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/adamhart...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

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by FantasticDan

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

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhart...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

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.

[Clocker]

Originally Posted by Tom

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

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]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

That, is an oxymoron.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by mostpost

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]

Originally Posted by mostpost

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]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

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]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

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/2...ion-estimates/

http://traderscrucible.com/2011/02/0...ry-very-wrong/

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

http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/th...h-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_...ent_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]

Originally Posted by mostpost

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/e...K-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.