Obama Has Lowest Average 1stQ GDP Growth of Any President on Record

Even if you leave out the first quarter of 2009—when the recession that started in December 2007 was still ongoing--President Barack Obama has presided over the lowest average first-quarter GDP growth of any president who has served since 1947, which is the earliest year for which the Bureau of Economic Analysis has calculated quarterly GDP growth.

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Warning: Stocks Will Collapse by 50% in 2014

Money News: It is only a matter of time before the stock market plunges by 50% or more, according to several reputable experts.

It's official: we're already in a recession!

Since 1948, every time the four-quarter change has fallen below 2 percent, the economy has entered a recession. It’s hard to argue against an indicator with such a long history of accuracy.

Leading Economics Blog: US Economy Already In Recession

The Big Red Button

Most of the worst financial panics in history have happened in the fall. Just recall what happened in 1929, 1987 and 2008. Well, September 2011 is about to begin and there are all kinds of signs that the financial world is about to hit the big red panic button.

25 Signs That The Financial World Is About To Hit The Big Red Panic Button

Are you better off or worse off than you were two years ago?

This really caught my eye because I was at my local discount health food store visiting my acupuncturist (for a very bad cold that just won't go away) and overheard two women talking about how THIS YEAR was worse than last year no matter what the politicians keep trying to tell us!

More than 50 percent of Americans say they are worse off now than they were two years ago when President Barack Obama took office, and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.

The survey, conducted Dec. 4-7, finds that 51 percent of respondents think their situation has deteriorated, compared with 35 percent who say they’re doing better. The balance isn’t sure. Americans have grown more downbeat about the country’s future in just the last couple of months, the poll shows. The pessimism cuts across political parties and age groups, and is common to both sexes.

The negative sentiment may cast a pall over the holiday shopping season, according to the poll. A plurality of those surveyed -- 46 percent -- expects to spend less this year than last; only 12 percent anticipate spending more. Holiday sales rose by just under a half percent last year after falling by almost 4 percent in 2008.

“It’s definitely different this year than it’s been,” says poll respondent Larry Deyo, a 38-year-old father of two in Marlton, New Jersey. “I can’t really do too much with spending.” He says he lost his job at a kitchen and bath design center when the company closed, and he’s now working at a Home Depot Inc. store with a “significant decrease” in pay.

It was President Ronald Reagan who popularized the question, “Are you better off or worse off than you were four years ago” in his 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter.

Most Americans Say They're Worse Off Since Obama Took Office, Poll Shows

Comparing previous recoveries from all 10 American recessions since 1948 to the current financial crisis, the stark figures show almost no improvement in employment figures in the past year.

SCARIEST JOBS CHART EVER!

 

Why losing your job is not the end of the world and what to do if it happens.

If you’re anything like me when I got laid off, your mind will be reeling. The kind of reeling that happens after your dog unexpectedly dies or when you find out your sweetheart actually wasn’t so sweet and sort of operates an escort service at night and is kind of well known throughout several large metropolitan areas. It’s ok though, this reeling feeling is completely normal. But what to do about it?

An essay on the interoperable relationship between business and fear, in particular as it relates to the current world economy, especially having to do with the prospect of losing one’s job vis-à-vis layoff...

10 Reasons Why Ordinary Hard-Working Americans Are About To Really Start Feeling The Squeeze

You think 2010 was bad? You ain't seen nuthin' yet...

The stimulus didn't work

Echoes of the Great Depression

Internationally, the fear of a double-dip recession--and a global depression--is palpable...

SOCIETE GENERALE PREDICTS COLLAPSE OF EURO

Mr. Obama might want to stick to a moderate approach. FDR's war against business played to the crowd, but it hurt the economy. While monetary policies impeded recovery in the late 1930s, it was the administration's assault on companies and capital that ensured the Depression's duration.

FDR's war against business showed that a president must choose between retribution and recovery...

Wages dropped last year by 1.6%, the biggest decline since 1990...

...but the number of federal workers making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s doesn’t include overtime pay and bonuses are counted…

Economists say Obama goofed

These facts suggest that it was a serious economic mistake to press for a hasty, major transformation of the U.S. economy on the heels of the worst financial crisis in decades. A more effective approach would have been to concentrate first on fighting the recession and laying solid foundations for growth. They should have put plans to re-engineer the economy on the backburner, and kept them there until the economy emerged fully from the recession and returned to robust growth. By failing to adopt a measured approach to economic policy, Congress and the president may be slowing the economic recovery, and thereby prolonging the distress from the recession.

—The authors are economists at the University of Chicago. Messrs. Becker and Murphy are also fellows of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Mr. Davis is also a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Shocking numbers: Real unemployment tops 22%

Obama figures deliberately understate economic downturn

WSJ: Stimulus Spending Doesn't Work

Our new research shows no evidence of a Keynesian 'multiplier' effect. There is evidence that tax cuts boost growth.

Whatever happened to the Depression?

By Allan H. Meltzer

Day after day, economists, politicians and journalists repeat the trope that the current recession is the worst since the Great Depression. Repetition may reinforce belief, but the comparison is greatly overstated and highly misleading. Anyone who knows even a bit about the Great Depression knows that this is false.

The facts we face today are very different than the grim reality Americans confronted between 1929 and 1932. True, this recession is not over. But it would have to get improbably worse before it came close to the 42-month duration of the Great Depression, or the 25% unemployment rate in 1932. Then, the only safety net was the soup line.

The current recession is also much less severe than the 1937-38 Depression. A more accurate comparison is to the 1973-75 recession...

And why has the Obama administration been so invested in telling us this is as bad, or close to as bad, as THE GREAT DEPRESSION?

Reason #1:

The Obama administration wanted to make it appear as though it saved us from an incipient disaster, so it overstated its achievements. The White House also wanted to foist its huge "stimulus" program on the country in order to redistribute income. That pleased many Democrats, but did very little to restore growth.

Reason #2:

Then there are economists who would like to see government take a larger role in the economy. They've chosen to use the recession as a pretext for arguing for this change

Think "Keynsian" ... "Paul Krugman" ... "IMF" ... "financial press" ... "Federal Reserve" ...

The Federal Reserve also shared this Keynesian viewpoint. It provided unprecedented monetary stimulus, increasing the monetary base by more than $1 trillion. Much of this increase corrected for its major mistake: allowing Lehman Brothers to fail. After 30 years of bailing out almost all large financial firms, the Fed made the horrendous mistake of changing its policy in the midst of a recession. That set off a scramble for liquidity and heightened the public's distrust in the market.

This had world-wide repercussions. For four months, many financial markets remained frozen and real activity collapsed. Allowing Lehman to fail without warning is one of the worst blunders in Federal Reserve history. Extrapolation caused many market participants to conjecture that we were in a depression. The New York Times and others piled on, speculating foolishly about the end of capitalism.

Now, with recovery in sight, we need to ask what kind of a recovery to expect and what kind of policies are appropriate.

Read the whole thing

Less tax money coming in, but Obama administration going on a big spending spree...with YOUR MONEY!

AP Reports:

The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation's plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.

Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show

By Bob Willis

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.

Recession, Depression, What Michelle Worry?

If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michele are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:

1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (CHIEF OF STAFF)

2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)

3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL SECRETARY)

4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST LADY)

5. Winter, Melissa E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)

6. $90,000 - Medina, David S. (DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)

7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (DIRECTOR AND PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)

8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND ADVANCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)

9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)

10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)

11. Reinstein, Joseph B. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)

12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND EVENTS COORDINATOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)

13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ADVANCE AND TRIP DIRECTOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)

14. Lewis, Dana M. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT AND PERSONAL AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)

15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)

16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR SCHEDULING AND TRAVELING AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)

17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)

18. Tubman, Samantha (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,SOCIAL OFFICE)

19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)

20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (STAFF ASSISTANT TO THE SOCIAL SECRETARY)

21. Bookey, Natalie (STAFF ASSISTANT)

22. Jackson, Deilia A. (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)

First Lady requires more than twenty attendants

FYI

• During recession George Bush's economic plan saw 23.8% growth in six months.
  
  
• During recession Barack Obama's economic plan has shown -5.2% growth in six months.

Just sayin'...