Bad Economic News Mounts

After basking in the glory of the one day announcement of the rise in GDP a couple of weeks ago, the Republicans have been silent about the bad economic news that has followed.

A quick peek at the front page of the money section of the 11/17/03 issue of USA Today shows that the price of crude oil futures has shot up to $32.37 per barrel. That's well above the psychological $30 level. After the blackout in August, Energy Secretary Spence Abraham tried to convince us that everything was fine, and that oil prices would soon fall. Today, oil prices are higher than they were during that late summer panic.

Those skyrocketing oil prices will surely lead to higher pump prices, and will eventually lead to price rises in other goods and services. That will provide a double whammy to the pocketbooks of working Americans.

USA Today also showed that the price of gold has risen to $397.80 per ounce. It was $265 when Bush took office. That's a 50% increase in only three years. Great news if you have a lot of money in gold, but pretty bad news, if you don't. The reason is that gold had always been the emergency hedge against upcoming bad economic times. The recent price peak indicates that gold investors aren't counting on an economic recovery anytime soon.

The bottom line is that the Bush administration and their right wing media grunts are lying to us about the recession. They are generally ignoring it and just hoping that it will go away in time for the election. At other times, they will report on the occasional piece of good sounding economic news, and then give that item more media attention that it ever deserved. Meanwhile, they will keep silent about all the negative economic facts that are staring them AND US in the face.

bankruptcies are at an all time high...and and and....foreclosures are too. That can't be ALL bad, can it? I mean, they're records, ya know..Nobody else has beat them....n all

Bush can play fast and loose with the economic numbers all he wants, but the stock market doesn't lie, and it's lower now than it was 2 weeks ago, 1 year ago, 2 years ago, and 3 years ago.

And the stock market is a leading indicator.

except extreme partisan Repugs thought the GDP jump was seriuos good news. Basically, everyone went out and spent their $150 tax rebate, because for many of them it was the only money they'd seen in months. Now that's gone, so we are back in Bushonomics. The problem lies in the fact that THIS ECONOMIC MODEL WON'T WORK.

All the tax cuts did was give the economy (the rich that is) a small shot in the arm to invest.

But the cuts did not address the major structual problems (i.e. job out-sourcing, divide between rich and poor, trade deficets, the deficiet, etc...)

Our economic system is on drugs.

What's the all-time high for gold? $450+?

Damn Chimp.

The decline of the dollar, to an all-time low against the euro, is another bad indication. The economic forecasters are singing gloom-and-doom over the debt. One guy I read said the forthcoming decline will make the great depression seem like a party.

I can't revel in bad economic news, I'd like my kids to go to college. I'd like to retire someday too.

There's a reason gold is thru the roof. Bad times are coming my friends. pay off all your interest bearing debts now.Lock your mortgage rates and batten the hatches.

*sigh* <longing for Clinton>

many of us realize that it is not entirely controlled by market forces. They do nothing to fix the economy because they don't believe its even possible.

This is one of their many achilles heals...the economy CANNOT get better by the next election because it DOESN'T take care of itself. Smart policies are needed.

The economic model in favor with the neocons seems a lot more like corporate socialism/oligarchical-crony facism than laizez-faire capitalism.

Just because they don't believe in feeding the poor doesn't mean they are laizez-faire capitalists.

Or maybe they are just singing and dancing: I'm in the money!! tah dah dah dah dah!

"The recent price peak indicates that gold investors aren't counting on an economic recovery anytime soon."

Yes, that would be an indication that the folks who have REAL investments in tangible things are a bit worried.

We are IN a friggin depression........ and, oddly, Greenspan, to his credit, is not pandering to the GOP completely. Between and him the NY AG (Spazito???).....there are some people with real integrity left in this nation. Thank God!

Data Underestimates New Jobless Claims
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=568&e=3&u=/nm/economy_jobless_dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Labor Department (news - web sites), at the urging of Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites), is working to fix a statistical quirk that causes the government to routinely underestimate the number of newly unemployed Americans each week, a department official said on Tuesday.

Each Thursday, Labor issues its count of Americans filing initial claims for state unemployment benefits in the latest week. In 51 of the past 52 weeks, it has also revised the previous week's number upward, making the picture less rosy than it originally appeared.

*****Gee, maybe the DOL should not be rounding off.....the corruption in this maladministration really astounds me.

RATE THE STORY!

I remember before the first Bush tax cut, Greenspan made a comment something like, 'I'm not absolutely convinced that Bush's proposed tax cut will totally destroy the economy'. They next day all the media right wingers ran around yelling that Greenspan said the tax cut wouldn't be bad for the economy, and after about one day, they were saying that he said the tax cut would be GOOD for the economy. Why doesn't anyone counter their lies?

This one has a graph tracing crude oil prices:

http://www.wtrg.com/daily/crudeoilprice.html

This one allows you to enter a date and see the price of gold from that day:

http://www.onlygold.com/TutorialPages/SearchPricesFS.asp

are incomes rising? If they are not, then Bush has a big problem on his hands. That means Americans have already used up all of their disposable incomes from the tax cuts. At this rate, we will seroiusly be bankrupt 5-10 years down the road.

We're on the verge of a trade war with Europe AND China

The dollar is plummeting

Foreign investment has dangerously declined

Interest rates are on the rise

Record bankruptcies and foreclosures

People are NOT spending money

Inventories are edging up because people are not buying anymore

Low holiday sales expectations

And despite what they want you to believe there are NO jobs being created, but rather, the US is still steadily losing jobs

The trade deficit is staggering

The federal deficit is even more staggering