 - Last login: 3 hours agoHunza
- Don is a 43 year old guy from Munster, Indiana, USA.
- Likes 619 pages, 13 videos, 7 photos • 19 fans • Received 8 reviews
- Member since Feb 05, 2006
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Responses to a few letters posted on Roby 07's Stumble Blog:
- The smarter economists view "consumer confidence" as a false signal because most people will spend what they have. You can be extremely confident, but if you don't have enough money to buy that Prius you're gonna struggle through another year with that used Silverado gas guzzler.
- From 2005 thru 2007 gas prices varied between 1.80 and 3.00 in the northwest Indiana area (and, with some variation, throughout a large portion of the nation). This after a few years of varying between 1.20 and 1.80. It stayed in the 2.00-3.00 range in 2007 before holding through the winter of 2008 and rising to 4.25 this summer. Guess what else I remember: $.80/gallon gas in 1999-2000; also known as part of the Clinton Years.
- The unemployment rate has been jerri-rigged since 1968, an era encompassing Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2 (as have our other signals; the inflation rate has been especially gutted of its original meaning since 1980). And I can tell you, the true unemployment rate is much higher than is allowed to be reported.
- The real estate bubble (with all the debt that Americans took on from the bloated housing prices) developed while Bush was in the White House AND the GOP had both houses (2001-2007). We're just seeing the pop. You honestly believe the GOP would have had the bubble last as long as you owned both houses as well as the presidency?
- With all these bizarre financing formats that developed during the Bush/Republican years (interest only loans? only if you're stupid; you could get loans that allowed you to pay LESS than interest) I expect to see that number rise a bit more. Too many people got bad loans that were set up to fail, and too many people were left high-and-dry. Yeah, these people may have deserved it, but if you're going to let people pay for their follies, you're gonna have to let the foreclosures happen. And guess what: this has been developing since REAGAN, not just overnight.
- Yeah, yeah; I'm supposedly paying less tax than before and I'm supposed to fear tax increases coming from the candidates. Problem is, right now the money I'm earning is worth less than before. Why is that? Because this nation as a whole, from President Bush and the Republican congress of 2001-2006 (yes, the whipped Democrats went along with the spending) to the local household, spent this nation into massive multiple deficits. There may have been cheating during the Clinton years, but we as a nation were actually ahead of the game when Clinton left office. I remember all that neocon whining over the surpluses (which, amongst other things, led to the $.80 gas we had JUST BEFORE CLINTON LEFT OFFICE); well they got their wish: debt beyond this nation's ability to pay off. Let me sound like a Gold-bug: when governments live within their means things get better. Last time we came close to that was during the Clinton years.
There's a lot of things going on in the background of many of the stats quoted. To place things within a short enough view so as to blind yourself to the past (as the letter writer did) is dishonest.
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