Monday, February 8, 2016

Recession Looms


More evidence that we are in an expanding recession:
Theo Francis, "Big Firms Hit Brake as Profit Slumps," The Wall Street Journal, Feb 8, 2016, A1, A2:

"Overall, companies in the S&P Index are on track to report adjusted fourth-quarter profits down 4.1% from a year earlier, and sales down 3.5% according to Thompson Reuters. That would mark two consecutive quarters of shrinking earnings for the first time since 2009, and four straight quarters of falling sales." (A2)

Much of the falling earnings is attributable to the energy sector.  Employees in this sector have wages that are typically higher than found in the retail sector. That means that the imploding energy sector is going to hurt retail sales, spreading job cuts further afield.

Capitalism will consume itself cutting labor, exacerbating over-production and fueling simmering social discord.

The government and intelligentsia will feebly call "all's well" in the pages of the mainstream news but falling tax revenue will hurt states, which will cut social welfare and education benefits still further.

Millennials will buy phones, rather than cars and houses and the economy will become increasingly polarized.

Of course, perhaps falling wages will be overshadowed by the looming enviro-apocalypses everywhere I look: Fukushima, Hanford, Porter Ranch, St. Louis landfill fire, WIPP in New Mexico, etc, etc. etc.

Taking the blue pill would be nice but where is there left to go where the matrix still maintains enough integrity for fantasy to prevail?

8 comments:

  1. Why americans will no longer be able to afford living in american cities.
    http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/05/23532480/why-americans-will-no-longer-be-able-to-afford-to-live-in-american-cities

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  2. Yet I shall joust, and figure out how to be more effective. stock out

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  3. According to Michael Hudson we are in debt deflation now. Personally I think during the past seven years people have merely adjusted to lower incomes and moved from houses to apartments and similar things. Americans still identify the stock market with the real economy but that is simply where all the money has gone from the QE's. In short the recession is still with us and apparently getting worse not better.

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    1. I agree with Hudson and really like his work. Yes the problem is that Americans do identify the stock market with the "real" economy.

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  4. Hudson would like to see debt forgiveness but thinks the oligarchs will never go for that. In the ancient world it was common. It also looks like the European banks are in serious trouble.

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  5. SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME FROM CITIES LIKE SEATTLE
    During the last great depression there was so much poverty and homelessness that the rich and  burgeois hired
    vigilantes thugs to clean things up.The euphemism is extra security patrols. There are probably 30000 in shelters tents underbbridges ect. Recent head vount of jus people on the streets was above 5000!. That is much higher than previous years. People in rvs and cars ar not necessarily counted homeless nor are couch surfers.

    There are many homeless in the rainy  streets of seattle that are hightly intoxicated to cope with the cold rain in seattle. Like the starving coyotes of california they live on amanita muscaria mushrooms only with cheap malt liqour as well. At sometimes in the day in seattle, you can hardly go to china town or king street or even as far north as wallingford without gettin molested by intoxicated disposessed.  Especially at rush hours at bus train hubs. homeless.
    The weather is so cold and crummy in seattle this time of year and the disposessed homeless so wasted a lot of the time. They actively molest people downtown for money change.  My veteran friend, who works downtown seattle has been mugged twice in last few months. He has a prosthetic leg.

    Kids are picked up on school buses from tent citiesin seattle every day.  So many working people living out of cars and rvs in ballard, greenlake, magnolia ,queen anne, capital hill, u district, north on aurora.
    Lake city , wedgewood , and similar neighborhoods have every other house in foreclosure. 
    One of the gys on ene tg was livin like that up there in a car for months.

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    1. More Shape of Things to Come From Cities like Seattle
      Suburbs of seattle like monroe , federal way to the south, and lake stephens to the north, have  brand new completely empty neighborhood housing projects built in 2008.

      Same in many places in tacoma every other house in foreclosure in surprising numbers of neighborhoods.  Streets lined with rvs and cars people are living out of like hiway 99 north and just off of it. Like east ballard. East magnolia.

      Yet dumn liberals , conservatives so called centrists and others just listen to the fake job reports on npr or fox or cnn, the fake economy reports and vote for the same old lunkheads.

      Expensive luxury apts, high rises condos with crappy parking or parking that pushes people out sit empty.  Built by billionaire russians, chinese, saudies, enlishman, carlos slim types. 

      The constant new building and high dollar dwelling keep rents at 2000 a month for studios . Very similar to london , new york , hong kong even vancouver bc.  Artficially high land prices keeps crappy small houses of 1500 sq ft at 222000 dollars, even though few are selling. 

      The few high tech jobs there gives a dubious excuse for such inflated housing prices.Meanwhile owners wring their hands and wonder why there is so much homelessness and things are so out of control.  Their answer is hire private security ie vigilantes to clean things up.

      Really they want goon squads to shake down  poor people and rv dwellers car dwellers and intimidate them with their legal firearms. Very dark bloody depair.

      It is the worst kind of rentfare, wealthfare, property fare. It is extreme neoliberalism, zillionaire wealthfare wreaking with a vengeance.  It is a vicious cycle and property values are kept way artificially high for the creepy ousider oligarchs. Not free market at all. Just lies, fraud, crooked, politicians like the nuclear industry. Property taxes   kept way artificially high.

      The zillionaires have no place to put money because stock equities and savings are so crappy, no return. so they are keeping propery values rigged.

      Most americans will no longer be able to afford living in american cities soon
      http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/05/23532480/why-americans-will-no-longer-be-able-to-afford-to-live-in-american-cities

      The suprised liberal hippocrits n ballard, greenlake, magnlolia, capital hill, queen ann in seattle want their property values to stay high. The reality is working people cant afford the high rent and could never buy a condo or house now.

      Many many people have to live in rvs and cars to stay out of the rain and go to work everyday.  Now the loving liberal and conservative bourgies, and retired bourgies and ric i n seattle want to hire extra security or what they called vigilante posses in the last great depression in america, to chase rvs and cars out of neighborhood.  Things are getting ugly.  The real depression started in 2008 in many cities . now it is about to get a lot worse.
      http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/meeting-draws-hundreds-frustrated-by-rvs-property-theft-in-seattle/

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    2. Great comment. You won't be surprised that in the wake of the financial crisis, Wall Street created rent-backed securities to amplify the value that could be extracted from their new ownership of foreclosed properties. I just saw that rental prices have risen quite excessively nation-wide, as reported here:
      Jonathan Chew, “Why Rents Could Rise by 8% in 2016,” Fortune, October 7, 2015, accessed January 24, 2016, http://fortune.com/2015/10/07/rents-rise-housing/.

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