farangbaa

Silicon Valley has been absolutely booming in recent years, and yesterday the long Facebook foreplay finally culminated with their IPO orgasm. 

The day before, the NY Times ran an article describing Silicon Valley’s gilded age. As far as I know, the last time the Times cited a gilded age was in October 2007 — as the economy was cresting just before the crash. They jinxed it!

Every big boom has one transaction that signified the peak, when the party ended. In the 1980s it was the RJR Nabisco deal (which I am semi-ashamed to admit I worked on).  In the 1990s it was the Time-Warner/AOL merger. Is it Facebook's IPO this time?

Interestingly, yesterday Groupon was down 6.7% and Zynga was down 13.4%, on a day when the broader NASDAQ was down 1.2%. Hmmm...

Today the Senate voted 99-0 against a fake Obama budget, in a stunt vote forced by Republicans simply to embarrass Obama. Is it any wonder why Americans hate Congress so much? These Republicans are clowns.

Michael Dougherty explains What It Means That The 'President's Budget' Went Down 99 To 0 In The Senate:

A big headline is coming out of Congress right now. "Obama Budget Defeated 99-0" says the Washington Times.

And conservatives are tweeting that like crazy.

But, it just isn't true.

Just as they did in March in the House of Representatives, Republicans forced a vote on a bill that was supposed to resemble the president's budget, but wasn't actually the president's budget. A Republican Senator submitted it, and called for the vote.

But the headline would look very different if it said, "Senate Unanimously Rejects A Budget Offered By Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)" which is what actually happened.

Earlier this week the NY Times reported this stunt was coming:

Republicans are hoping to force Democrats into a series of budget votes intended to embarrass the president

And it's becoming routine for Republicans:

Republicans Pull Cunning Stunts with Budgets

The hypocrisy is so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw:

The 52 members of the Tea Party Caucus, which pledges to cut spending and reduce the size of government, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during fiscal year 2010

Republicans Voting Against Stimulus Then Asked Obama for Money

Cost-Cutters, Except When the Spending Is Back Home

Tea Party Caucus Founder Michele Bachmann Repeatedly Sought Stimulus, EPA, Other Government Funds (see the smoking gun)

Rick Perry vocally opposed the Obama stimulus — but used stimulus money more than any other state to balance the Texas budget

The scurrilous smear on Fox News — or the apology for a "mistake" on Twitter?

During the May 10 edition of The Five, co-hosts Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld had this exchange:

BOLLING: What would you call a guy who not only used cocaine, but dealt cocaine in high school and/or college? What would you call that kind of guy?

GUTFELD: The president.

[laughter]

BOLLING: Besides "president"

At 10:09 the next morning, Eric Bolling wrote on his Twitter feed:

"Said yesterday that I thought the President had admitted to buying or selling drugs. I was wrong. And I apologize to him for my mistake"

What's next, Fox News? Obama pimps out his daughters?

I've always agreed that the Federal government is bloated and is spending at unsustainable levels. It's true now, it was true ten years ago, it was true 30+ years ago. We need to cut spending on a variety of things over the long-term — just not right now, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. 

But talk is cheap. It's always so easy to holler and shout for spending cuts. But here's a perfect example of what happens when you actually try to cut spending in a big way. And most rural citizens tend to lean right and call for spending cuts — until it's their spending, of course.

Faced with a public outcry and pushback from Congress, the United States Postal Service on Wednesday backed away from its plan to close as many as 3,700 rural post offices starting next week

"We've listened to our customers in rural America, and we've heard them loud and clear. They want to keep their post office open," said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe.

The Postal Service said last summer that it would consider closing 3,700 post offices, or nearly one in 10, that it said had low revenue and sparse foot traffic. Opposition came from all sides, including elected officials and tiny communities from New Hampshire to Iowa to Wyoming. Many communities see the local post office not only as a place to pick up mail but also as a link to one another and to the rest of the country.

Unlike the Federal government, most states and municipalities are required by law or constitution to balance their budgets.

So when the economic crisis hit, economists and analysts correctly knew that state/local tax revenues would plummet across all levels: business and personal income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes — everything. This would cause state/local governments huge deficits that they'd have to deal with like companies do: by firing people.

People like teachers, cops and firemen. Cuts in services, like garbage collection and road maintenance. And when you make cuts like that, communities all across America turn into slums. And that is a wholly unacceptable scenario.

So to prevent that, the Obama stimulus provided money to states and municipalities so they wouldn't have to fire massive numbers of such people (government jobs are down 608,000 since the stimulus passed, but would've been even worse without it).

Now, many conservatives blithely ignore all the factual analysis I just presented and cut directly to the fact that most state/local workers just happen to be union.

So these conservatives conclude that, ipso facto, it's "obvious" the stimulus money was Obama payback to his union buddies. This, to them, is a "smoking gun."

Theirs is the kind of shallow, thoughtless, simple-minded "analysis" that renders such conservatives unfit to govern.

Join Sean and his panel of experts as they prove Obama is the antichrist — using Ouija boards and tarot cards!

Don't miss it!

Fox & Friends Invites Astrologer To Discuss Obama And Hillary Clinton’s Future Political Careers

And here are some other fine examples of Fox News's superior analysis!

Fox News Cites Non-Existent Part Of The Constitution:

Fox News reports that 8.6% is greater than 8.8%:

Fox News reports that 15 million jobs were lost in one quarter (actually, 588,000 jobs were gained in the quarter ended June 2010):

Fox News reports that gas prices increased in a continuous straight line through 2011 and into 2012, but ignore the fact that gas prices declined during most of 2011 before rising again in early 2012

But it's not as if we went from zero unemployed to 12.5 million unemployed during the recession, or on Obama's watch. Even when we hit peak employment in January 2008, there were still 7.7 million Americans unemployed, so the increase in the unemployed due to the recession now stands at 4.8 million.

And as of March 2012, Obama has now recovered all of the 4.2 million private sector jobs that were lost during the early months of his presidency. So that means that the remaining private sector jobs that haven't yet been recovered were lost during the year before he took office.

"Of course," he says now. "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order"

But what has he said before?

In 2007, he criticised then-candidate Obama for vowing to strike al-Qaeda in Pakistan if necessary. He also said back then, "It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

When Mr. Romney says that "even" Mr. Carter would have ordered the killing of bin Laden, he implies that Mr Carter was a wimp. But Mr. Romney surely remembers that Mr. Carter’s electoral fate was in fact sealed when he gave the order for a rescue mission to pluck America’s embassy hostages from the heart of Tehran. That was a much more daring gamble than Mr. Obama’s, and it failed.

"The reason [the unemployment rate] came down is because 340,000 people dropped out of the workforce. So many became discouraged they stopped looking for work"

Actually, most of the people who dropped out were retiring boomers and others who chose to drop out

"We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month"

So we checked: how many times has the economy generated 500,000 net nonfarm jobs in one month?  

The answer: not many. Since 1970, it’s only happened five times. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, amid strong economic times, only logged one 500,000-plus month each, in 1983 and 1997 respectively.  

Presidents George H.W. Bush and son George W. Bush had no months with more than 500,000 jobs gained. Neither did Presidents Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon.  

In fact, the president with the most since 1970? Jimmy Carter, who racked up a gain of 513,000 jobs in March 1978 and 702,000 in April 1978.

"This is a time when America wants to have someone who knows what it takes to create jobs and get people working again"

Massachusetts ranked 47th among states in job creation during Romney's tenure as governor

Through March 2012, private sector job growth is closely tracking to the Clinton recovery, which was ultimately the greatest jobs boom in modern American history...

and the unemployment rate has declined faster and farther than during either of the last two recoveries:

And with March's jobs report, all the private sector jobs lost in the early months of Obama's presidency have now been recovered. He's emerged from the red into the black:

There has been considerable discussion in recent months about how the official unemployment rate is understated because the labor force participation rate has been declining. That much is true. But the key question is: why has the LFPR been declining? Many contend that it's because discouraged jobseekers are giving up and dropping out of the labor force. But many are (willfully?) ignoring what began 66 years ago and what is happening as a result today. Can you say "baby boom?" Sure, I knew you could.

From the Washington Post:

If the same percentage of adults were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent. If the percentage was where it was when George W. Bush took office, the unemployment rate would be 13.1 percent.  

But a number of economists are arguing that the recession is distracting people from the real story — long-run demographic trends that have nothing to do with the current economy. Baby boomers are starting to retire en masse, which means that there are fewer eligible American workers.  

But since 2000, the labor force rate has been steadily declining as the baby-boom generation has been retiring. Because of this, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago expects the labor force participation rate to be lower in 2020 than it is today, regardless of how well the economy does.  

In a March report titled "Dispelling an Urban Legend," Dean Maki, an economist at Barclays Capital, found that demographics accounted for a majority of the drop in the participation rate since 2002.  

And what about the most recent downturn? Based on survey data, Maki found that about 35 percent of Americans who have dropped out of the labor force since the recession began in 2007 do want a job, but they have become too discouraged to fire off résumés. That’s a sign of a weak labor market. But the other 65 percent are people who have left the labor force and do not want a job. The biggest chunk of that group seems to be composed of baby boomers, those 55 and older, who have decided to retire early.

On a related topic, many are saying that recent job growth is inadequate to even exceed the population growth, which some claim exceeds 150,000 per month. But Dean Baker at Center for Economic and Policy Research writes:

We Need 90,000 Jobs Per Month to Keep Pace With the Growth of the Population

In an article on the June employment report the NYT told readers that the economy needs 150,000 jobs per month to keep pace with the growth in the population. Actually, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the underlying rate of labor force growth is now just 0.7 percent annually. This comes to roughly 1,050,000 a year or just under 90,000 a month.

They never stop whining that Obama is trying to turn America into a European-style social welfare state. But even GHWB pledged during his 1988 campaign to create a "kindler, gentler America," after many had deemed Reagan-style capitalism to be a bit harsh. And back then we hadn't seen nuthin' yet, with the stupendous wealth concentration at the very top we have now. But with talk like that, modern Republicans would consider GHWB to be an outright socialist now. Obama isn't trying to create a Euro-style social welfare state, he's simply trying to soften some of the harder, sharper edges of American capitalism.

Anyway, if we'd actually done what the Tea Party has advocated over the past three years and immediately slashed government spending, right about now we'd be looking a lot like...wait for it...Europe! Oh the irony.

Europe, in Slump, Rethinks Austerity

Spain has joined seven other euro-zone nations in recession, according to data released Monday, providing new evidence that austerity policies are failing to spark confidence in the region's economies ahead of a week of expected anti-austerity protests and a string of important national elections.

Almost every piece of new economic data in recent weeks has reinforced the impression that swaths of the European economy are contracting. Among the 17 euro-zone nations, Spain joined Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia in recession. Outside the bloc, the U.K., Denmark and the Czech Republic are also in recession.

"It's now the time for economic stimulus," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Monday...

The UK economy has fallen back into recession, after contracting by 0.2 percent in the first three months of 2012, official data showed Wednesday

The Office for National Statistics said a fall in public sector investment had contributed to a sharp decline of 3 percent in the construction sector, which was the main reason behind the surprise figures, according to the BBC.

But wait, a return to recession in America would be fine with the Tea Party. They support anything that would prevent a second Obama term.

Republicans do. And they will be repeating the "excessive regulation" mantra ad nauseam for the remainder of the campaign, even while most business managers wonder "huh?" It's the demand, stupid!

The NABE August 2011 Economic Policy Survey presents the consensus of a panel of 250 members of the National Association for Business Economics

Regulatory activity has gained a lot of attention, with many groups suggesting that American businesses are overregulated by the current administration. With that said, 80 percent of survey respondents felt that the current regulatory environment was "good" for American businesses and the overall economy.

Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.

McClatchy reached out to owners of small businesses, many of them mom-and-pop operations, to find out whether they indeed were being choked by regulation, whether uncertainty over taxes affected their hiring plans and whether the health care overhaul was helping or hurting their business.

Their response was surprising.

None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.

The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists in a new Wall Street Journal survey

And of course, the favorite bogeyman of Republicans is the evil EPA, which many conservatives want to abolish outright. But what do the overwhelming majority of Americans think?

The American people, by substantial majorities, are concerned about air and water pollution, and largely trust the EPA, national surveys say
 
Three out of four of those surveyed, including 61% of the Republicans, say "Congress should let the EPA do its job"

Oh, and by the way: Obama Isn't Overregulating the Economy

And for those of you keeping score at home...

Change in DJIA so far in presidencies:

• Ronald Reagan, the conservative messiah: up 24.4%

• George W. Bush, the über-capitalist: down 3.4%

• Barack Obama, the mere community organizer: up 67.1%

The 54% of Americans who hold individual stocks, mutual funds, or stocks in their 401(k) are quite pleased to see the values of their portfolios replenished on Obama's watch.

Unpredictable events may come and go between now and November, driving the approval ratings of the presidential contenders up or down. But pollsters say that American voters tend to make their decisions regarding the personal likability of the candidates early, and those first impressions tend to be "sticky" and immutable throughout the campaign. The candidates don't get much of a second chance to make a first impression. And no one should underestimate sheer personal likability as a significant factor in voters' choices.

Of course, being a Mormon, Romney can't participate in the national pastime — drinking beer — so right off the bat tens of millions of Americans don't like him. ;)

And as Gerald Seib of the WSJ reports, it doesn't look good for Mitt:

Given those similarities in retail style, it is somewhat surprising that the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has revealed a wide gap — a chasm, really — in the way these two men are perceived by voters on a personal level. Call it the likability gap, and Mr. Obama enjoys a wide advantage.

Asked who is more "easygoing and likable," those surveyed gave Mr. Obama the advantage by a 54%-to-18% margin. Similarly, when asked about "caring for average people," it is advantage Obama, 52% to 22%. A virtually identical gap shows up on who is "compassionate enough to understand average people."

Mr. Romney enjoys a small advantage on two characteristics that are of considerable importance: having good ideas for the economy and potentially changing the way Washington works. But on the personal level, he starts the general election well behind the incumbent president in the eyes of many voters.

So the obvious question is: How much does that matter?

It can be significant. Other things being more or less equal, Americans have shown they tend to vote for a presidential candidate they like personally. As in so many areas, Richard Nixon was the exception on this front, but other examples are plentiful: One of Ronald Reagan's huge advantages in 1980 was that even Americans who disagreed with him on policy found it much easier to warm to him than to incumbent Jimmy Carter. Two decades later, George W. Bush seemed more like the kind of guy you'd like to have over to the house to watch the Super Bowl than the stiff and cerebral Al Gore.

Or should I say...Obama's American manufacturing renaissance?

Here's an astonishing fact: 26% of American manufacturing jobs vanished during the Bush years. Yes, that's right: more than one in four. Apart from sporadic growth during 2004-06 — when a measly total of 170,000 manufacturing jobs were created — it was a nearly-continuous eight-year downward slide. Simply unbelievable.

But since 2009, American manufacturing jobs have increased by 4.0%.  As the WSJ reports:

"The U.S. economy is in the early stages of a long-term manufacturing renaissance," analysts at Bank of America recently wrote in a report titled "An Industrial Revolution."

And:

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in April for the 33rd consecutive month, and the overall economy grew for the 35th consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business

Now, I'm not gonna assert that Obama has single-handedly engineered a manufacturing boom, but if an American manufacturing renaissance indeed does materialize, Obama will deserve the credit more than any other politician.

September 2009:

President Obama on Monday announced his selection of Ron Bloom as senior counselor for manufacturing policy

"As my new point person on manufacturing, he's going to help us craft the policies that will create the next generation of great manufacturing jobs and ensure American competitiveness in the 21st century," Obama said.

August 2010:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law an act that reduces or suspends tariffs paid by American companies on certain imports needed to manufacture their products

September 2010:

The government is working to provide a "high level of support" for the nation's shrinking manufacturing base by improving access to export markets, freeing up capital for investment, offering tax credits and providing job training, the president's top manufacturing adviser said

"We're looking to build a new kind of partnership" with the private sector, Ron Bloom, a senior counselor to President Obama, said at a program focusing on ways for manufacturers to improve performance and competitiveness. The goal is for government to provide support that private sector companies can't get on their own, then for government to "get out of the way."

"We need to stimulate a new wave of private-sector investment and innovation that will help our old industries adapt and our new industries grow," Bloom said.

Methinks Messrs. Mann and Ornstein are being quite charitable in their essay (below) when they say modern Republicans are "unmoved" by facts. My recent experience with increasing numbers of Republicans is that they exhibit outright contempt for facts. One can present to them a mountain of overwhelming, irrefutable, indisputable facts and they will glibly dismiss them as "lies" because they conflict with their rigid ideology. And no, liberals are not equally at fault in this; increasing numbers of modern Republicans have simply become unmoored from reality.

And despite all the right-wing railings against "liberal lamestream media," too many mainstream media outlets are complicit in legitimizing right-wing crackpot assertions. Terrified that the right-wing will attack them as "unfair and unbalanced," mainstream media bend over backwards to give equal time to nutjob theories, when what they actually need to do is come straight out and expose those theories for the lunacy that they actually are. Or, at a very minimum, simply ignore them. But conflict and controversy sells advertising, even when one side of the controversy is certifiably delusional.

Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

Politifact rates statements made by Romney as "false" or "pants on fire" 52% more often than for Obama's statements.

And check this out: when it comes to solely "pants on fire," Politifact's category for big honkin' whoppers of lies, Romney lies 631% more often than Obama. No, that's not a typo. Six-hundred-thirty-one percent.

And no, Politifact is not funded or controlled by George Soros or any other liberals, so don't even start with that.

There has been considerable consternation in certain circles about perceived "skyrocketing" prices, especially for gasoline and food. And naturally some say it's all Obama's fault. Well, here's the data through March 2012:             

As you can readily see, yes, prices are up, but not by as much as they were during the comparable period before Obama became president. And while some may say that these lower inflation numbers don't comport with their personal experiences, it's important to note that YMMV because prices vary by one's geographic location and the particular mix of products one buys. The figures shown above are the national averages.

Over the twelve months ended March 2012, food prices have increased 3.3%, well below the average of 4.4% since 1967. If people complain about food prices, it might be because they eat too much meat, the price of which has increased 5.4% over the past year. So maybe they should eat more healthy fruits and vegetables, since their prices have declined 3.9% over the past year. Ah, the beauty of the American system: when one food stuff becomes temporarily expensive for whatever reason, there is a bewildering array of substitutions Americans can make to keep their costs down. Alternatively, they can sit around moaning and whining that "everything" is more expensive and it's all Obama's fault. I mean, it's not like we're the USSR and our options are bread, bread or bread.

And have you checked your electric bill lately? Average electricity inflation was five times higher during Bush's last 38 months than during Obama's first 38 months.

As far as gas prices go, they're up 9.0% over the past year, which is somewhat higher than the average inflation of 7.1% since 1967. But as the WSJ notes, much of the recent run-up has been due to speculative trading, and now traders are pulling out of those trades:

After a sizzling start to the year, gasoline futures prices are sliding, easing pressures on drivers and the U.S. economy and raising the prospect that prices at the pump could be headed lower still.

Joanne Shore, a senior analyst of the EIA, says retail prices typically lag behind those of gasoline futures by a few weeks. About half of the change in futures gets passed through within a week, and the rest tends to show up over the next several weeks, according to Ms. Shore. who follows gasoline prices.

"What you're seeing in the market is some back-pedaling from the hysteria we saw in February and March," said Sander Cohan, a principal at ESAI, an energy-consulting firm in Wakefield, Mass.

"It was a very overdone trade, and people are getting out of it," said Amrita Sen, an energy analyst at Barclays

"Money managers were walking toward the exit last week; they seem to be running over the last three days," said Tim Evans, an energy analyst with Citigroup.

And indeed, we can see this happening in this chart from gasbuddy.com:

Will gasoline prices increase again with the summer driving season? Sure, quite likely. But for now they're falling from their highs that were reached largely because of speculation, and they still didn't reach the highs of 2008, when speculators caused prices to go skyhigh then, too:

Institutional investors caused the rapid rise and subsequent steep fall in oil prices in 2008, according to an independent report released by U.S. lawmakers yesterday.

The report, co-authored by hedge fund manager Michael Masters, said that from January to May index traders poured $60 billion into commodity markets, causing a big spike in oil prices.

When the U.S. Congress held hearings May to July about reining in speculation, traders pulled $39 billion from the market, the report stated.

An influx of large index traders into commodities markets has been blamed by some for pushing up oil and food prices.

Masters said institutional investors should be banned from all futures markets or be greatly restricted. "I think they greatly distort the marketplace," Masters said.

Despite all the job market strife, the vast majority of Americans have remained employed, so the primary economic concern for most Americans is the cost of living. So when the inevitable question arises "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" the answer in terms of cost of living is most definitely yes.