Recent comments

  • 20,000 jobs created in an area where the job skills don't exist, requiring a move to the Great Plains where XL is to be built. Once XL is completed, there is NO MORE WORK THERE. All these 20,000 people are then to hope that Red State economies will absorb them? I'm very sure Kansas can't care for their own citizens who have lived there for many years much less those transients who came in for the construction. Would they regret having to spend what little they saved across that one year to find another place to alight in hope of gainful employment?

    Typical CON radical. A band-aid will fix anything, as long as you got yours.

    Reply to: The GOP’s “Jobs Bill Joke” (and other 2015 LOLs)   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Pretty much all charitable organisations in the west are the same.

    Everywhere CEOs tell themselves and everybody else that to get the best you have to pay for it.

    Time to tax the hell out of CEOs no matter who they "serve"

    simply because we all know but wont admit that they are all thieves, liars and slimy low life creeps that should be skinned and salted before being beaten to death by the people they steal from.

    Having worked with quite a few i can assert that shooting them all would make the world a far better place.

    pop

    Reply to: Hold the Mayo! It's eating up billions in 'nonprofit' funds   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • the Wall Street Journal was just misleading, as if they wrote half the story & headline beforehand because they knew that health care outlays would be revised up...but Zero Hedge deliberately punked their readers, posting a chart showing just the revisions to PCE between the 2nd estimate and this one, such that 3rd quarter GDP appeared to be all about health care, which was the way they wrote about it...others spread that story from there...

    Reply to: Q3 2014 GDP Revised Up to a Whopping 5.0%   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Just to confirm, you're right, it's 4.6% annualized increase and I just have no idea where they came up with such a wild hair unless there is some other specialized index, sure not from consumer spending.

    Reply to: Q3 2014 GDP Revised Up to a Whopping 5.0%   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • In a town in China that makes the world's Christmas decorations, there’s no snow and no elves, just 600 factories that produce 60% of all the decorations in the world.

    http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/de...

    Reply to: Q3 2014 GDP Revised Up to a Whopping 5.0%   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • i just may not spit it out right...i report from the tables here: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2014/pdf/gdp3q14_3rd.pdf

    the percentage increases of each are shown in table 1, and the itemized percentage contributions to the GDP change are shown in table 2...then the current dollar and inflation adjusted changes are shown in table 3...when i compute the annualized change for figures such as health care that are not itemized in table 1, i take the quarterly 2009 chained dollar change in table 3 to the 4th power to give an annualized figure that would be comparable to the annualized GDP figures quoted elsewhere in the report..

    Reply to: Q3 2014 GDP Revised Up to a Whopping 5.0%   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • percentage point contribution is more fractional whereas percentage are against themselves. In other words, defense spending increased 16% from Q2, yet contributed 0.66 to GDP, that's roughly 13.3%.

    Health care spending is right under services and it was 0.52 percentage point contribution, or 10.5% of Q3 GDP.

    They (and you I think) are mixing percentage point contributions against percentages. The percentages are against themselves and the percentage point contribution breakdown, if you add them all up and then attribute for rounding, error ...that adds up to GDP 4.96%.

    Not the first time ZH has done this.

    Reply to: Q3 2014 GDP Revised Up to a Whopping 5.0%   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • both the Wall Street Journal and Zero Hedge headlined health care spending as the reason for the jump in GDP, and by the time that reporting was digested by Ilargi at Automatic Earth and Yves at Naked Capitalism it became "health-care spending makes up 2/3 of the 5%"

    as i've been trying to point out whereever it's been misreported, real health care outlays were just a tenth of the 3rd quarter GDP increase and less than half of the upward revision….they actually increased at a real rate of 4.6%, so health care outlays were actually a small drag on the overall quarterly increase…

    here's my breakdown of PCE, with the links showing my math:

    real personal consumption expenditures, the largest component of GDP, were revised to show growth at a 3.2% annual rate rather than the 2.2% growth rate reported last month, and hence they contributed 2.21% to the quarter's growth rate, not the 1.51% previously estimated...real consumption of durable goods grew at a 9.2% rate, revised from the 8.7% growth rate reported in the second estimate, and added .67% to the final GDP figure; major contributors to that were a 15.7% real growth rate in consumption of recreational goods and vehicles and a 11.2% real growth rate in motor vehicle and parts consumption, while real consumption of furnishings and durable household equipment rose slightly and consumption of other durable goods fell, even as all durables consumption benefited from a negative 2.1% deflator...meanwhile, real personal consumption of non-durable goods rose at a 2.5% rate and added 0.39% to GDP, revised from the previous estimate of a 2.2% growth rate, even though inflation adjusted outlays for food and beverages, clothing, and energy goods were virtually unchanged....in addition, real consumption of services grew at an 2.5% rate and added 1.15% to the quarter's growth, revised from the 1.2% growth rate and 0.53% addition reported in the second estimate last month, as real consumption of financial services and insurance grew at a 7.0% annual rate, real consumption of food and lodging services grew at a 4.9% rate, and real outlays for health care services rose at a 4.6% rate, offsetting a small decrease in real outlays for housing and utilities and while outlays for recreation and other services were flat..

    Reply to: Q3 2014 GDP Revised Up to a Whopping 5.0%   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • But yet, we can expect the rest of society to bailout banks, airlines, auto companies, etc....

    The government (you and me) are expected to bailout corporations and credit default swaps, but not retirement funds.

    Reply to: New Spending Bill Puts Pensions at Risk   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • You don't point out that the "multi-employer plans" were sweetheart deals negotiated in which all the participants knew in advance that the funding didn't exist to fund all the benefits. They were pre-panned as a way of dumping excessive union pension obligations on the rest of society. Now it is clear the piper needs to be paid, or the pensions that remain need to reflect actual contributions made over the years of employent. Most single employer plans have already faced up to this, and have frozen the plans to avoid much of the over-extension. That's why those plans--unlike the multi-employer plans--either have much lower benefits, or have stopped increasing benefits over the past 12 years.

    This is not to justify the practice, just to say that you can't expect the rest of society to pay for union negotiated benefits that the unions and the Big Three automatker employers haven't funded.

    Reply to: New Spending Bill Puts Pensions at Risk   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • true, but it's weighted heavily in the CPI compared to how the BEA weighs it in national accounts...shelter is 32% of the CPI, and the housing aggregate is 41.668% of the CPI, while housing and utilities was just 18% of PCE in the 3rd quarter...

    Reply to: Plunging Gas Prices Pull Down November CPI   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Rent is clearly going through the roof...

    Reply to: Plunging Gas Prices Pull Down November CPI   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • what's hidden in the core CPI is that prices prices for goods have been falling while prices for services have generally tended to rise, and since services are more heavily weighted, the lower prices for goods is rarely noticed...for instance, prices for household furnishings and supplies, the commodity component of housing, fell by 0.5%, with a 4.4% drop in prices for laundry appliances, a 1.9% decrease in prices for linens, 1.8% lower prices for decor items and 1.2% lower cookware and tableware more than offsetting a 3.4% increase in the price of window coverings...the price index for apparel fell 1.1% in November as a 3.7% drop in prices for women's outerwear, a 3.4% drop in prices for girls apparel, a 2.4% drop in prices for women's suits, 1.7% lower priced boys' and girls' footwear, and 1.2% lower prices for men's suits, coats, and outerwear, more than offset a 1.7% increase in the prices of men's pants and shorts. ...meanwhile, prices for transportation commodities less fuel prices fell 0.4%, as prices for new cars and trucks fell 0.1%, prices for used cars & trucks fell 1.2%, tire prices fell 0.4% and prices for oil & other automotive fluids fell by 0.5%; recreation commodities fell 0.6% as television prices fell 3.2%, prices for other video equipment fell 2.7%, prices for audio equipment fell 1.2%, and prices for both toys and photography equipment fell 0.9%, education and communication commodities fell 0.9% on a 2.9% drop in prices for telephones and other consumer information hardware and 1.5% lower prices for personal computers and similar gear...in November, 3 line items among the CPI core components showed a annual price drops of greater than 10%: televisions, which have fallen in price by 16.2%, telephone hardware, which is now priced 10.6% less, and laundry appliances, which are now 10.2% cheaper than they were a year ago...

    Reply to: Plunging Gas Prices Pull Down November CPI   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Didn't say it wasn't important, said it was pathetic and insufficient.

    "We need government [but] we need government to stop pursuing policies to give the rich all the money. "

    Here's the solution you asked for. Perhaps they need to type more slowly for you.

    Reply to: The GOP’s “Jobs Bill Joke” (and other 2015 LOLs)   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • so 20,000 job years, good paying jobs, are not important ?
    schmuck (and I don't use that word lighlty)
    why don't you go to gary IN or someplace like that and tell people 5 or 6 or 7,000 high pay jobs are not important

    how about, instead of criticizing, an alternative ? nah, that would require actual work

    Reply to: The GOP’s “Jobs Bill Joke” (and other 2015 LOLs)   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • I had no idea on the history of Baldwin pianos, great piece! And we thought we were just practicing the notes, who knew others were learning how to short a stock to oblivion.

    Reply to: Wall Street Players and Pianos   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • I posted an update to this post at my blog (It's too long for a comment here).

    http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2014/12/is-any-pension-safe.html

    Reply to: New Spending Bill Puts Pensions at Risk   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • I already imagined what the Top One Percent's "END GAME" would look like...

    http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-top-one-percents-end-game.html

    Reply to: The GOP’s “Jobs Bill Joke” (and other 2015 LOLs)   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Yep.

    Reply to: The Devaluation of American Workers   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • Just thinking of the end game in that robots will be cheaper than paying for the gruel one needs to keep people running. The end game on squeezing labor unabated is none too pretty.

    Reply to: The GOP’s “Jobs Bill Joke” (and other 2015 LOLs)   9 years 11 months ago
    EPer:

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