Jim Hightower: a thud of a boom/ Consumer Confidence Plummets

[cosmicdot]

Friday, April 09, 2004
"A THUD OF A "BOOM""

by Jim Hightower
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Despite George W's recent cheer leading effort to convince us that –
sis-boom-bah, the economy is surging and The Boom Is Back! – most
Americans are shaking their heads and saying, a boom for whom?

With the mass offshoring of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs,
and with the Wal-Maritization of wages and benefits here at home,
it's no longer just the unskilled, down-and-out, abject poor who are
left out by our "boom boom" economy, but also skilled, formerly-
middle-class workers.

There's a quiet crisis spreading in the America that Washington and
Wall Street either never visit or ignore. I'm not talking about the
inner cities, but the middle-class suburbs, where even hunger is a
growing problem.

~snip~

... so 94 million of our people now have "significant" housing problems. That's one-third of the population of the richest country on earth. Worse, 40 million of us now have housing problems ranked as "severe," meaning their housing is either severely substandard, severely unaffordable, or both.

~snip~

Meanwhile, the richest among us get the bulk of federal housing
subsidies. Not only do multimillionaires enjoy full mortgage
deductibility on their main mansions, but also on their Park Avenue
condo, their Aspen getaway home, and the summer place at the beach.

~snip~

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Sources: "Hunger a Growing Problems in Suburbs," New York Times,
March 23, 2004.

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Copyright - Saddleburr Productions, Inc

http://www.jimhightower.com/



Consumer Confidence Plummets in U.S.

April 9, 2004 10:27 AM EDT


WASHINGTON - Consumer confidence sank during the past month, weighed down by worries about job security and concerns about local economic conditions in the months ahead. The AP-Ipsos consumer confidence index dropped to 84.8 this week, from a reading of 97.7 in early March, when Americans' feelings about the economy had shown an improvement from the previous month.

The decline in consumer confidence comes as other recent economic indicators suggest the overall national economy is gaining ground and that the jobs market may be finally turning an important corner

~snip~

http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=1&aid=D81RC1P80_story

[mhr]

1. Part Of The Problem Wrought By Chimpy - The Missing 9.4 million Jobs

Despite all the cheer leading, this economy is not creating the number of jobs needed to productively employ Americans. Americans understand that without viable jobs one's future is bleak. A bleak future leads to diminished expectations. Diminished expectations leads to plummeting consumer confidence. Etc, etc, etc ....

......
http://www.comstockfunds.com/index.cfm?act=Newsletter.cfm&category=Mar

Comstock Funds
Charlie Minter
7 April 2004

Although the 308,000 increase in March payroll employment may seem like a lot compared to what we’ve been getting and what most have been expecting, it actually falls far short of what we should be seeing at this stage of a recovery. Here’s what we found in examining the last seven economic recoveries.

In the first six of these recoveries beginning with May 1954 employment rose by an average of 7.7 percent over the first 28 months with a high of 9.1 percent and a low of 5.5 percent. This includes one cycle that peaked in 24 months with a gain of 7.4 percent. Even in the recovery that started in March 1991, employment climbed 2.2% over the first 28 months. For all of the seven recoveries, employment rose by an average of 6.9 percent over 28 months. So let’s not hear any more about employment being a lagging indicator. It is not, and even if it were, 28 months is surely enough time to catch up.

In the current recovery employment has actually declined 0.2 percent in the first 28 months that includes the March number and the revisions that were released on Friday. If employment had increased by 6.9 percent, the average of the past recoveries, March payrolls would have come to about 139.9 million rather than the 130.5 million actually reported. This means that there are now 9.4 million fewer jobs than there should be at this point in the cycle, and that we needed an average increase of 322,000 jobs for each of the past 28 months to equal the average job growth of the last seven expansions.

Snip ......