Octopus Overlords

Rip wrote:

Zarathud wrote:So would you agree that the federal government should have used fiscal policy instead of monetary policy? Paul Krugman has long argued the limits of monetary policy and that government spending on infrastructure projects was the preferable policy option, despite the opposition of the Republican party to "increasing the deficit."

Somewhat. QE is a nice short term shock tool, not something you should do long term (more than a year or two) IMHO. I would have liked to see them spend a little less and yes to have spent most of what was spent on infrastructure and/or creating true wealth over paper wealth. If you ask me QE is nothing but trickle down theory in another wrapper. Fooled us twice if you will.

Pyperkub wrote:

Rip wrote:

Zarathud wrote:So would you agree that the federal government should have used fiscal policy instead of monetary policy? Paul Krugman has long argued the limits of monetary policy and that government spending on infrastructure projects was the preferable policy option, despite the opposition of the Republican party to "increasing the deficit."

Somewhat. QE is a nice short term shock tool, not something you should do long term (more than a year or two) IMHO. I would have liked to see them spend a little less and yes to have spent most of what was spent on infrastructure and/or creating true wealth over paper wealth. If you ask me QE is nothing but trickle down theory in another wrapper. Fooled us twice if you will.

Most of what was spent was on Tax Cuts - which don't create as many jobs as infrastructure spending.

Several rounds of QE in America have increased the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet—the value of the assets it holds—from less than $1 trillion in 2007 to more than $4 trillion now.

Rip wrote:

Pyperkub wrote:

Rip wrote:

Zarathud wrote:So would you agree that the federal government should have used fiscal policy instead of monetary policy? Paul Krugman has long argued the limits of monetary policy and that government spending on infrastructure projects was the preferable policy option, despite the opposition of the Republican party to "increasing the deficit."

Somewhat. QE is a nice short term shock tool, not something you should do long term (more than a year or two) IMHO. I would have liked to see them spend a little less and yes to have spent most of what was spent on infrastructure and/or creating true wealth over paper wealth. If you ask me QE is nothing but trickle down theory in another wrapper. Fooled us twice if you will.

Most of what was spent was on Tax Cuts - which don't create as many jobs as infrastructure spending.

Most of what was spent was created from nothing. QE isn't much different than starting the printing presses and just handing the money to the wealthy hoping that they use it to make more money and it trickles down. They did and it didn't.

Tax cuts are/were a triffle when compared to the amount of capital involved in QE. The ironic thing is that we have just emerged from a giant bank bailout where the banks were pretty much crooks, and now we are printing mountains of cash and handing it to them expecting them to do the right thing. It is nothing short of insanity.

Several rounds of QE in America have increased the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet—the value of the assets it holds—from less than $1 trillion in 2007 to more than $4 trillion now.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... explains-5

Pyperkub wrote:I'd argue that it was short of insanity, as it did what couldn't be done politically yet needed to be done, but ok. I just want to see this same rationale applied when a GOP President runs us into the trough again. If we end up in another Middle East war, there better be some kind of sacrifice to pay for it, and not just putting it on the adults' credit card like last time, while cutting income.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that the big US banks received possibly more than all of their profits from the implicit subsidies associated with being “too important to fail”, as opposed to actually producing anything of value.

That supports Andy Haldane’s hypothesis that the supposed post-1980 productivity miracle in finance, which was calculated by blindly trusting the big banks’ reported profits, was simply the result of greater risk-taking — and therefore larger hidden transfers from the rest of society — rather than any genuine value creation.

For perspective, the financial sector contributes about a fifth of total US corporate profits. That share has grown tremendously since the late 1970s, and is a big reason why overall US corporate margins are so much higher now...

...Pair these findings on worker pay with Haldane’s research into the true value added by the big banks and it becomes quite easy to imagine that a significant chunk of the increase in inequality is due to the massive hidden subsidy of artificially cheap leverage measured by the IMF.

Fewer than 400 families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era.

...

Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs.

“The question is whether we are in a new Gilded Age or well beyond it — to a Platinum Age,” said Michael J. Malbin, president of the Campaign Finance Institute, which tracks the flow of campaign money.

The man currently in custody for allegedly killing his hedge fund founder father wants to take yoga classes: A Rikers staff told the Daily News that Thomas Gilbert Jr., 30, "kept asking for yoga. He thought he was in some resort.” It's worth noting that this is not such a fanciful request, as yoga classes are an option for some inmates at Rikers

"I do whine because I want to win, and I'm not happy about not winning, and I am a whiner, and I keep whining and whining until I win," he said on CNN.

So this global binge of QE has caused inflation, a lot of it, but not consumer price inflation. It has caused rampant asset price inflation, with stocks, bonds, real estate, classic cars, art ... all skyrocketing over the years.

Just about the only major asset class that didn’t experience gains is the commodities sector. There, prices have collapsed. And we’ll get to that in a moment.

So why has QE caused rampant asset price inflation but little consumer price inflation? Because the money never went to consumers — in the form of wages. They would have spent most of it, thus driving up demand that could have created some inflationary pressures in consumer prices. But they never got this money.

OK, there has been confiscatory inflation in parts of the consumer price spectrum, for example in healthcare and college expenses. This chart by Advisor Perspectives shows that since 1991 college tuition and fees have soared 338% and medical care 167%. Increases have accelerated since 2001, through heck or high water.

So why has QE not caused a big bout of consumer price inflation? Because the money has been channeled to big financial and corporate entities, and they plowed it into financial and other assets (including share buybacks and other forms of “financial engineering”), thus pushing up asset prices.

As asset prices jumped, people holding these assets got richer and invested their gains, thus propagating the asset price booms. These already wealthy people didn’t need to spend their gains (what Bernanke called the “wealth effect”) because they already were spending all they wanted to spend. So the asset price boom had little impact on consumption and thus didn’t create inflationary pressures from consumers (however, some luxury items like yachts did see a spurt of activity).

On Friday, a team of researchers led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty released a paper on how growing up in poverty affects boys and girls differently. Their core finding: Boys who grow up in poor families fare substantially worse in adulthood, in terms of employment and earnings, than girls who grow up in the same circumstances. (The Washington Post has a good write-up of the paper and its implications.)

But beyond its immediate conclusions, the paper, like much of Chetty’s recent work as part of his Equality of Opportunity Project, points to a deeper truth: In the U.S., where you come from — where you grow up, how much your parents earn, whether your parents were married — plays a major role in determining where you will end up later in life.

Pyperkub wrote:This is a really interesting piece, on how your opportunities are very much related to your parents' success, but I really, really wish that they had also charted the data over time, as I suspect we would see a strong correlation with tax policy changes:

On Friday, a team of researchers led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty released a paper on how growing up in poverty affects boys and girls differently. Their core finding: Boys who grow up in poor families fare substantially worse in adulthood, in terms of employment and earnings, than girls who grow up in the same circumstances. (The Washington Post has a good write-up of the paper and its implications.)

But beyond its immediate conclusions, the paper, like much of Chetty’s recent work as part of his Equality of Opportunity Project, points to a deeper truth: In the U.S., where you come from — where you grow up, how much your parents earn, whether your parents were married — plays a major role in determining where you will end up later in life.

noxiousdog wrote:

Pyperkub wrote:This is a really interesting piece, on how your opportunities are very much related to your parents' success, but I really, really wish that they had also charted the data over time, as I suspect we would see a strong correlation with tax policy changes:

On Friday, a team of researchers led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty released a paper on how growing up in poverty affects boys and girls differently. Their core finding: Boys who grow up in poor families fare substantially worse in adulthood, in terms of employment and earnings, than girls who grow up in the same circumstances. (The Washington Post has a good write-up of the paper and its implications.)

But beyond its immediate conclusions, the paper, like much of Chetty’s recent work as part of his Equality of Opportunity Project, points to a deeper truth: In the U.S., where you come from — where you grow up, how much your parents earn, whether your parents were married — plays a major role in determining where you will end up later in life.

And now... separate that from genetics.

Longer Hours for Less Pay?

Sanders repeated his talking point that “millions of Americans … are working longer hours for low wages.” (Typically, he says “lower wages,” as he did in a Dec. 29, 2015, Facebook post, a Jan. 14 tweet, and a campaign ad that began airing in November.)

Sanders: Millions of Americans are giving up on the political process. And they’re giving up on the political process because they understand the economy is rigged. They are working longer hours for low wages. They’re worried about the future of their kids, and yet almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent.

Let’s look at the official figures. The trend for the average weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory employees in the private sector has declined — from a high point of 38.8 hours a week in May 1965 to 33.7 hours a week in December 2015, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average weekly hours dropped to a low of 33 in June 2009, at the official end of the Great Recession, and have gone up a bit to 33.7, where weekly hours also were in January 2008.

For all employees in the private sector, BLS data are only available since 2009, showing a small increase in weekly hours from 33.8 hours to 34.5 hours on average.

At the same time that average weekly hours for production and nonsupervisory employees were going down, the average weekly earnings also declined. BLS numbers show average weekly earnings for those employees in May 1965 were $320.69, in 1982-84 dollars, compared with $307.94 in December 2015. That’s a drop in inflation-adjusted earnings of 4 percent, during a time period in which the hours worked declined 13 percent.

So that’s lower earnings for fewer hours worked.

LordMortis wrote:I know that what I observe is not necessarily indicative of the whole, but does any one know of normal full time employees working less than 40 hours? In my industry, in my area, the standard work week has become 45 hours and no one works "only" 45 hours. Of course we get paid as if we work a 40 hour week.

GreenGoo wrote:I can't for the life of me believe that the majority of salaried workers are working only 33-34 hours a week regularly.

The Meal wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:I can't for the life of me believe that the majority of salaried workers are working only 33-34 hours a week regularly.

*Maybe* if you factor in holidays and vacations as time-not-working you can pull the average down below 40. But that's a lot of time off to pull the weekly average down by six or seven hours.

Jeff V wrote:11 holidays?

We get...um...6. Beginning of Summer, Middle of Summer, End of Summer, Football and Turkey Day, Presents Day, and Drunken Party Day.

LordMortis wrote:

Jeff V wrote:11 holidays?

We get...um...6. Beginning of Summer, Middle of Summer, End of Summer, Football and Turkey Day, Presents Day, and Drunken Party Day.

11 is standard around here.

NY
Memorial
Easter Friday
4th of July
Labor
Turkey Day +2
Xmas +2
NYE

...

I appear to be missing one but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. We don't Columbus, Voting, or MLK days off.

Max Peck wrote:Veteran's Day?

Isgrimnur wrote:13 holidays, one of which is slurped by the all team meeting, but compensated for with a floating holiday.

Jeff V wrote:11 holidays?

We get...um...6. Beginning of Summer, Middle of Summer, End of Summer, Football and Turkey Day, Presents Day, and Drunken Party Day.

Archinerd wrote:School kids around here get more though.
Polish General's Day, Civil Rights Activist Day, Furry-Faced President's Day, and whatever Feb 5th is because I've been seeing kids walking around outside all day so I'm pretty sure there is no school.

noxiousdog wrote: ↑Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:25 am New adults (and note that includes 15-18 year olds) SHOULD earn less than retirees.