Where are the candles hiding? Are the stems carved wax?
Where is the best place to buy pumpkins this year? You might see a low price but then discover your pumpkin weighs 15-20 pounds.
It would seem a shame to carve up these pumpkins. We will just let them be.
@Moon-howler
I don’t and didn’t expect overnight…but its not snapping back AT ALL. If you actually figure inflation adding in energy and food, the GDP is negative. We are stagnant at best.
This is what it looks like if you believe the recession ended in 2009 and how the current situation compares
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/studies/recession_perspective/
Sooooooooo … the president knew absolutely nothing about the readiness of the ACA, according to Kathleen Sebelius, and yet he fought the republicans to prevent delaying it to the point of allowing the government to shut down. The one stellar item in Obama’s agenda that has been in the works for years, and yet neither he nor anyone else in his administration felt it necessary to inquire as to the readiness and guaranteed success of the ACA rollout before fighting tooth and nail to prevent delaying it? If you truly believe that he knew nothing about the problems, which would be a total lack of management skills, or that people didn’t inform him, then someone’s head has got to roll. Of course it won’t be Obama who is not responsible for anything, and yet is the president of this country, and so I have to ask what is his purpose? I guess this is just one more thing to add to the list of things he knew nothing about such as the IRS issue, the NSA spying issue, Fast and Furious, Bengasi, etc. etc.
Ok, it’s spelled Benghazi not Bengasi but you get the picture. Unless of course you’re a disciple of Obama.
A 3rd AP
reporteremployee has been fired. 1 reporter and 2 editors.WAshingtonpost.com:
This has recession been worse for the US than other recessions for many reasons.
Political – governing from crisis to crisis, debt ceiling brinkmanship, fiscal cliff, shutdown – all these issues left to fester and not compromising until the very last minute leaves much uncertainty in the markets. No business knows what next year will look like which can prevent expansion plans. We are in another one of those cycles – it is even being asked by the media if another shutdown in coming in December or January.
Banking and Insurance – the banks and insurance companies were a house of cards where they all (well all except Goldman) were betting on the same bet that did not come in. When one failed it started to escalate to all the banks on a global basis. If not for TARP the dominoes would have continued to fall. TARP was quite successful and hated but needed. AIG insured far too many of these transactions without mitigating the risk.
Housing – The boom and bust in housing affected many other industries. The US had overbuilt and over priced all those homes. The number of new homes starts are recovering but are still at historic low levels. The influx of immigrants and the usage of tax avoidance schemes did not help the industry at all. Good paying jobs went away and cash paying ‘contractors’ (undocumented workers) took over industries and went unchecked. In the past housing construction provided wages for college kids and bread winners – no more. This is a structural problem.
Mortgages – many people took on mortgages that they could never afford and lost their savings when the home was foreclosed. Many others are still underwater – preventing them from refinancing or moving. Talking about wealth redistribution – the middle class lost about 40% of their wealth mostly due to mortgages and over priced housing. The wealthy were diversified and the poor did not own homes. Many of those people were told that the housing prices would never come down and they could sell later and make a profit.
Manufacturing – or lack there of. In the past manufacturing jobs with good wages would help pull the US out of recession. But those jobs are gone for a variety of reasons. Wages, regulations and the ultimate cost savings. There is one reason that these manufacturing jobs have gone over seas – the people over there are willing to work harder for less money. This global competition has forced our wages to be reduced over time. The Chinese and Japanese manipulation of their currencies have not helped either.
Outsourcing – IT Jobs, Radiologists, call centers, tax prep – etc. Those jobs have been outsourced overseas are are not coming back unless the wages here drop low enough to make it worthwhile.
Greed – the constant bean counting caused major problems in many industries – the constant need to show more profits. Bringing in the C-Suite benefit packages that most times seem to not be correlated to growth or stock performance. Many CEO’s forgo investment in the company to show these paper profits but have nothing to sell after a few years. Benefit packages include inflated wages, jets, perks, housing, security, cars, dinners, etc.
Auto Industry – another over leveraged area. Teetering on bankruptcy, yet they still traveled on separate corporate jets to ask Congress for money. Underfunded pensions, underfunded spin offs, losing market share, etc – increase bonus and golden parachute.
Some of these issues started well before Bush’s first day in office – but it definitely came to a head before he left. I often wonder if the administration knew that the balloon was getting too big and just hoped it would last a little longer. I knew people were getting mortgages they could not afford, I knew that immigrants were turning (and still are) the trades into a cash business.
I am trying to not be biased here, but the Republicans have been obstructionists. From the very first day of the Obama election (and re-election) – there have been some in the party who have actively worked against anything that can help the economy. McConnell saying his number one priority was to make Obama a one term President. Changing House Rules to prevent legislation (the CR https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hres368/text ) from coming to the floor unless the Majority Leader (Cantor) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0Jd-iaYLO1A ) agrees. They have planned the shutdown for months and yet they want to say they did not shut it down. Fighting all legislation even when both sides say we need it – tax reform, immigration, etc. I cannot wait for all the birthers to come out and publicly start backing Cruz – a man admittedly born in Canada.
@Moon-howler
“Cargo, you are overlooking how deep of a recession we were in. It isn’t going to snap back overnight. ”
While I was watching Charlie Brown Halloween with my daughter, and they got to the part where Linus has Sally waiting in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin to appear, instead of Trick or Treating, I suddenly thought about your comment, quoted above. It’s been 4 years. When’s the Great Pumpkin going to rise?
Maybe we needed to have passed one of those infrastructure passages in Congress to really crank things up in the total recovery. Serious economic crashes rarely self correct immediately. Furthermore, no one really understands fully the internal workings of crashes. Much of it is still theory.
Manufacturing might not ever come back strong. Of course, we were warned about that 30-40 years ago.
Be careful who “helps” you.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/breaking-identity-theft-russian-roulette-healthcare-gov-refers-users-to-uncertified-navigators-and-assisters/
We’re in the VERY best of hands.
Very interesting article in Mother Jones about Cuccinelli giving several thousand dollars to fake abortion clinics. The ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers” pretend, through advertising and name, to be clinics to lure patients in, collect personal and medical information, and then start pressuring women to not have abortions.
The one here in town, AAA Women for Choice had a real bag of dirty tricks up their sleeve. At one point, they had an office next door to the real medical clinic and opened their door to stuff literature in the hands of the patients entering the clinic.
A friend of my daughter went in and gave information. That night one of the volunteers called her at home and sang hymns to her and applied all sorts of pressure. The also tried the cancer and guilt to the scenario.
Anything run on the fuel of deceit and deception probably shouldn’t exist.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/ken-cuccinelli-donated-thousands-dollars-crisis-pregnancy-centers
@Cargosquid
You are right about being careful who helps you . See my next post about Cuccinelli giving to the fake abortion clinic.
Sang hymns?
Yes, sang hymns to her on the phone while imploring her to make other choices.