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Dylan T. Grall

The following chart shows nominal department store sales (in black) compared to the federal funds rate (in red).


Click to enlarge.

On the off chance we were to enter a recession while still in ZIRP, then what exactly would we expect the Fed to do?

Oh, wait. I forgot that it is common knowledge that the Fed has permanently put a stop to recessions. Never mind. Silly question.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

Ming Dong Chen

Click to enlarge.

The low points are following a linear trend, implying that growth is slowing over time. If it took 30 years for real net worth per capita to roughly double from 1982 to 2012, then it will take 60 years for it to roughly double again. That's assuming we even should extrapolate past history into the distant future of course. I for one am skeptical, especially now that we've entered a "QE Trap".


The high points are following an exponential trend, implying that the bubbles are growing exponentially over time (relative to the linear base line). I expect an epic failure that even mainstream economists can see coming if we get anywhere near that blue trend line again. Note that the data only goes through June of 2013. The stock market's up another 7% since then. To the moon, Alice!

This chart is more disturbing if one factors in that the federal, state, and local debts are not included in the household net worth as calculated by our government. That's not quite true. We get credit for owning them as households, just not as owing them. Win win. Perhaps we'll someday find an alien species that we can bill instead of American households. That must be the thinking.

If my net worth is $10,000 and I loan it all to the government then the government would claim my net worth is still $10,000. If the government then spends the $10,000 to keep the government running then my net worth is still $10,000. I'd only be in big trouble if the government actually taxed me $10,000 to pay me off. But why do that? Stick with what works! Deficit spending for the win!

The chart is even more disturbing if one factors in rising wealth inequality. I doubt that real median net worth would make such an optimistic looking chart. That's just my way of saying that there are parts of this economy that were financially subprime heading into the Great Recession and they remain financially subprime. In fact, there were 34% more households on SNAP in July 2013 than were on SNAP in October 2009. How's that for a recovery!

And lastly, who would have thought that the Fed could make the average household so much richer simply by helping us earn even less interest on our savings. Genius! And sustainable? Well, who can really say for sure?

Sarcasm abounds. To the moon! Alien species! Government running! Optimistic! Sustainable! Beware, it's a bungle out there. Seriously.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

Yesenia Eldermira Rodriguez, aka, "Jessie Rodriguez"

Feminine meets Edgy!

 A short weekend post with some of my favorite outwears in the most great delicious colours or bittersweet colours. Most of them are under $200 and all I know is that I need the light pink one soon!
 Isn't a coat the sartorial piece in your wardrobe during the cold season?




                                                                                    1. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    2. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    3. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    4. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    5. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    6. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    7. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    8. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                    9. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                   10. Topshop Coat/ Here
                                                                                   11. See by Chloe Coat/ Here
                                                                                   12. Topshop Coat/ Here 

October 25, 2013
Special Report: Help wanted in Fukushima: Low pay, high risks and gangsters

Image courtesy of America's Voice
Washington, D.C. - Maria Zuniga, the mother of Jonathan Zuniga and Rocio Perez, the mother of Rocio Hernández were taken into custody by Capitol Police on Thursday at U.S. Senator Robert "Bob" Menendez (D-NJ) office. After their release from jail on Thursday, they went back to Menendez' office on Friday again.

The Illinois Secretary of State will begin issuing Temporary Visitor Driver's Licenses to undocumented immigrants in early December.
Click to enlarge image.

Friday is here and it is time to celebrate good times. My friend Beth from designPOST has come over today to put her cards on the table and do a little fessin' up. If you haven't visited designPOST yet you need to. Beth know how to tackle a project and show it who's boss and she makes it all look so easy. A modern day Wonder Woman I tell ya. Her daughter's nursery is still one of my favorites- baby glam all the way. Take it away Beth...


Hi LBD'ers, Beth here from designPOST interiors and I am so happy to be guesting here on Elizabeth's blog!  Not only can I unload a dirty little secret, but I also get to virtually hang with one of my favorite bloggers out there!  I am always anxiously awaiting Elizabeth's next project and she never disappoints!

Ok, so confession time.  There are so many weird habits I could confess to but I am going to try to keep it relatively normal.  At least I hope it's kind of normal?  I have major procrastination issues when it comes to my own home decor.  I have tons of end visions and half-started projects but somehow other things always get in the way...client work, kids, The Real Housewives, life.  I recently had a client casually say, "I should just come to your house and get ideas" to which I promptly had a panic attack.  The thought of being judged as a "decorator" based on my own house scares me a majority of the time.

Part two of my fess up is that the only time things do get done around here is when I have some kind of big event coming up.  The last time I tackled all of my half-done projects was right before my daughter was born last November.  And now her first birthday is rolling around and I am suddenly unstoppable.  My husband loves this about me, by the way (sarcasm, sarcasm).  In the last two weeks I have literally finished: painting and recovering 5 chairs- all rescued from the trash or Goodwill and all have been sitting around unfinished for months, hung 2 sets of curtains, hung a gallery wall, painted some frames, and found a lamp shade for a lamp that's been naked since it's purchase.  No lie!

I am exhausted and probably won't have the energy to finish another one of my projects for another 6 months.  And the cycle continues....

Thanks for letting me come to your confessional Elizabeth - I feel 10 pounds lighter!

Surendra Malik, aka, Neetu Dabodia

Click to enlarge.

August 1, 2013
Fertility forecast: Baby bust is over; births will rise


1.89 to 1.90! Color me impressed! A few more years of that and we might even make it back to the declining long-term trend line. As a side note, it takes a rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population. Otherwise, immigration for the win! It's the land of the free. What could possibly go wrong?


The following chart shows real annual religious construction spending per capita (August 2013 dollars).


Click to enlarge.

I'll leave the trend line as an exercise for the reader. Got crayon?

I'm not a religious person but I can say this. Over the long-term, we appear to be ZIRPing to Japanese hell in a handbasket. The future's so bright I gotta buy glasses.

Source Data:
Demographics of the United States
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

America's Middle Class is Doomed
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
********************
Obama has billed himself as the champion of America's Middle Class.  It's bull.  His policies are destroying the Middle Class.

The recent unemployment figure is 7.2%.  Well, that's the figure the government reported for public consumption.  Of course, the REAL unemployment figure is closer to 12% than 7.2%.

One of the most important contributing factors to the decrease in the unemployment figure is the fact that so many Americans have simply stopped looking for work.  See, THEY are not included in the unemployment figure let by the US government.  If they were counted we'd be looking at an unemployment figure much closer to that 12% I mentioned above.

Consider this from a report from back in August:  "Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work,” said Keith Hall, a senior researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center quoted by McClatchy Washington Bureau. Hall was head of the US Bureau of Labor (BLS) Statistics from 2008 to 2012.
 
Citing the BLS Household Survey, Hall said that over the past six months 963,000 more people reported that they were employed while 936,000 of them reported they were in part-time jobs. Hall continued, “That is a really high number for a six-month period. I am not sure that has ever happened over six months before.” (“Report: 97 percent of new US jobs are part-time”, World Socialist Web Site)  SOURCE:  http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/19/obamas-destroys-the-middle-class/

There can be no question the 40 hour work week in America is endangered -- if not doomed -- by the advent of Obamacare -- another outstanding example of the unintended consequences of a government critically out of touch with its citizens.

So how is business fairing?  Not good.  Consider this:  "While pre-tax corporate profits are at record highs, amounting to 12 percent of GDP, net investment is barely 4 percent of output. This is despite the fact that the cost of equity capital is low, as are interest rates. Increased profits are not being used to expand production, as took place in the past, but are increasingly being used to finance stock buy backs, so as to increase the rate of return on shareholders’ capital.

Under what were once “normal” conditions, increased profits would lead to greater investment, higher production and an increase in wages, leading to an expanding market. Today, however, wages are falling as a share of GDP.

This result indicates that rising profits are no longer being produced by an expansion of the market, as they were in the past, but are increasingly the result of cost-cutting, as firms raise their bottom line by grabbing an increased share of a stagnant or contracting market from their rivals. In other words, the once “normal” process of capitalist accumulation—increasing investment leading to an expanding market, higher profits and further investment—has completely broken down." SOURCE:  http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/06/pers-a06.html

Americans have forgotten Obama's promise to fundamentally change America.  Believe me -- he is keeping that promise by crippling and finally destroying America's middle class.

No President has been as divisive as Obama.  The country is split asunder in near equal parts.  Americans are fearful and and at each other's throats.

Consider all the new laws and rules and regulations decreed by Obama and geared toward the middle class.  It's all a part of the master plan to destroy the middle class.
 
As long as Americans are fighting to survive, or battling through all the regulatory rules, just to keep a small business afloat, trying to find a job that will at least allow them to pay the rent and keep the lights on, they don;t have the time nor the inclination to fight the on coming authoritarian government Obama is creating right before our eyes.
If one considers the strong stock market and the fantastic increase in the number of poor on the government dole, one would have to agree that the rich AND the poor have done well under Obama.  It is the middle class, the people who make America work, who have been creamed by the fundamental change Obama has brought to America.

With immigration reform about to raise its ugly head in Congress, the specter of an even greater influx of immigrants into America is a given.  The US has been the victim of the greatest land invasion in the history of this continent.  America has been invaded and is well on the way to occupation by a people seeking to re-populate a land area their government legally sold to America well over 150 years ago.

When one compares the fall of the Roman Empire with the fall of the USA one cannot escape the parallels between Rome succumbing to the migration of barbarians into the empire and the capital city of Rome itself to the invasion by immigrants of the USA.   The end result may yet prove to be the same.

Taxes paid by the middle class go towards free eduction, healthcare, and so much more.  It has  placed a tremendous strain on the middle class, as well. 

As a result of all the above, common sense tells us the middle class cannot survive in America.  But that is a hallmark of socialism. No middle class.  Under socialism a nation has a lower class and -- the elite.

Care to guess the class in which you will eventually wind up?

© J. D. Longstreet

Suspect confessed to participating in 45 murders and is implicated in 34 more, according to Nuevo León state officials.

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

There is most definitely a huge gap between what proponents of low marginal tax rates argue and what the actual results of lowering said rates over the past 30 to 40 years has been. While reading the following article from The Guardian think long term effect. Many are arguing the policies of lower taxes and increased spending (much on defense and the MIC) during this time period is largely responsible for our present sorry fiscal state state of affairs. They may have a point and it is most certainly worth considering as we look to 2014 and 2016. At the very least the party of lower and lower taxes and increased spending, and we all know who that is, should rethink it's strategy for success.

In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled, from less than 10% in the 1970s to over 20% today (pdf). A similar pattern is true of other English-speaking countries. Contrary to the widely-held view, however, globalisation and new technologies are not to blame. Other OECD countries, such as those in continental Europe, or Japan have seen far less concentration of income among the mega rich.

At the same time, top income tax rates on upper income earners have declined significantly since the 1970s in many OECD countries – again, particularly in English-speaking ones. For example, top marginal income tax rates in the United States or the United Kingdom were above 70% in the 1970s, before the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions drastically cut them by 40 percentage points within a decade.

At a time when most OECD countries face large deficits and debt burdens, a crucial public policy question is whether governments should tax high earners more. The potential tax revenue at stake is now very large.

For example, doubling the average US individual income tax rate on the top 1% income earners from the current 22.5% level to 45% would increase tax revenue by 2.7% of GDP per year – as much as letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire (only a small fraction of them lapsed in January 2013). But of course, this simple calculation is static: such a large increase in taxes may well affect the economic behaviour of the rich and the income they report pre-tax, the broader economy and, ultimately, the tax revenue generated. In recent research, we analyse this issue both conceptually and empirically using international evidence on top incomes and top tax rates since the 1970s.

There is a strong correlation between the reductions in top tax rates and the increases in top 1% pre-tax income shares, for the period from 1975-79 to 2004-08, across 18 OECD countries for which top income share information is available. For example, the United States experienced a 35 percentage-point reduction in its top income tax rate and a very large ten percentage-point increase in its top 1% pre-tax income share. By contrast, France or Germany saw very little change in their top tax rates and their top 1% income shares during the same period.

So, the evolution of top tax rates is a good predictor of changes in pre-tax income concentration. There are three scenarios to explain the strong response of top pre-tax incomes to top tax rates; each has very different policy implications.

First, higher top tax rates may discourage work effort and business creation among the most talented: the so-called supply-side effect. In this scenario, lower top tax rates would lead to more economic activity by the rich and hence more economic growth. If all the correlation of top income shares and top tax rates seen in the above data were due to such supply-side effects, the revenue-maximising top tax rate would be 57%. This would imply that the United States still has some leeway to increase taxes on the rich, but that the upper limit has already been reached in many European countries.

Second, higher top tax rates can increase tax avoidance. In that scenario, increasing top rates in a tax system riddled with loopholes and tax avoidance opportunities is not productive either. A better policy would be to first close loopholes so as to eliminate most tax avoidance opportunities, and only then increase top tax rates. With sufficient political will and international co-operation to enforce taxes, it is possible to eliminate most tax avoidance opportunities, which are well documented. Then, with a broad tax base offering no significant avoidance opportunities, only real supply-side responses would limit how high top tax rate can be set before becoming counter-productive.

In the third scenario, while standard economic models assume that pay reflects productivity, there are strong reasons to be sceptical, especially at the top of the income distribution where the actual economic contribution of managers working in complex organisations is particularly difficult to measure. Here, top earners might be able to partly set their own pay by bargaining harder or influencing compensation committees.

Naturally, the incentives for such "rent-seeking" are much stronger when top tax rates are low. In this scenario, cuts in top tax rates can still increase top income shares, but the increases in top 1% incomes now come at the expense of the remaining 99%. In other words, top rate cuts stimulate rent-seeking at the top but not overall economic growth – the key difference with the first, supply-side, scenario.

To tell these various scenarios apart, we need to analyse to what extent top tax rate cuts lead to higher economic growth. Again, data show that there is no correlation between cuts in top tax rates and average annual real GDP-per-capita growth since the 1970s. For example, countries that made large cuts in top tax rates, such as the United Kingdom or the United States, have not grown significantly faster than countries that did not, such as Germany or Denmark.

What that tells us is that a substantial fraction of the response of pre-tax top incomes to top tax rates may be due to increased rent-seeking at the top (that is, scenario three), rather than increased productive effort.

Naturally, cross-country comparisons are bound to be fragile; exact results vary with the specification, years, and countries. But the bottom line is that rich countries have all grown at roughly the same rate over the past 30 years – in spite of huge variations in tax policies. By our calculations about the response of top earners to top tax rate cuts being due in part to increased rent-seeking behaviour and in part to increased productive work, we find that the top tax rate could potentially be set as high as 83% (as opposed to the 57% allowed by the pure supply-side model).

Until the 1970s, policy-makers and public opinion probably considered – rightly or wrongly – that at the very top of the income ladder, pay increases reflected mostly greed rather than productive work effort. This is why governments were able to set marginal tax rates as high as 80% in the US and the UK. The Reagan/Thatcher revolution has succeeded in making such top tax rate levels "unthinkable" since then.

Now, however, we have seen decades of increasing income concentration that have brought about mediocre growth since the 1970s. And with the Great Recession that was triggered by financial sector excesses, a rethink of the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions is underway.

The United Kingdom increased its top income tax rate from 40% to 50% in 2010, in part to curb top pay excesses. In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement and its famous "We are the 99%" slogan also reflects a view that the top 1% has gained at the expense of the 99% – a view endorsed by our findings about the highly unequal distribution of income gains during the recovery.

In the end, the future of top tax rates depends on what the public believes about whether top pay fairly reflects productivity or whether top pay, rather unfairly, arises from rent-seeking. With higher income concentration, top earners have more economic resources to influence both social beliefs (through thinktanks and media) and policies (through lobbying), thereby creating some "reverse causality" between income inequality, perceptions, and policies.

The job of economists should be to make a top rate tax level of 80% at least "thinkable" again.

This is an updated version of an article originally published by VoxEU

While I certainly don't advocate a top marginal tax rate of 80% in the USA it certainly seems reasonable to entertain at this time a return to Clinton era rates (or slightly higher)and review the effects of an increase in say ten years or so. If at that time our nation, and the middle class is in better shape then stick with success.

Via: Memeorandum

The following chart shows quits in the retail trade industry.


Click to enlarge.

September 4, 2013
Abused Retail Staff Quits With Epic Resignation Letter [UPDATE]


See Also:
WikiTubia: Charlie the Unicorn

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart