction of allocated funds have been spent, and stress the need for job creation and productive investments to drive genuine recovery. The discussion reflects a broader concern about the sustainability of economic policies and the potential for long-term consequences stemming from current fiscal practices.
  • #181
Oraltalker said:
http://libertysilver.se/pages.php/page/editorial_090107/language/en

Three parts about What has caused the financial turmoil?

Part 2 will discuss and examine the current and future outlook for inflation or deflation.

Part 3 will investigate how the precious metals market is affected by the financial situation.


Hello Oraltalker, I see this is your first post, welcome to PF. Maybe you'd like to share a little info about your professional experience?

In response to your comments, I think the most important element of your post is the Savings Rate time line.

Take a look at the trend in savings after "Black Monday", Oct. 19, 1987. On that day, the Dow lost about 22%.
http://www.usnews.com/money/business-economy/articles/2007/10/19/the-lessons-of-black-monday.html Also keep in perspective the S&L crisis of the same time period.
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/Historical/s&l/

The Government's response over the next few years was to cut interest rates, a trend that has continued until now. While it fueled growth, it also inadvertently chased cash out of the banks and into the stock market - which also fueled the market recovery.
http://mortgage-x.com/trends.htm

The problem now is that savings rates are low, interest rates are low, the market is low, and housing starts are low - plus unemployment is high, credit card debt is high, and inflation is expected to increase. Next, couple those variables with massive Government stimulus, bank bailouts, auto/union bailouts, increasing health care costs (social security, medicare, and medicaid), and unpredictable energy costs.

The result is that we are in somewhat unfamiliar waters at this time.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #182
Some things to think about.

How bad is the U.S. budget deficit?
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/10/05/am-sloan-q/
Sloan: The first set is the number almost everybody uses -- $1.6 trillion, which will be the official deficit number. And then there's the number I use and a few other agent cranks who care about things. And our number is roughly $2 trillion.

. . . .
Sloan: Well, I think it's really bad. What you're going to start hearing is two sets of things. One of which is going to be: well, as a percentage of the economy, this number is only about half the deficit we had during World War II, so they really don't matter. That's going to be one set. And the other set is going to say: The end of the world is at hand.

Chiotakis: We know what kind of problems go with deficits and high debt. What kind of issues are we likely to confront first with all this though?

Sloan: Well if this doesn't stop -- and I don't think it will -- we're going to discover that the rest of the world is going to want higher interest rates to lend money to the United States than it now is demanding. And a lot of this money that we're paying in interest basically leaves the country as opposed to, say, World War II -- where the deficits as a percent of the economy were much bigger, but we financed them pretty much inside the country so the interest payments that the government was making stayed inside the country and the money was recycled. And now it's going to leave. And that is not a good thing.

Could we have handled the truth?
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/10/05/pm-tarp/

Bob Moon: Where do you draw the line between "break it to me gently," or being intentionally misleading? That's the question raised in an audit released this morning by the government overseer of the federal bailout program. He previously said we're not likely to see all our TARP money again. And now Neil Barofsky says top officials weren't leveling with the public about the health of some of the nation's biggest banks when they pitched their bailout plan last year. Here's Marketplace's Steve Henn in Washington.

. . . .
We hear comparisons of the current economic situation with the Great Depression era, and that's sometimes followed with "we're on our way to recovery". But what's different about then and now?

Well - then the US was a net creditor with a + balance sheet. Europe's and Asia's economies were battered by WWII and the significant economies of many smaller countries were under the control the European colonial power, e.g., England, France, Germany, . . . .

But now the US is a debtor nation - with substantial debt - and little prospects for significant growth (GDP increasing > 3%/a). In addition, the US now has to compete against EU, BRIC and other economies for the same limited resources - and BRIC can provide many of the same products that the US used to provide to the global economy.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #183
Amid the global economic crisis, China rises
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091007/ap_on_bi_ge/as_meltdown_rising_china

BEIJING – The auto-parts maker Delphi Corp. is headquartered in Troy, Mich., in the heart of the region that made the United States the car capital of the world. It's a place where the phrase "buy American" is right at home.

Now the 3,000 employees of Delphi's brake and suspension unit are getting a new boss. Battered by weak sales, Delphi is selling the unit to investors led by a company named Shougang Corp.

Shougang is a steel maker owned by the government of China — a government that calls itself communist but espouses a "socialist market economy" as it marches down globalization's road toward a capitalistic future.

"Everyone's so desperate for cash that the Chinese show up with a checkbook and people say, `Yes, please'," says Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Dragonomics, a Beijing research firm.

Explosive growth in China and India, coupled with Japan's clout as the world's No. 2 economy, has long been expected to shift economic power from the United States to Asia as this century progresses. The financial crisis and resulting Great Recession are accelerating that process.
. . . .
We shall see.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #184
How much is "GM" selling the division to the Chinese for - is it more than the Government guaranteed in (some) pensions and health care benefits?http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574306482334001914.html

http://www.tribtoday.com/page/content.detail/id/518132.html?nav=5003

http://tribtoday.com/page/content.detail/id/527488.html?nav=5021

http://www.business-journal.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=14615&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1711&hn=business-journal&he=.com
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #185
Astronuc said:
Amid the global economic crisis, China rises
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091007/ap_on_bi_ge/as_meltdown_rising_china

We shall see.
The Japanese attempted similar acquisitions here in the 80's. A small golf course close to where I grew up was bought by Japanese investors flush with cash. Turns out they sold it some years later for 1/3 of the purchase price.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #186
mheslep said:
The Japanese attempted similar acquisitions here in the 80's. A small golf course close to where I grew up was bought by Japanese investors flush with cash. Turns out they sold it some years later for 1/3 of the purchase price.

The Japanese also used inflated Tokyo land values to finance US properties - that didn't have sufficient cash flow to cover debt service.
 
  • #187
In Merrill’s Failed Plan, Lessons for Pay Czar
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/in-merrills-failed-plan-lessons-for-pay-czar/

It sounds like something Washington’s pay czar might propose to rein in runaway bonuses on Wall Street, The New York Times’s Louise Story writes. Tie executives’ compensation to their company’s stock price. Withhold big paydays for years. Claw back bonuses if things go wrong. And force risk-loving traders to gamble with their own money, not just their company’s.

In fact, those strictures were part of a compensation plan that Merrill Lynch adopted voluntarily in 2006 — two years before the company collapsed into the arms of Bank of America.

But the Merrill program, which was supposed to align its top employees’ pay with the company’s long-term performance, did not keep workers from taking risks that nearly sank the brokerage giant. And some of its senior executives still stand to collect millions of dollars in stock under the plan.

As the Obama administration’s pay czar, Kenneth R. Feinberg, contemplates curbing compensation for the top 100 executives at each of the seven companies that received big bailouts — including Bank of America — the Merrill experience raises some sobering questions.

. . . .
Financial Time's points out that the drive to reform has slowed, and some regulators are reluctant to take on the financial industry.
 
  • #188
The recovery is working for some, but not others.

Still on the Job, but at Half the Pay
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/business/economy/14income.html

Bonuses Put Goldman in Public Relations Bind
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/107974/bonuses-put-goldman-in-public-relations-bind
. . . .
For Goldman employees, it is almost as if the financial crisis never happened. Only months after paying back billions of taxpayer dollars, Goldman Sachs is on pace to pay annual bonuses that will rival the record payouts that it made in 2007, at the height of the bubble. In the last nine months, the bank set aside about $16.7 billion for compensation — on track to pay each of its 31,700 employees close to $700,000 this year. Top producers are expecting multimillion-dollar paydays.
. . . .
I have a friend who worked at Goldman and survived all but one of the last rounds of layoffs. Even when they were poised to make profits - they let folks go.


Meanwhile - Warren: Housing Market Getting Worse
http://finance.yahoo.com/techticker/article/355866/Warren:-Housing-Market-Getting-Worse
There's been a lot of talk lately about a recovery in the housing market – even reports of bubbles re-inflating in certain markets.

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, isn't buying it.

"We see things getting worse in the housing market," Warren says, citing the pernicious effects of foreclosures, which rose 5% in the third quarter to a total of 937,840, according to RealtyTrac.

"The long-term impact of high foreclosure rates on our housing market and overall economy would be disastrous," Warren warns, citing estimates that 10 to 12 million U.S. homes could ultimately go into foreclosure. "We have to get foreclosures under control."

Why the sense of urgency? A single foreclosure property brings prices down an average of $5000 for every house in a two-block radius and costs investors an average of $120,000, she says.

In its most recent report, Warren's panel criticized the Treasury's foreclosure modification efforts as "inadequate" and "targeted at the housing crisis as it existed six months ago, rather than as it exits right now."

. . . .
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #189
I wonder if sometimes certain talk (talking up or down the equities markets) becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

A Dow Bubble? It Looks Like It
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/business/15bviews.html

. . . .
The Dow broke through 4,000 on Feb. 22, 1995. That was the day Alan R. Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, first hinted at a relaxation of monetary policy. At that time, the American economy was in its fourth year of expansion, and stock prices were 50 percent above their peak before the 1987 crash. Modest optimism prevailed.

So it’s logical to peg 4,000 as an estimate for the Dow’s reasonable level at the time. Inflate that by the increase in nominal gross domestic product in the intervening period, which should be related to company profits and valuations, and assume a 4 percent annual growth rate for nominal G.D.P. in the third quarter this year, and the equivalent reasonable valuation today would be just north of 7,800.
. . . .
Has the economy actually grown in real wealth, or is most of it credit/debt, and if the latter - how much of it cannot be repaid?

At what point does the US economy run out of room to continue adding debt?

The 2009 deficit is estimated at ~ $1.4 trillion, and next year's could be just as bad. States are trying to cut budgets in order to avoid deficits, and apparently counties and municipal governments are experiencing reduced revenue and having to cut back as well. Meanwhile, states, counties, and municipal govts want some of that Federal stimulus money. It would be one thing to borrow the money for investing in something that will provide a return on investment, but it seems to me the stimulus money is mostly going to O&M (operating and maintenance) expenses. And taxpayers want to pay less taxes.

If everyone pays less taxes, who does the debt get repaid - on top of providing services and O&M?
 
Last edited:
  • #190
Astronuc said:
At what point does the US economy run out of room to continue adding debt?
I'd distinguish between the private economy, http://www.bea.gov/BRIEFRM/SAVING.HTM" , not adding, and the federal government which is piling on debt at record rates.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #191
mheslep said:
I'd distinguish between the private economy, http://www.bea.gov/BRIEFRM/SAVING.HTM" , not adding, and the federal government which is piling on debt at record rates.

In the long run these things may not be as separate as they seem.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #192
  • #193
WhoWee said:
Which Dow average are we talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average

A quick look shows that 5 of the 30 companies have been swapped out in 2008 and 2009 - the $10,000 number is meaningless - apples/oranges.
I'm sure they Dow Jones Industrial Average or Dow 30. When a new component is added, it's weighted to match the one replaced. Over course, the media talk about the Dow without considering that over the years, failing companies are removed and replaced with better performing companies in order to better reflect the health of the economy.

I think the part "Inflate that by the increase in nominal gross domestic product in the intervening period, which should be related to company profits and valuations, and assume a 4 percent annual growth rate for nominal G.D.P. in the third quarter this year," is an attempt to put it on less of an apples/oranges basis. I have no idea how rigorous it is, or how objective it is. It's just one person's way of saying the Dow is overvalued - still.
 
  • #194
mheslep said:
I'd distinguish between the private economy, http://www.bea.gov/BRIEFRM/SAVING.HTM" , not adding, and the federal government which is piling on debt at record rates.
But it appears that essentially the private saving is funded by the government debt. In other words, the government is not responsibly taxing at the appropriate rate to cover it's expenses.

On the other the hand I remember hearing that the personal savings rate was actually negative at some time during the last 4 or 5 years.

Why Americans Are Going Broke
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106778
Times are bleak for the U.S. consumer. The average household owes 20 percent more than it makes each year. The personal savings rate is in negative territory. Record numbers of Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure, and millions more are struggling to keep up with their monthly bills and obligations. And the nation's economy isn't in much better shape. The Treasury Department has estimated that, with the added costs of the economic stimulus plan passed by the House of Representatives this week in an effort to avoid a recession, the federal deficit could rise to as much as $400 billion this year.

Then there's this - "The national savings rate -- which includes corporate savings and government budget deficits --"

Certainly the numbers seem to show a savings crisis. Over the past year, the household savings rate has averaged a meager 0.8% of disposable income, the lowest level since the Great Depression. The national savings rate -- which includes corporate savings and government budget deficits -- is only about 13.6% of gross domestic product, also near a postwar low.
(JANUARY 17, 2005) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_03/b3916043_mz011.htm
There is a big discrepancy between household and national savings rates.

In reading the rest of the article, one notes the positive tone -
Rising Asset Prices
So while other countries chide the U.S. for being profligate, Americans are putting more money into the things that matter over the long run. That's reflected in U.S. economic performance, among the strongest in the world. Both in the short run -- the past year -- and the long run -- the past 20 years -- the U.S. has had the fastest growth of the major industrialized countries.

Moreover, low personal savings has not stopped Americans from accumulating plenty of assets for retirement. Strong economic growth has lifted both housing and equity values. Over the past decade, for example, the NASDAQ is up 182% and Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up 158%, far more than the London, Frankfurt, Paris, or Tokyo bourses. Over the same stretch, household net worth is up 67%, after adjusting for inflation and subtracting federal debt.
But 4 years later a lot of that 'wealth' had vanished! And we've seen home real estate values drop on the order of 30%, or more in some places.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #195
Astronuc said:
But 4 years later a lot of that 'wealth' had vanished! And we've seen home real estate values drop on the order of 30%, or more in some places.

Only 30%? The http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/08/26/weekinreview/27leon_graph2.html" is fun to look at. It looks as though everyone who owned a home in 1997 nearly doubled their money by 2006.

If you plot a line from 1997 to 2009 on http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqrguz/housingbubble/", housing prices are still up nearly 20%.

And going up for the last two quarters as I recall.

Oh, but wait, rising housing prices are bad:

http://au.biz.yahoo.com/090929/2/28vua.html
Rising house prices hurt vulnerable: RBA
Tuesday September 29, 2009, 5:46 pm

Rising house prices can hurt low income Australians and governments should keep working to stop prices rising too fast, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) says.

Prices go down, it's bad. Prices go up, it's bad. It's always bad.

Stupid humans.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #196
Astronuc said:
But it appears that essentially the private saving is funded by the government debt. In other words, the government is not responsibly taxing at the appropriate rate to cover it's expenses.
?? Yes the government is deficit spending. That doesn't mean they are 'funding' private savings. I don't follow the 'responsibly taxing' part - the whole theory of Keynesian stimulus is to borrow money from the future to stimulate anemic aggregate demand now. Not that I agree the stimulus works, but raising taxes in a recession doesn't even comport with the theory.

Astronuc said:
On the other the hand I remember hearing that the personal savings rate was actually negative at some time during the last 4 or 5 years.

Why Americans Are Going Broke
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106778


Then there's this - "The national savings rate -- which includes corporate savings and government budget deficits --"

(JANUARY 17, 2005) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_03/b3916043_mz011.htm
There is a big discrepancy between household and national savings rates.
The first article is dated last year Feb 2008. Yes certainly the savings rate was negative back then, but not now.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #197
I've posted on this subject several times across various threads. Since the 1987 market "adjustment", interest rates have been lowered.

This enabled growth, but it also chased savings into the market.
 
  • #198
Intersting perspective from Allan Sloan.

Uncle Sam's gift to the prudent saver: Less money
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/19/AR2009101903569.html
This is a quiz. What do the record-high Wall Street bonuses have in common with the record-low yields for savers? Answer: They show yet another way that prudent people, especially those living on fixed incomes, are being cheated by the government's bailout of the imprudent.

Here's the deal. The government is spending trillions to keep interest rates down to support the economy and prop up housing prices, and those low rates have inflicted collateral damage on savers' incomes. "It's a direct wealth transfer from savers and retirees to overly indebted borrowers," says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

. . . .
So the prudent investor (low risk) get low and lower interest rates, and the guys who took high risk and lost - get subsidized by the Federal government. What's wrong with this picture?
 
  • #199
Some fallout of a Federal inquiry. This probably belongs under "What's wrong with the US economy".
Six people, including the founder of the big hedge fund the Galleon Group, were arrested on Friday in one of the largest hedge fund insider trading schemes in history. The scheme, according to prosecutors, reached across a broad swath of corporate America and ensnared among others a top I.B.M. official and executives at Intel and McKinsey & Company.

At the center of the scheme is Raj Rajaratnam, who built Galleon into a multibillion-dollar hedge fund and a respected investor in technology companies. But Mr. Rajaratnam's charitable giving to his native Sri Lanka has attracted the attention of law enforcement authorities investigating fundraising for the Tamil Tigers rebel group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/business/17insider.html
 
  • #200
mheslep said:
?? Yes the government is deficit spending. That doesn't mean they are 'funding' private savings. I don't follow the 'responsibly taxing' part - the whole theory of Keynesian stimulus is to borrow money from the future to stimulate anemic aggregate demand now. Not that I agree the stimulus works, but raising taxes in a recession doesn't even comport with the theory.

The first article is dated last year Feb 2008. Yes certainly the savings rate was negative back then, but not now.

The theory also suggests reducing spending when the economy recovers.
 
  • #201
Galteeth said:
The theory also suggests reducing spending when the economy recovers.
Well yes, though actually in later years Keynes himself said deficit spending to stimulate an economy in a temporary downturn would likely not work at all. It only had hope with chronic, long term low demand. One reason he gave was that the government could not move fast enough nor with sufficient accuracy, exactly as we have seen so far.
 
  • #202
http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/14/unemployment-efca-health-care-opinions-contributors-steven-j-davis.html" to work from Chicago school economist Steven Davis, my summary:

  1. Roll back benefit mandates for health insurance. They act as a 'drag on job creation'. A bigger step wold be to eliminate interstate commerce barriers on health insurance.
  2. Suspend federal minimum wage mandates. Current unemployment among teenagers is 26%, just the demographics where min. wage applies.
  3. Kill the the Employee Free Choice Act lingering in Congress. It threatens employers with higher costs, freezing them in the headlights.
  4. Experiment. Job search assistance, interviewing skills, counseling, education, training. Some of these work, some don't. Measure them and throw out the losers.

And things not to do. These are current proposals in Congress:
  • Extend unemployment benefits. They are expensive, maybe $100B/year, and they weaken, rather than strengthen incentives to get a job.
  • Tax credits to employers to create jobs. Even more costly than unemployment benefits, maybe $250B

Sounds very good to me.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #204
  • #205
Astronuc said:
...
I suppose they could cancel social security and cut back on Medicare and Medicaid.
The latter will happen, it is unavoidable now, sometime within the next 15 years I expect, the US government will default on its Medicare liabilities.
 
  • #206
And yet they're going to try and add a huge new healthcare entitlement on top of this (?)
 
  • #207
Nebula815 said:
And yet they're going to try and add a huge new healthcare entitlement on top of this (?)
But don't worry, they won't screw up the nationalized healtchare the way they screwed up Medicare! :rolleyes:
 
  • #208
russ_watters said:
But don't worry, they won't screw up the nationalized healtchare the way they screwed up Medicare! :rolleyes:

Their strategy revolves around Medicare, Medicaid, and SS. It's a mixing of funds - muddy the water.
 
  • #209
Economy is still wobbly.

Foreclosure buyer demand dips as supply mounts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091215/ts_nm/us_usa_housing_foreclosures

Defaults and forclosures may continue to rise, although there has been some apparent slowing down recently.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #210
Astronuc said:
Economy is still wobbly.

Foreclosure buyer demand dips as supply mounts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091215/ts_nm/us_usa_housing_foreclosures

Defaults and forclosures may continue to rise, although there has been some apparent slowing down recently.
Wobbly? As in it is standing up? 10% unemployment leaves it still on its butt, my view. I'm saving wobbly for 6-8% :wink:

Edit: unemployment still climbing in California
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...employment_rate&idim=state:ST060000&tdim=true
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Similar threads

News Is The Global Economic Crisis Worse Than Expected?
  • · Replies 29 ·
Replies
29
Views
5K
News Should the US intervene in world problems?
  • · Replies 29 ·
Replies
29
Views
10K
News Ahmadinejad's speech at Durban II
  • · Replies 38 ·
2
Replies
38
Views
7K
News Europe's Economic Future: A Cause for Concern?
  • · Replies 12 ·
Replies
12
Views
4K