Ezra Klei of WaPo: Five reasons the economy may be about to boom

Washingto (Com)Post ^ | 09/05/2012 | Ezra Klein

[SeekAndFind]

1.

[SeekAndFind]

His two other reasons are:

4. “The U.S. has made a huge leap in industrial competitiveness.

5. “The U.S. may surprise itself and the world by rectifying its deficit and debt problems.

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST

[Obadiah]

Ezra Klein is the guy who started Journ-O-List.

[GeronL]

#5, lol.

competitive? We have the highest corporate tax rates on Earth

[rod1]

The article should have begun like this:

Roger Altman former Democratic party operative and who is willing to say anything to further the party’s cause says......

[Tenacious 1]

.....

99. Obama will be leaving the Whitehouse soon and sanity is expected to return the the US economy.

[Dead Corpse]

And slated to go higher next year with even more Obamacare taxes...

Yippy. :-|

[griswold3]

Ezra is not talking to the folks here. My small business friends are sounding like it’s 2008 again, the time when they saw Obama coming and there was a massive cutback preparation for the brewing storm. They were right then. I just wonder who the ‘progressives’ are going to blame this downturn on. Nothing good will come of this.

[2ndDivisionVet]

1. Mitt Romney
2. Paul Ryan
3. Barack Obama gone
4. Obama czars gone
5. Federal right-to-work legislation

[2ndDivisionVet]

There’s no such thing as a “former” Democratic Party operative. See George Stephanopolous, Chris Matthews, etc.

[Hojczyk]

Drill Baby Drill

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

#0: President Romney

[radpolis]

Remember, these are the same liberals who promised us that if spent trillions in deficit spending that unemployment would never go below 8%.

And the same liberals who promised us a recovery summer back in 2010.

[GeorgeWashingtonsGhost]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Competitiveness_Report#2008-2009_rankings

When Bush was President we were #1 in Global Competitiveness. 0bama's first year in office we slipped to #2 and it's been downhill since:

2009-2010 = U.S. #2

2010-2011 = U.S. #4

2011-2012 = U.S. #5

2012-2013 = U.S. #7

[apillar]

If Romney does win and the economy does improve sometime in the next four years, all we will here about from the liberal media is how Romney had nothing to do with it, Obamanomics finally worked and what a shame it is that the idiot voters kicked him out of office before he had could finish what he started.

[PowderMonkey]

Someone sees more “green shoots” of an impending recovery through readings of the tea leafs and goat entrails.

[cuban leaf]

There is a typo in the headline. The word “go” should follow the word “to”.

[cuban leaf]

If there is a boom, and I think there may be, it will be caused by one thing: monetization of the whole mess. That truly is the scorched earth solution. Whenever it is implemented, and it will be, eventually, it will be the last and final solution to this mess. And when it falters, you had better be wearing a really tough parachute.

[God luvs America]

reason 6- ezra klein needs/wants obamogabe re-elected...

[cuban leaf]

Here is a great comment from the comments at the article’s site. It sums it up very well:

1. Housing, even with the “improving” number is still half of what it was averaging before 2006. I found the data in 5 secs, why didn’t the author?

2. Oil and gas will save the economy. Its a mirage according the today’s NYT, and the Democrats will likely shut down fracking.

3. Banking recovered? With unlimited taxpayer funds, I should hope so. But financial stocks never recovered from 2008. Morgan Stanley is rumored to be about to fail and GM is back in bankruptcy territory. The banking system is on life support nothing more.

4. Unit costs are down because wages, benefits and the numbers of workers are down.

5. Ending all of the Bush tax cuts net $100 billion per year. The budget “sequestration” cuts net about $100 billion per year. The deficit is $1.1 trillion. No fix is imminent for the budget woes. The Fed is having to print money and force interest rates low not to stimulate the economy but to keep the US government from a Greek or Spanish type collapse.

I rarely read the WaPo any more because of trash like this, but I clicked the link without looking at the url. The quality of the WaPo content has dropped to the level of a facebook post.

[SampleMan]

1. The housing sector is improving

It stopped falling. That is about it. With 15% real unemployment house sales aren't going anywhere based on demand. Mortgage rates are now at 3.5%. They can only realistically go up, and price movement will be inverse to interest costs.

2. The breathtaking increase in oil and gas production.

Maybe if Republicans win the WH and 60% of the Senate this will mean something, but otherwise the petroleum industry is working at cross purposes with the government.

3. The U.S. banking system has recovered faster than anyone could have imagined.

That is a joke right? Its totally propped up by a federal government, which is itself bankrupt.

4. The U.S. has made a huge leap in industrial competitiveness

Companies retracted into their next lowest sweet spot of productivity, giving up on positioning for growth. As they all have done this, efficiency has gone up. This isn't a leap up, its hunkering down. Comparisons have also been skewed by the under reporting of the dollar's collapse.

5. The U.S. may surprise itself and the world by rectifying its deficit and debt problems.

Only if some new laws of mathematics are discovered.