Wednesday, February 13, 2013

What is all the cheering about?

I guess I am getting a little tired of some of the cheer leading.

The New Reality Of 'Economic Recovery' For American Workers
Testosterone Pit, 7 February 2013 (hat tip: NC)
“Deeply pessimistic” is the term used in the sobering survey, “Diminished Lives and Futures: A Portrait of America in the Great-Recession Era.” A confirmation of bits and pieces of economic data that has been trickling in over the years on this topic.
Just today, for example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wages adjusted for inflation had continued their morose decline: in 2012, by 0.4% after having already declined 0.5% in 2011. It doesn’t seem much. With nominal wages rising, workers might temporarily be fooled into thinking that they’re moving ahead. But enough of those declines, and pretty soon you’re talking about some real money.
They compound the lingering impact of the financial crisis. “Five years of economic misery have profoundly diminished Americans’ confidence in the economy and their outlook for the next generation,” conclude the authors of the survey. And yet, since 2007, Congress borrowed $8 trillion, nearly doubling the US gross national debt to $16.48 trillion, and the Fed printed another $2.1 trillion, all under the unholy pretext of wanting to stimulate the economy

The sobering survey is Diminished Lives and Futures: A Portrait of America in the Great-Recession Era (pdf).

The husband of someone I work with, an Iraqi Vet who is/was working as an Electrician was just laid of because the company ran out of work.  He had just received a raise a few weeks earlier but than the tap simply ran dry for new work coming in.  From what I have seen, almost all types of service work (plumbing, hvac, electrical) are very slow.  New construction is vastly over prescribed in the number of bidders for each job.  Since we are talking about the much discussed Research Triangle Park (RTP- the triangle being Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State U.) we are not talking about some lost backwoods of the economy.

2 comments:

PioneerPreppy said...

Any GDP or economic growth is coming almost exclusively from the Public/Government sector including the stock market. The market especially is growing on very small volumes of trading while commodities are almost exclusively the playground of big banks and financial institutions.

I believe this is the final rung on the ladder really. The question is how long can the government levitate itself with no middle class left to hold it up?

russell1200 said...

Pioneer: Good question. Particularly when the Europeans and Chinese are looking worse than we are.