Posted on 02/10/2013 4:51:10 AM PST by IbJensen
Actually, we already saw it last quarter and there’ll be no escaping it this year.
To the shock of many, U.S. GDP shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012 by 0.1%. Immediately, however, economists and commentators flooded the media with reassuring explanations. Super Storm Sandy reduced economic activity in the areas it ravaged; worries about the fiscal cliff and sequestration dampened business spending and government defense spending; businesses let inventory levels dwindle. Even the Federal Reserve commented that the GDP drop was the result of “weather-related disruptions and other transitory factors.” All this is true, to some extent. But none of the reporting I saw even mentioned the elephant in the room that not only depressed economic activity in the fourth quarter of 2012, but will continue to depress economic activity through 2013 and beyond. That elephant is the “Affordable Care Act,” aka “Obamacare.”
Some of the negatives from the fourth quarter will reverse in the first quarter of 2013. Sandy reconstruction will kick in, and the big drop in defense outlays was probably an anomaly. But business inventories fell in the fourth quarter not because businesses were too pessimistic about demand and let inventories fall too much, but because they had been too optimistic earlier in the year and allowed them to get too high. The idea that business will have to start increasing inventory levels in the first quarter of 2013 in order to meet increasing demand is purely theoretical, and right now, there is precious little evidence to support that theory. On the contrary, lackluster holiday sales do not augur well for consumer spending, and the Conference Board’s index of consumer sentiment fell from a reading of 66.7 in December to 58.6 in January, its lowest reading since November 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
The evil power of the federal government is intoxicating and, for some, addictive.
One can only imagine the impact on the psyche of the power a senator, representative, federal judge or the president experiences daily. Certainly more power is the federal junkies dream.
Obama thinks he is a God. Rightly so. His sycophantic staffers (900 in the White Hut staff at last count) and worthless appointees, plus the trappings that surround him would reinforce this.
We cannot understand this federal power or its impact on the human mind. It would be an easy leap to think the masses should be ruled and that those in power are superior to those they rule.
The concept of evil is mysterious. Hitler was evil and sought power. How evil is Obam? Many of us believe that he is as evil as any human being ever to inhabit this planet.
Problem is, when the mask is unveiled it will be too late. Martial law. False flags. Death on a global scale. We will not be here to say “I told you so”. The internet as we know it will be gone in a flash drive.
Dream on. Ben will print like there’s no tomorrow. They quit caring about unemployment and GDP growth years ago.
I would say it’s hard to figure out how health care costs will function by 2016. My humble opinion is that more people will be on their own looking for health care options, than there were in 2008 before we started this. And that might be something that the news people won’t be able to avoid talking about (even small stations will be dumping their health care options for TV journalists).
If they had actually gone out and developed limitations on lawsuits and legal limits....they would have cut around twenty-five percent of all health costs. But that just wasn’t in the plans that they were building.
In ten years...most people will just shake their heads and wonder what this was supposed to do. Other than costing more and ending health care options for thirty million Americans who had health insurance....there’s no plus-up.
“The concept of evil is mysterious.”
“Evil” is simple: it is displacing God within the self WITH the self. Once one does that, if he be in power, death on a mass scale is a certainty. (Evil does not lack for fellow travlers).
Evil is simply the absence of good.
Another recession in the ongoing Depression. As it was in the thirties so it is now. The Great Depression was composed of expansions and recessions with the unemployment rate never decreasing to normal levels. Counted the way that unemployment was counted in the thirties, our smaller numbers become equal to those of the thirties. Actually. there may have been no actual expansion at all if you count price inflation the same way it was counted thirty years ago. That gives us unremitting “recession” since 2008.
If you control the government, the banks and the insurance companies, you pretty much control the entire economy without dealing in anything messy and tangible.
Friggin' lawyer/politician's dream.
It ends health care options for us old folks on Medicare, also. And we won’t be allowed to use our own money, either unless we go out of the country for procedures and such. And what is $20,000 (government estimate) a year for health “premiums” going to do for a $60,000-a-year family of four going to do? This all has nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with suppressing that most unreliable element of a population in a totalitarian state, the producing class.
yep, the only difference between now and the 30’s is the welfare system, which is hiding the truth.
That is my take on it. I guess we will find out in another 5 years or so. We currently are running trillion dollar federal deficits and the fed is pumping a trillion a year into the financial system to prevent it from collapsing. What do we have to show for it? A .1% decline in 4th quarter GDP. Food stamp participation rates still at all time highs and a labor force participation rate at generational lows.
The county I live in has 25% of the population living at the poverty level or below. It has never been that bad. But if you listen to the financial MSM, we have turned the corner and everything is now going like gang busters.
Define “good”.
i love it. the “coming” recession.
more like “continuing” recession. if anything has actually done well besides guns it’s because they may have gotten a ‘breather’ fiscal quarter here or there, but the climate hasn’t changed for 4+ years.
Like EBT food stamps- today's bread lines.
If you accept official inflation rates as real then we are probably entering another recession after a recovery, just as happened in the thirties. That whole period was recessions and expansions until the War (actually until Eisenhower).
Altogether it was the Depression. If you prefer more realistic inflation rates then there was no "recovery" at all, only a declining rate of contraction.
probably more close to your latter explanation.
hardly anyone in the business community has seen much of a recovery, that isn’t worried about things getting worse real soon, if not already worse. Only people doing well are gun manufacturers and gun retailers.
Anyone who has read the book of Jeremiah or Second Kings has heard of Evil-Merodach. No one ever hears of Good-Merodach.
BFL
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