Bush group sees faster US growth

[acmejack]

The US economy is entering a period of "sustained expansion", a report by the president's Council of Economic Advisers has predicted.

Growth is set to accelerate this year, while inflation and unemployment rates are both declining, they said.

The advisers added that the ballooning trade deficit also should come down.

President George W Bush says his policies have helped the US weather the effect of killer hurricanes and record crude oil prices.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4710766.stm

[bemildred]

1. "weather the effect of killer hurricanes"

The puns just keep on coming ...

I guess we could all hum a few bars from "Big rock-candy mountain" here or something.

[marmar]

2. What's this, the King of Wishful Thinking policy group?

What indicators are they looking at? This great economy they keep talking about doesn't exist for 90 percent of Americans.

[applegrove]

3. Yes. And baby boomers are retiring - some probably due to tax

cuts on the rich. So that the fewer younger people will find work. But not because of any Bush policy.

There will be a crisis of employment in 2014. Too few workers. And just in case anyone thought that it could mean great wages? That 'ill never happen. Not with guest workers depressing wages for the bottom half. But those with stock portfolios will do good - while doing bad.

[acmejack]

4. What world are these "people" living in?

This is totally inane! Unemployment dropping? Sure, more people giving up & dropping off the unemployment rolls. This is just nuts.

[leftchick]

5. bush group sees utopian future for the neocons

check

[Oversea Visitor]

6. Sure sure

Now US growing as you say.
Ok got money all healthy
HELP KATRINA victims then.

What?
Broke.....

Then since economy healthy
bush must be a bad CEO
Cant even manage right.

[area51]

7. "U.S. economy to have 'sustained expansion'"

In what alternate universe? Our economy is contracting in the 2nd Great Depression.

[bemildred]

8. A typo, they mean inflation.

Like: "US economy to see sustained inflation."

[punpirate]

9. All this is predicated upon...

... a very, very soft landing of the housing market boom and continued moderate strength of the dollar.

But, one can't give up as much manufacturing capacity as this country has done and expect services to fill the export gap--it just doesn't work that way, and hasn't. The trade deficit is a direct result of a policy to offshore manufacturing--the two have tracked each other for decades.

Core inflation is pretty static recently, and small drops in that is no reason for celebration--real inflation is on the rise--it can't help but be with rising costs for transportation. They make high crude oil prices sound like a thing of the past, but, if one notices, they haven't gone below $60/bbl in a long, long time. Commodity metals prices are still in the stratosphere.

Employment? This bunch of assholes have completely jiggered the numbers ever since there were precipitous drops in the recession which started in 2000.

Debt is still going up, not as fast as previously, but still going up, and the deficit problem is going to get worse with continued tax cuts for the fatcats. The negative savings rate is as bad as it was in portions of the Great Depression.

Frankly, this sounds as if it's meant to prop up the markets, and nothing else. The bottom 90% of us aren't seeing it this way, at all.

[SIU_Blue]

13. Thank you for your concise and well worded analysis

much appreciated!

[punpirate]

17. Thanks. I'm sure there's a lot more that could be said...

... to show this is just more whistling past the graveyard, but what I mentioned just hits the high points. There are literally hundreds of thousands of layoffs planned in the next couple of years, and they're in well-paying industries. That will eventually result in a net drop of consumer purchasing power, and if the idiots in the WH start a war with Iran--even one that doesn't result in an invasion of that country--oil prices are going to head skyward.

But, the big fallacy in all this are tax cuts. Supply-side economics predicts increased investment and production which creates revenues, making up for the tax cuts. So, why are there huge deficits and the supposed need to reduce social spending? The key is in industrial capacity utilization. That's been pretty much unchanged for years. The investment money is being spent on overseas production capacity.

[savemefromdumbya]

10. Bush is still taking the stuff I see

This country is in a mess

[Roland99]

11. "I see dead people"..don't forget, M3 stops being published in a few weeks

Of course they see faster growth. That's how they'll claim they are cutting the fiscal deficit in half (as a % of GDP vs. actual dollars.) And, they'll just fudge those numbers like they have been all of the last 5 years.

With the cessation of the publishing of M3, they can fudge the numbers with greater cover.


This is really starting to scare the shit out of me.

[acmejack]

15. Ditto

I don't know whether to run through the streets laughing maniacally or take cover. Maybe I should try to do both simultaneously.

[bemildred]

16. I see four lights

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

There was a period of time when 'Star Trek - The Next Generation' was the best thing going on television. Between the character development, the social themes and the awesome reality of the Kingon, Worf, one could regularly tune in and spend an immensely satisfying hour in space.

One of the best 'The Next Generation' episodes is called 'Chain of Command.' A two-part cliffhanger, the story revolves around the abduction and torture of the captain of the Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, at the hands of an enemy commander named Gul Madred. Madred strips Picard naked, implants a device in his body that delivers agonizing pain at the push of a button, and over the course of many days attempts to wear Picard down through a disturbingly simple process of psychological warfare. Picard is seated in a chair with four bright lights shining in his face, and Madred attempts through painful coercion to make him say that there are, in fact, five lights. Every time he refuses to say there are five lights, he is drilled with pain. In essence, Picard is expected to deny the reality described by his own eyes, and surrender the will of his mind to the definition of reality offered by his captor.

In the end, Picard's will wins through the torture. He is rescued, and as he is led from the torture chamber - bloody, shivering, but unbowed - he turns back to Madred and husks, "There...are...four...lights!" Despite the agony, the deprivation, and the commanding voice of a controlling authority who demanded that a simple truth be subjugated, Picard never appeared to release the knowledge that his eyes were right. He refused, it seemed, to allow another to define his reality, even under torture. There were four lights.

This plot line is lifted directly from George Orwell's book, '1984.' The main character, Winston, is given a demonstration of how Doublethink works; O'Brien, his torturer, holds up four fingers before Winston's face, all the while increasing his agony, until Winston is compelled to say that he sees five fingers. The diabolical aspect of this is the incredible effectiveness of the coercion. Winston, at the end of the experience, actually does see five fingers before him.

http://truthout.org/docs_02/10.17A.wrp.4.lights.htm

[Roland99]

18. I fear the end result of this "reality" will make soup lines seem like

a luxury.

[stepnw1f]

12. Lock this Nutcase Up

America, please come to your senses!

[Clara T]

14. Economic growth is cancerous

Those who adhere to the economic notions of growth perpetuate an addictive lifestyle. The culture of growth functions so that it is self-destructive, suicidal; as if it were a person addicted to alcohol, white sugar, drugs or tobacco.The addict denies there is a problem, denial of reality. The civilization of growth is addicted in the same way.

Growth has been the fundamental pattern of the culture of civilization before Alexander conquered the known world. The difference now is that civilization is reaching its outer limits and soon will have nothing to feed on.

[EC]

19. Does anyone really listen to any of these guys anymore?

How could anyone believe them without rose colored glasses and acid?

[tanyev]

20. Bush group sees all kinds of things.

I want some of what they're smoking.

[NuttyFluffers]

21. "Come with me/ and you'll see/ a world of pure imagination!..."

Ahh, but Willy Wonka is so much cooler than Bush.