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The Obama Index: The Newest Index to Measure Our Despair
Townhall.com ^ | September 8, 2012 | John Ransom

Posted on 09/08/2012 3:26:24 AM PDT by Kaslin

To give you an idea how bad the jobs report released on Friday is, consider this fact: The employment situation in the country is so bad that economists can’t accurately measure it with the existing tools they use to measure jobs. In other words, we have entered a period in our country not contemplated by economists. They simply don’t have the tools to measure what’s actually occurring in the jobs market.

Modern economists never imagined a scenario in which a country with as much wealth, power and innovation as United States could stretch out a jobs recession as long as the country has under Obama.

Economists please meet Barack Hussein Obama, record-setter. More debt, more spending, more regulation than ever before- and fewer jobs.

We have a record amount of money in the system doing a record amount of nothing right now. And still the government policy wonks keep thinking that by injecting more money into a system already over-burdened by its money supply we will eventually get different results.

Only Obama could preside over an economy with so much money that has produced so little return as our economy has since January 2009.

Never in the annals of human history have so many dollars done so little for so many.

1 percent unemployment number is meaningless. It actually doesn’t exist. It’s like measuring an 8 foot board with a 12 inch ruler. Shortening the ruler doesn’t make the board smaller.

The rate at which Americans are participating in the jobs market is now 63.5 percent. More than one-third of Americans qualified to work have despaired of ever finding a job under Obama. That’s the highest number of Americans who have sat on the sidelines rather than look for work since 1981. For over a year the workforce participation rates have plunged, coinciding with expiring unemployment benefits.

And the problem is not that there is a lack of money in the system to sustain the economy. But there is a notable lack of demand. Demand comes from confidence that consumers and business feel about the health of the economy. Unlike politicians, those of us in the real world can’t spend what we don’t have. We have to manage our lives using the cash that we actually have at hand.

The problem here is not that businesses and banks don’t have money. Currently the money supply (MZM) stands at a record $11 trillion. Yet the velocity at which the money has moved through the system has plunged under Obama. Money is sitting in accounts, not contributing to GDP growth, but rather just chasing the price of hard assets up because people who make decisions fear that the worst in the economy is yet to come.

Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, TARP, public pensions, John Corzine, Solydnra and the UAW have done a fantastic job of muddying the waters for corporate America as well as small business owners and the self-employed.

These hostile acts taken by or on behalf of Big Government have our economy idling in place.

Economic conditions are so bad that the standard tools used by economists to explain current conditions can’t measure the depth of the peoples’- or the economy’s- depression. Jimmy Carter had the Misery Index. People, meet the President of the United States: Barack Hussien Obama.

The Obama Index is the new index for measuring our despair.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
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1 posted on 09/08/2012 3:26:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

You’ll have to start using the models of third world countries like Zimbabve under insane rulers and fascism.


2 posted on 09/08/2012 3:34:41 AM PDT by Hardraade (http://junipersec.wordpress.com (I will fear no muslim))
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To: Kaslin

The Obama index...........you can only jerryrig the numbers so much until you come up with another catch phrase or blame Bush as a last resort


3 posted on 09/08/2012 3:34:58 AM PDT by ronnie raygun (bb)
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To: ronnie raygun

The Obama misery index


4 posted on 09/08/2012 3:35:30 AM PDT by ronnie raygun (bb)
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To: Kaslin
That’s the highest number of Americans who have sat on the sidelines rather than look for work since 1981.

This is an interesting fact for 2 reasons: 1) Reagan had just become President, and with the implementation of his policies, the US economy began the longest growth cycle in the nation's history.
2) Prior to 1981, many woman did not work. Housewives/mothers stayed home - by choice. During the 1970s, more and more women joined the workforce.

I don't know if it's possible to measure this or not, but it would be interesting to measure the workforce participation between 1950-2010 with those who want to work, rather than those who are of working age.

It is my belief that if you measure the percentage of people wanted to work, and couldn't find work, today's participation would be MUCH lower.

When I went to college in the late '70s (during the Carter administration), most women in college were pursuing an MRS degree. They were simply looking for a husband, and had no intention of working - outside of maybe some volunteer work...

5 posted on 09/08/2012 3:55:16 AM PDT by Cowboy Bob (Greed + Envy = Liberalism)
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To: Kaslin
Anyone old enough to remember the "Misery Index" under (the now 2nd worst President ever) James Earl Carter (aka P-Nut Farmer)?

It was right up there close to 18% which was a combination of the Unemployment Rate and the Inflation Rate.

Under Dear Reader if the powers at be were not cooking the books, the Misery Index would be OVER 40%

SEE: True inflation rate 27.67 percent for past 12 months:

http://www.escapetyranny.com/2011/02/15/inflation-anyone-check-out-the-12-month-price-increases-on-this-commodity-price-index/

We keep hearing that inflation remains relatively low. But a look at this Commodity Price Index chart indicates that the real inflation rate was over 20 percent for the past 12 months, more than 30 percent for food — even higher for commodities we really need to live.

Cotton is up 132 percent. Agricultural raw materials up 39 percent. Oil up 21 percent. Coal up 36 percent. Metals up 57 percent. Coffee up 70 percent. Wheat up 62 percent. Beef up 39 percent. Fish up 31 percent. Hard logs up 19 percent. Soft logs up 27 percent. Rubber up 79 percent. Wool up 57 percent. Fertilizer up 39 percent. Soy beans up 42 percent. Corn up 58 percent. Silver up 60 percent. Industrial Inputs Price Index up 51 percent. Commodity Food Price Index up 30 percent. Commodity Fuel Price Index up 20 percent.

This just over the last 12 months!

Can you say catastrophe?

That and the "Real" Unemployment Rate being 14.2% make this Commie, POS, the WORST President EVER!!!

6 posted on 09/08/2012 3:58:24 AM PDT by neveralib
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To: Kaslin

If the new model hadn’t kicked in in August, the unemployment number would have been 9.1%. I guess Obama’s economists can just keep changing the model when the statistics aren’t in their favor. And the msm certainly will not publicize it. Can you imagine their hyperventilating coverage if this had taken place during Pres. Bush’s watch?


7 posted on 09/08/2012 4:02:58 AM PDT by txrefugee
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To: Kaslin
1 percent unemployment number is meaningless. It actually doesn’t exist. It’s like measuring an 8 foot board with a 12 inch ruler

Actually, the government found a way around this a while back. They use a rubber band now. Stretch as necessary....

8 posted on 09/08/2012 4:20:21 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: Gaffer
1 percent unemployment number is meaningless. It actually doesn’t exist. It’s like measuring an 8 foot board with a 12 inch ruler

Actually, the government found a way around this a while back. They use a rubber band now. Stretch as necessary....

You mean they didn't insert their fingers through the middle of the rubber band and roll it down the board?

Wouldn't that be easier by government standards?

9 posted on 09/08/2012 4:39:18 AM PDT by thingumbob (I'm a bitter clinger...I dare you to take my gun)
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To: Kaslin

Unbelievable

The silence of those who condemned Bush for 5% unemployment, for the Patriot Act that monitored library accounts and overseas calls by terrorist suspects, and for the “oil war” in Iraq

the silence they now show when 89 MILLION Americans are out of the job market, when armed drones are flying over our homes and we dont even know what agencies are controlling them or why, when the NSA mines our emails and internet chats for subversive terms like Tea Party, when the IRS hires a new army of thousands of agents to pursue ‘the rich” and collect coming obamacare taxes, when domestic US cabinet agencies buy hundreds of thusands of rounds of hollow point bullets, when TSA agents stick their hands down our grandmothers’ bras and our childrens’ underpants at airports, school and sporting events, when US troops dying in Afghaistan don’t even make the evening news


10 posted on 09/08/2012 4:55:53 AM PDT by silverleaf (Age Takes a Toll: Please Have Exact Change)
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To: neveralib

anyone who buys gas and groceries and pays utility bills knows we are being jerked around on inflation figures

big time


11 posted on 09/08/2012 4:57:34 AM PDT by silverleaf (Age Takes a Toll: Please Have Exact Change)
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To: Kaslin
Sort of Galtish the way people and businesses are not willing to keep the engine running in the Obama economy. Sure, there is a lot of fear and worry about "what next", but I'm sure there is also a fair amount of "screw you, Barack Obama, you socialist bastard" in the unwillingness to spend and hire.

Come on, November.

12 posted on 09/08/2012 4:57:48 AM PDT by onemiddleamerican (FUBO and all your terrorist buddies)
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To: neveralib

“True inflation rate 27.67 percent for past 12 months:”

That’s a fact. I was hunting thru the supermarket meat department yesterday to stock up and I was thinking I might need to take out a loan. Plain old hamburger is near $5 a pound.


13 posted on 09/08/2012 5:03:09 AM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: neveralib
Anyone old enough to remember the "Misery Index" under (the now 2nd worst President ever) James Earl Carter (aka P-Nut Farmer)?

I'd say Jimmy has dropped to third place among White House occupants (I don't want to get into whether the thug in our White House today is eligible for that position and should even have a place on the same list with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Reagan). Buchanan's mangling of the first months of the South's actions produced a full-scale civil war, and we still haven't fully recovered from the chain of events that Buchanan set in motion. Obama has not (yet) started our second civil war, but he has done exceptionally grave damage to our country, to the point that many despair of ever recovering. Jimmy was an inept bumbler, but he did little lasting damage in comparison to Buchanan and Obama.

14 posted on 09/08/2012 5:04:54 AM PDT by Pollster1 (Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: Kaslin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_index_%28economics%29


15 posted on 09/08/2012 5:05:46 AM PDT by diverteach (If I find liberals in heaven after my death.....I WILL BE PISSED!!!)
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To: Kaslin

My 0bamameter has been pegged since the last election...actually sometime before it.


16 posted on 09/08/2012 5:06:59 AM PDT by SueRae (See it? Hell, I can TASTE November from my house!)
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To: silverleaf
...domestic US cabinet agencies buy hundreds of thusands of rounds of hollow point bullets,

Hundreds of thousands?

More like "hundreds of millions".

17 posted on 09/08/2012 5:16:03 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Kaslin
BLUF – What we are seeing in the economy is caused by the Emperor’s total ignorance of the economy.

The economy has, and will again, flourish when we get beyond the dependent upon government funding mentality.

Businesses work because they have a long-term plan of where they want to be in five, ten, or fifteen years into the future. Daily, weekly, and monthly figures are measured against that plan and it is adjusted as things change. And that is the secret – the plan is always being adjusted to meet the long term goal of profit in the future. Add to this the need to have funds (do I dare say savings) to cover businesses surprises and modernization and I think we have a broad brush definition of a successful business.

But what happens to the business plan based on government funding? First of all their business plans never look more than five years into the future. They more often look only a year into the future because the Federal Budget that funds them is an annual event. Second, they spend every dollar they get no matter how wasteful the end of year spending spree. This spending spree is based on the Federal Budgeting process that punishes effective management.

So – where is this going?

The Emperor is the product of his experience. As a Federally Funded Community Organizer his world view has been defined as a one-year vision. After all, with funding based on an annual Federal handout how could he plan for the out years? As a Federally Funded Community Organizer his financial management has been defined as spending every dollar he has been given. Failure to do so means less money in the next gift from the Federal Government.

Our economy will NOT move because of the conflict between the Emperor, the Federally Funded Community Organizer, and the businessmen, the long term planners.

Who will win?

18 posted on 09/08/2012 5:28:55 AM PDT by Nip (TANSTAAFL and BOHICA)
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To: Kaslin

If obama had the mental capacity to understand how much money is being sit on because of him, he would be insulted.


19 posted on 09/08/2012 5:29:28 AM PDT by kevslisababy
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To: Kaslin

-—— but rather just chasing the price of hard assets up———

I wonder how many corporate treasurers are buying gold? We think of the cash just sitting in banks but MBA’s know how to put money to work. How much gold do US corporations own?

The money made by corporate treasurers investing cash in overnight securities was a big deal back when but is a trifle to the gain in metals.


20 posted on 09/08/2012 5:44:19 AM PDT by bert ((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... Present failure and impending death yield irrational action))
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