Kathianne
08-13-2011, 10:40 AM
they will be facing very rough seas. Given the past couple years, Obama isn't up to it. Of those running, who's the most like a young Jack Welch, cause that is what is needed:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/structural-economic-problems-more-worrying-cyclical-ones_588255.html
Structural Economic Problems More Worrying than Cyclical Ones
12:00 AM, Aug 13, 2011 • By IRWIN M. STELZER (http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/irwin-m.-stelzer)
President Obama blames the recent turmoil in financial markets on floods in Japan and Republicans who won’t raise taxes. Republicans blame roiling markets on the president and Democrats who won’t cut spending. The Europeans blame short-sellers. Stock traders blame the problem variously on Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade America’s credit rating, the unsafe condition of French banks, the Federal Reserve Bank’s failure to give the economy a boost, the Fed’s insistence on giving the economy a boost by announcing that near-zero interest rates will be maintained past the presidential elections in November of 2012, and the fact that this week contains a Friday, a day on which traders shun risk lest their weekends be fraught. And if it rains on Monday….
You get the idea...
But it's argued that the real issues are systemic:
...longer-term problem is revealed not in the figure for the unemployment rate, or even in the far higher figure that includes workers too discouraged to continue pounding the pavements in search of work, and those involuntarily working short hours. It is revealed in the fact that over 6.5 million workers, 44 percent of those counted as unemployed, have been out of work for more than 27 weeks. At the end of the last recession in November 2001 that figure was 13.9 percent....
...A second long-term problem left unattended is the massive debt burden that will sooner or later have to be addressed. No, not the mere $14 trillion-and-rising debt recorded on the books of the U.S. Treasury. The trillions more that are not reflected on the nation’s ledgers. Economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who have studied what they call “eight centuries of financial folly,” note: “public obligations are often ‘hidden’ and significantly larger than official figures suggest. In addition, off-balance-sheet guarantees and other creative accounting devices make it even harder to assess the true nature of a country’s debt until a crisis forces everything out into the open.” Think of the massive debt burden that came with recognizing that the federal government is the guarantor of the debt of mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and of the viability of banks that are too big to fail. ...
...consumers no longer can be counted on to borrow and spend as they did in past decades. Yesterday’s report that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment is at its lowest level since May 1980 is a warning shot across the bow of retailers who are counting on a big back to school season, and wondering how much to spend on inventory in advance of the Christmas shopping season. Combine that pessimism with consumers’ need to restore their balance sheets to something approaching pre-binge levels, and it is not unreasonable to assume that when the recovery comes it will not be consumer led. These are only a few of the underlying trends that will in the end matter more than share price gyrations: A mismatch of the unemployed and available jobs, the withdrawal of government purchasing power as a source of growth, and banks less able to lend and consumers less willing and able to borrow. These will be with us long after calm replaces panic on the world’s stock markets.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/structural-economic-problems-more-worrying-cyclical-ones_588255.html
Structural Economic Problems More Worrying than Cyclical Ones
12:00 AM, Aug 13, 2011 • By IRWIN M. STELZER (http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/irwin-m.-stelzer)
President Obama blames the recent turmoil in financial markets on floods in Japan and Republicans who won’t raise taxes. Republicans blame roiling markets on the president and Democrats who won’t cut spending. The Europeans blame short-sellers. Stock traders blame the problem variously on Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade America’s credit rating, the unsafe condition of French banks, the Federal Reserve Bank’s failure to give the economy a boost, the Fed’s insistence on giving the economy a boost by announcing that near-zero interest rates will be maintained past the presidential elections in November of 2012, and the fact that this week contains a Friday, a day on which traders shun risk lest their weekends be fraught. And if it rains on Monday….
You get the idea...
But it's argued that the real issues are systemic:
...longer-term problem is revealed not in the figure for the unemployment rate, or even in the far higher figure that includes workers too discouraged to continue pounding the pavements in search of work, and those involuntarily working short hours. It is revealed in the fact that over 6.5 million workers, 44 percent of those counted as unemployed, have been out of work for more than 27 weeks. At the end of the last recession in November 2001 that figure was 13.9 percent....
...A second long-term problem left unattended is the massive debt burden that will sooner or later have to be addressed. No, not the mere $14 trillion-and-rising debt recorded on the books of the U.S. Treasury. The trillions more that are not reflected on the nation’s ledgers. Economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who have studied what they call “eight centuries of financial folly,” note: “public obligations are often ‘hidden’ and significantly larger than official figures suggest. In addition, off-balance-sheet guarantees and other creative accounting devices make it even harder to assess the true nature of a country’s debt until a crisis forces everything out into the open.” Think of the massive debt burden that came with recognizing that the federal government is the guarantor of the debt of mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and of the viability of banks that are too big to fail. ...
...consumers no longer can be counted on to borrow and spend as they did in past decades. Yesterday’s report that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment is at its lowest level since May 1980 is a warning shot across the bow of retailers who are counting on a big back to school season, and wondering how much to spend on inventory in advance of the Christmas shopping season. Combine that pessimism with consumers’ need to restore their balance sheets to something approaching pre-binge levels, and it is not unreasonable to assume that when the recovery comes it will not be consumer led. These are only a few of the underlying trends that will in the end matter more than share price gyrations: A mismatch of the unemployed and available jobs, the withdrawal of government purchasing power as a source of growth, and banks less able to lend and consumers less willing and able to borrow. These will be with us long after calm replaces panic on the world’s stock markets.