Jobs? Growth? Investing? Obama beats Reagan

[FantasticDan]

Interesting article about how Obama compares to Reagan, the "best modern economic president".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/

Economically, President Obama’s administration has outperformed President Reagan’s in all commonly watched categories.

Look for this story to be picked up very soon on Breitbart and Friends :lol: :ThmbUp:

[classhandicapper]

Interesting article about how Obama compares to Reagan, the "best modern economic president".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/

Economically, President Obama’s administration has outperformed President Reagan’s in all commonly watched categories.

Look for this story to be picked up very soon on Breitbart and Friends :lol: :ThmbUp:

I don't like this data.

1. Calling Reagan the best modern economic president is like calling him the tallest pygmy.

2. IMO Job creation as not such a great metric.

a) The job creation stat will be dependent on where you are in the business cycle

b) All else being equal, a larger population will create a more jobs than a smaller one. All else being equal who would create more jobs in a recovery, Texas or Rhode Island? So naturally we should create more jobs in a recovery now than in the 80s

c) The deeper a recession is (Obama's was worse), the more likely you are to create a lot of jobs in the subsequent recovery to get back to the previous peak and beyond.

d) If the government borrows a lot of money and spends it, it can create a lot of temporary jobs that will eventually vanish when the programs stop.

It's hard to normalize for these things.


3. The unemployment rate is not comparable because of the changes that have been made in recent years to make it look better than the reality.

4. The stock market is often a poor measurement of the economy because it is often driven by easy money/credit from the Fed and speculative excesses from investors. That is often an indication of a very unhealthy economy that is about to have another recession.

I think it might make more sense to measure peak to peak total private sector jobs as a percentage of the total population and the average pay of those jobs adjusted for inflation. That way you are normalizing for where you are in the business cycle, size of the population, making sure not to count government jobs that could be all fat, and making sure the jobs you are creating are not all burger flippers. Even that would not be perfect.

The author conveniently left out all the data (like % of Americans on welfare, food stamps, medicaid or other government financial assistance) that makes the current environment look poor.

[Tom]

Obama himself said you cannot use the stock market as a reliable indicator of a good economy.

Reagan didn't create McJobs.

Millions of people were not forced out of the job market.

I'm looking for a good Dennis Miller routine for this one. :lol:

[Clocker]

I'm looking for a good Dennis Miller routine for this one. :lol:

Try Looney Tunes.

[Clocker]

From the article:
Deitrick: “The labor participation rate adds in jobless part time workers and those in marginal work situations with those seeking full time work. This is not a “hidden” unemployment. It is a measure tracked since 1900 and called ‘U6.’ today by the BLS.

This is incorrect. "U6" measures underemployment, not the participation rate. The participation rate is a measure of the number of people that quit looking for work, and are no longer counted as unemployed. It is currently the lowest (i.e., the worst) it has been since 1978. When the participation rate goes down, the unemployment rate goes down. So it is bad news that looks good on the surface.

And contrary to that article, Obama did not cut the deficit or decrease the federal payroll. Sequestration did that, despite his objections. And the deficit, although lower than earlier in Obama's administration, is still irresponsibly high. And despite the president's boasts about consistent job growth, the number of new jobs every month is not keeping up with population growth. So we are losing ground there, not gaining.

The economy returned to pre-recession employment levels in May, 2014, the longest recovery (77 months) from a recession since WWII. The recovery under Reagan took 28 months. This recovery, slow as it was, happened in spite of Obama, not because of anything he did. It shows that the US economy is so strong that not even Obama can kill it. Economic growth is still being slowed by government policies, including ObamaCare and the carbon nazis at the EPA.

All of which ignores the biggest point. It doesn't matter what Reagan did or what Bush did or what Nixon did. What matters is what Obama did. And what has he accomplished? In the words of his trusty side-kick, Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive. That and ObamaCare, a Frankenstein monster of government intrusion and pork. Nothing there any rational person would want on his resume.

[mostpost]

The unemployment rate is not comparable because of the changes that have been made in recent years to make it look better than the reality.
What are these changes and how do they favorably affect the rate now as compared to in Reagan's time?

[mostpost]

Obama himself said you cannot use the stock market as a reliable indicator of a good economy.

Reagan didn't create McJobs.

Millions of people were not forced out of the job market.

I'm looking for a good Dennis Miller routine for this one. :lol:
That, is an oxymoron.

[classhandicapper]

What are these changes and how do they favorably affect the rate now as compared to in Reagan's time?

I became aware of the trend towards changing the way the government calculates many of its stats during the dot com bubble period under Clinton. There were articles about it in Barrons and some investment newsletters I used to read regularly.

If I can find an article that highlights the specific changes made to unemployment, I'll post it. The changes are still referenced all the time in similar sources saying that the official unemployment figures are understating the level compared to the way it used to be calculated.

This is a good site for occasional articles comparing GDP, inflation, and other stats the old way and new way.

http://www.shadowstats.com/

[JustRalph]

Sorry, but the 7 million people out of the workforce are the huge pachyderm in the room. The proverbial fly in the ointment.

Not one damn number coming from anybody is worth a shit as long as even half of those people are not working.

The entire system is skewed. 92 million people sitting on the sidelines. Most of them on the dole. How you can crow about anything is a damn joke.

[Clocker]

What are these changes and how do they favorably affect the rate now as compared to in Reagan's time?

What difference does it make?

Are the unemployed and the underemployed and the labor force drop outs going to be better off if they know that Obama beat Reagan statistically?

The job market is not healthy and Obama is not helping it. Whether he has better or worse numbers than Reagan matters nothing in the real world.

[mostpost]

I became aware of the trend towards changing the way the government calculates many of its stats during the dot com bubble period under Clinton. There were articles about it in Barrons and some investment newsletters I used to read regularly.

If I can find an article that highlights the specific changes made to unemployment, I'll post it. The changes are still referenced all the time in similar sources saying that the official unemployment figures are understating the level compared to the way it used to be calculated.

This is a good site for occasional articles comparing GDP, inflation, and other stats the old way and new way.

http://www.shadowstats.com/
Thanks for that. I will look it over.

[mostpost]

I became aware of the trend towards changing the way the government calculates many of its stats during the dot com bubble period under Clinton. There were articles about it in Barrons and some investment newsletters I used to read regularly.

If I can find an article that highlights the specific changes made to unemployment, I'll post it. The changes are still referenced all the time in similar sources saying that the official unemployment figures are understating the level compared to the way it used to be calculated.

This is a good site for occasional articles comparing GDP, inflation, and other stats the old way and new way.

http://www.shadowstats.com/
I looked at your link and it seemed like gibberish to me. So I looked for some
expert commentary.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/08/art1full.pdf

http://voxrationalis.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/the-absurdity-of-shadowstats-inflation-estimates/

http://traderscrucible.com/2011/02/01/why-shadow-government-statistics-is-very-very-very-wrong/

http://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb

http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/the-trouble-with-shadowstats/

For those of you who do not wish to read all of those articles, I will summarize. They think shadowstats is GIBBERISH.

There is a discussion of Shadowstats and John Williams at Rationalwiki.org.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Shadow_Government_Statistics
Shadow Government Statistics or Shadowstats is a blog run by John Williams in which he re-analyzes government economic/unemployment published statistics in order to restate them. This is because he states these numbers have been manipulated over the past 25 years for nefarious political reasons.
The irony of the entire website is that Williams takes government reported statistics to make his apocalyptic predictions, after flatly stating on many occasions that government reported numbers are "deceptive," "rigged," and "manipulated.

Williams posts older statistics that have fallen out of favor by governmental agencies stating that they are being suppressed by the government to make the economy look better. This ignores the fact that these measures are still calculated and published along side the newer methods of looking at the data.[3] The various agencies also publish all of their backup data as well, which for some reason contains all the things he claims they are trying to suppress (where he claims to data mine)...between his claims that it is rigged and manipulated.
Again, don't ponder the last statement very long.

Williams loves to take the number of unemployed and add the people who have stopped looking for new jobs, those employed part time and want full time, and those who looked for a job at least once in the last year but are not working now. What he doesn't realize is that these are very subjective numbers dependent on questioning people...which is why they were dropped from many reports. When uncertainty increases often times a non-working spouse or college student that didn't want a job before will start looking for work, and would count. People who wish to have a job they might not be qualified for but are working part time would be counted. It would also include those who quit the workforce to raise children, then came back.

So by all means continue to pay Professor(?) Williams $175 a year to read his gibberish and please forgive me as I laugh behind my hand at you.

[Tom]

I looked at your link and it seemed like gibberish to me.

English?

[HUSKER55]

it provided him with something to do today.

[classhandicapper]

I looked at your link and it seemed like gibberish to me. So I looked for some
expert commentary.


The BLS? lmao They are the ones manipulating the data.


I don't consider any of your sources experts because I don't know them.

I can't vouch for every article or calculation on Shadow Stats, but where he uses government data side by side (old vs. new) you will see that all the changes are designed to improve the "reported" performance without any real change in the actual performance. That's what I am talking about. These things have been discussed at reputable sources like Barrons and by major private investors.

There was recently a change in Europe where they started counting all sorts of illegal activity in GDP like drugs and prostitution. Is it real economic activity? Sure it is. But you can't compare the old data to new anymore. It's designed to make GDP look better because those countries are under serious fiscal stress and they need investors to be confident. It's justified as useful information and real economic activity.

Look for the US to incorporate those changes eventually also.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10861170/Drugs-and-prostitution-add-10bn-a-year-to-UK-economy.html

I consider the experts to be private investors that are putting their own money through the windows to the tune of hundreds of millions or sometimes many billions. There is broad agreement there that the government stats for GDP, inflation, unemployment etc... are at best not trustworthy and at worst purposely cooked to make the data look better.

That the changes have made the results look better is a 100% certainty.

You'll find exceptions to that view among people that work for large Wall St firms and speak publicly because they are part of the same cabal that's always trying to manipulate interest rates (and bonds) to the benefit of the government and their own bottom lines. But if you talk to private hedge fund managers with no vested political interest in the current system other than their own money and bottom line, you'll get a different tune.

[Robert Goren]

Obama started in a bigger hole than Reagan, so he should create more jobs.

[Clocker]

Obama started in a bigger hole than Reagan, so he should create more jobs.

Neither Obama nor Reagan created any jobs. Businesses, particularly small businesses, create jobs. The role of the government is to provide an economic and regulatory environment that promotes job creation. Reagan did a better job of that than Obama.

We are currently back to pre-recession levels of jobs, but the rate of job creation is not keeping up with population growth. So every month we are falling behind.

[johnhannibalsmith]

That, is an oxymoron.

Oh come on now, thee are twenty events a year that call for a reference to his bit on stupid consumers and buy one get one free sales - "folks, two of shit, is shit."

[davew]

What are these changes and how do they favorably affect the rate now as compared to in Reagan's time?

During Clintons regime, a new criteria for employment stats appeared - the U6 which separates marginally attached (which are unemployed but have stopped looking) from the generally reported values. These U6 totals are closer to reported unemployment rates during Reagan years. So people can be happy about how much better it is than 3-5 years ago, but it is still very poor.

http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp

[mostpost]

During Clintons regime, a new criteria for employment stats appeared - the U6 which separates marginally attached (which are unemployed but have stopped looking) from the generally reported values. These U6 totals are closer to reported unemployment rates during Reagan years. So people can be happy about how much better it is than 3-5 years ago, but it is still very poor.

http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp
I hope you are not saying that the reason unemployment is lower now than in Reagan's era because they were using the U6 criteria then while using the U3 criteria now. That is simply not true. U6 rate is generally six to eight points higher than the U3 rate.

If there had been a switch during 1994, there would have been a sudden drop of six points or so. There was not. The largest monthly drop that year was .3 points and the total for the year was one percent.

[ArlJim78]

Obama Outperformed Reagan? Hardly.
http://streettalklive.com/index.php/daily-x-change/2384-obama-outperformed-reagan-hardly.html

[davew]

I hope you are not saying that the reason unemployment is lower now than in Reagan's era because they were using the U6 criteria then while using the U3 criteria now. That is simply not true. U6 rate is generally six to eight points higher than the U3 rate.

If there had been a switch during 1994, there would have been a sudden drop of six points or so. There was not. The largest monthly drop that year was .3 points and the total for the year was one percent.

I guess you are correct, in 1994 there was just major revisions of what is included where - so we are still talking apples and oranges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Population_Survey#1994_CPS_Revisions

[classhandicapper]

"However, in 1994, Clinton removed individuals from the labor force that were currently unemployed for longer than 52-weeks. This adjustment immediately improved the overall measure of unemployment by shrinking the labor force by some 500,000 individuals."

This is the kind of stuff I was talking about.

Clinton made several changes to the stats. Another set had the effect of lowering the reported inflation rate and raising the GDP growth.

The reason I remember this is that when the dot.com bubble was brewing under Clinton, bullish analysts from Wall St kept pointing to the new figures as a justification for it being a "new era" of much higher stock prices. Private investors kept pointing out what the figures looked like under the old methodology and urged caution.

[Robert Goren]

"However, in 1994, Clinton removed individuals from the labor force that were currently unemployed for longer than 52-weeks. This adjustment immediately improved the overall measure of unemployment by shrinking the labor force by some 500,000 individuals."

This is the kind of stuff I was talking about.

Clinton made several changes to the stats. Another set had the effect of lowering the reported inflation rate and raising the GDP growth.

The reason I remember this is that when the dot.com bubble was brewing under Clinton, bullish analysts from Wall St kept pointing to the new figures as a justification for it being a "new era" of much higher stock prices. Private investors kept pointing out what the figures looked like under the old methodology and urged caution.The numbers are better than ever. The economy is constantly changing and the ability to process them is better. The old figures are out of date and people making decisions based on them are handicapping themselves. I have always had a problem with GDP numbers though. I think they don't reflect the increasing and decreasing value of existing assets (after inflation adjustments). For example, an old parking garage goes up a lot in value if they build a new sports arena 2 blocks away. As a city grows, land on the outskirts become more valuable. Finding water under farm land does wonders to its value. I could go on forever.

[classhandicapper]

The numbers are better than ever. The economy is constantly changing and the ability to process them is better. The old figures are out of date and people making decisions based on them are handicapping themselves. I have always had a problem with GDP numbers though. I think they don't reflect the increasing and decreasing value of existing assets (after inflation adjustments). For example, an old parking garage goes up a lot in value if they build a new sports arena 2 blocks away. As a city grows, land on the outskirts become more valuable. Finding water under farm land does wonders to its value. I could go on forever.

That's an idealistic view.

They are changing the numbers because:

1. Politicians want to make the economy seem better than it is to enhance their chances of getting re-elected and retaining power (lower reported inflation, higher reported GDP growth, lower reported unemployment figures all do that).

2. Lowering the reported inflation rate will help keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise be, reduce government spending (some programs are tied to inflation) and raise taxes (look up bracket creep). If you can slow the growth of spending and raise taxes in a backdoor fashion by manipulating the numbers, the public will not understand it. So they won't throw you out of office for doing it.

3. Many governments are heavily dependent on foreign capital to finance their debt and deficits. So by rigging GDP and other numbers, they hope to keep confidence high and lower the cost of raising that money.

4. Wall St is basically a den of demons looking to pump up markets and increase profits and bonuses any way they can.

It's all done under the pretense of greater accuracy, but few believe it because you can shoot holes in some of the changes and every single change they make ends up making the numbers look better. Some things are probably better than they look and others worse, but they conveniently leave out the worse. ;)

[Robert Goren]

That's an idealistic view.

They are changing the numbers because:

1. Politicians want to make the economy seem better than it is to enhance their chances of getting re-elected and retaining power (lower reported inflation, higher reported GDP growth, lower reported unemployment figures all do that).

2. Lowering the reported inflation rate will help keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise be, reduce government spending (some programs are tied to inflation) and raise taxes (look up bracket creep). If you can slow the growth of spending and raise taxes in a backdoor fashion by manipulating the numbers, the public will not understand it. So they won't throw you out of office for doing it.

3. Many governments are heavily dependent on foreign capital to finance their debt and deficits. So by rigging GDP and other numbers, they hope to keep confidence high and lower the cost of raising that money.

4. Wall St is basically a den of demons looking to pump up markets and increase profits and bonuses any way they can.

It's all done under the pretense of greater accuracy, but few believe it because you can shoot holes in some of the changes and every single change they make ends up making the numbers look better. Some things are probably better than they look and others worse, but they conveniently leave out the worse. ;)Like that wasn't case with the old numbers too? I have always said if want to know the economy is really doing, talk to a truck driver. Where is PKTruckdriver when you need him?

[incoming]

Like that wasn't case with the old numbers too? I have always said if want to know the economy is really doing, talk to a truck driver. Where is PKTruckdriver when you need him?

You are right RG, regardless of the administration....solution, term limits just like the president. 10 years in the federal government should be a cutoff regardless if it is elected or salaried. This would mean no more presidents could be elected from Congress, a good thing if the present President is any indication. If memory serves, JFK was the last President that was elected straight from Congress.

[Tom]

The numbers are better than ever.

OF course they are.
A lot of though and time goes into making them that way.
It is REALITY that is not so good.