Shot in the Dark

Category: The Great Recession

  • Ripping Off The Bandaid

    OK, so work with me here [1]. I’m not especially a fan of tariffs. Some of the arguments against them aren’t much better, though. If they go through, they are taxes, yes indeed. And if they don’t – if they are leverage, used to successfully change trade policy, or in some cases safeguard an industry…

  • The Fashion Curve

    A long-time friend of the blog writes: I am so sick of hearing about things that millennials will “never have.” I am not that much older and I don’t think things were all that much different when I was in college, renting or buying a house. Perhaps the difference is in mindset- I didn’t expect…

  • Our Lying Eyes And Portfolios

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: “Hoarding.”  Americans are “hoarding” cash in their checking accounts, rather than invest in the stock market. The analysts quoted in the story say the economy is wonderful, the recession is over, incomes are up so people should be spending like crazy but those darn backwards fearful idiots aren’t even…

  • Victimology

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: That’s two stories [recently] about doctors who see themselves as victims. Do they realize they’re one percenters who have nothing to bitch about?  Why aren’t they ashamed to be complaining? They know they’re on the top rung of intelligence, we all do.  We know they have as much perseverance…

  • Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Reading a book from 2004 called “Dark Age Ahead” by Jane Jacobs, who has written about culture and cities and societal change. When it was written, everybody assumed the house price bubble would never burst. When it was written, everybody assumed that if the house price bubble did burst,…

  • Participation

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Liberals object when I say we ought to run government like a business.  Here’s an example why we should (from the public land records, nothing confidential, all public information):  House in the 1300 block of Fremont Avenue in St. Paul sold in 2007, peak of the market just before…

  • Diminished Expectations

    I find myself more and more these days trying to give historical context to current events, to clarify current events for the various millennials in my life. Here’s a big one:  while the media is turning cartwheels about the “Obama Recovery” (happening an unprecedented eight years after the crash – worse than the Great Depression),…

  • Shelf Date

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: First Quarter GDP revised down to 0.8% and second quarter revised down to 1.2%.  The economy is flat.  And that’s if you believe these revised numbers are accurate information instead of political propaganda for the election year.  Joe Doakes Like any of Obama’s policy declarations, job and GDP numbers…

  • Some Poor Chump Is Always The Last To Get The Word

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The US economy grew in the first quarter of 2016, but only a tiny bit, 0.5%.  That’s technically enough to keep us out of a “recession.”  First, do you believe that number?  Economic estimates are routinely announced with pronounced spin showing how well the administration’s policies are working, then…

  • Your Smile Is Thin Disguise

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Liberals claim the economy has been turned around for years, big recovery going on, stock market booming, unemployment at all-time lows.  I don’t believe the government’s statistics; I think bureaucrats manipulate the numbers to make the administration look good.   How about a more concrete number: vacant buildings in St.…

  • “A Cold Mississippi”

    One of the Minnesota left’s favorite conceits is that Minnesota is just plain better than The South.  Their favorite imprecation against some conservative budget-cut or program-trimming plan is that conservatives would “turn Minnesota into a cold (fill in a southern state)”. Perhaps Minnesota’s African-American community would wish that were the case; household income for black people…

  • Imbalance

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Does it seem as if Americans are struggling to find jobs, but immigrants have no problem? That’s because it’s true. Joe Doakes “They take the jobs Americans won’t to do”, in some cases, because Americans don’t get to them first.” No, it’s not hyperbole: The one chart that matters…

  • Patching The Balloon

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Fannie Mae used to allow 97% loan-to-value meaning you only had to have 3% down to buy.  After the crash, they lowered that to 95% meaning borrowers needed to save up 5% to buy.  It turns out women and minorities are hardest hit by that change.  So Fannie Mae…

  • A Thousand Words

    If there’s one thing I cordially detest about social media today, it’s the photo-memeification of all political debate.  On Facebook and Twitter, thousands of people can pass along a graphic, often wrong, frequently giggly/snarky photo in lieu of understanding an issue or being able to state a coherent case. But sometimes they’re right: I’ve been…

  • Ghost Of Crisis Future

    “Progressives” the world over are pretty much all the same.  Kevin Williamson on the Greek crisis: When Greece’s sham economy went ass over teakettle, it agreed to a bailout package, finalized in 2010. That deal is now widely blamed by the Left for exacerbating Greece’s economic crisis with excessive “austerity.” The problem with that line…

  • Just Keep Repeating…

    “…the recovery is just booming along“.  

  • I Anticipate A Lot Of Coverage…

    …of racial violence, campus sexual assault, and the Kardashians. Why? Just a hunch.

  • Who Could Have Predicted?

    The economy under wan, feeble socialist Obama has grown at an anemic rate compared to the rates under the healthy, happy free-marketeer Reagan. Ronald Reagan’s economic plan saw GDP surge at a 3.5% clip – 4.9% after the recession. That’s a 32% bump. During the Obama years, thanks to his big government policies, the US…

  • The Greatest Recovery Ever…

    ….continues in the style to which we have become accustomed. Most chilling?  The labor force participation rate remains not a whole lot better than it was at the nadir of the recession.

  • Hope And Change – 2015 Edition

    Black unemployment is double white unemployment, national average, after six years of The Lightworker. Maybe we’ll just pass a law requiring the rate to drop…

  • Smarter Than Our Leaders

    Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain was right about one thing, anyway; despite all of governments foul-ups the fundamentals of the American economy are basically strong. We have ideas, and entrepreneurial energy, I don’t labor force that (2008 and 2012 elections not withstanding) we’re pretty smart and capable, and one of the worlds…

  • Rosy

    As the media relentlessly chants about “economic recovery”, at least one article (from the AP) notes that those “new jobs” aren’t really doing much for the lower-middle-class – people who may be doing OK on the surface, but are only a missed paycheck or two away from depending on someone else. And it’s worth noting…

  • Hunky Dory

    SCENE:  Mitch BERG is driving down the road, when he notices Avery LIBRELLE by the side of the road.  LIBRELLE is standing by the trunk of a Chevy Volt; on the trunk is perched a miniature windmill, attached by cables to a terminal under the Volt’s open hood.   LIBRELLE is blowing on the windmill.  BERG…

  • All That DFL Happy Talk About The Economy…

    …is baked wind.  Minnesota lost 4,200 jobs in July, and is adding them at an anemic pace year-to-date: State officials said Thursday that Minnesota employers shed a seasonally adjusted 4,200 jobs in July. Meanwhile, they also revised June’s numbers downward by 3,600 jobs. That means that, year-to-date, Minnesota has added a meager 2,900 jobs, or about…

  • Unexpected

    The “Obama Recovery” still isn’t.  The U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of 2.9 percent during the first three months of 2014, government bean counters announced this morning. That matches the worst non-recession contraction of the U.S. economy in over 40 years. Perhaps, taking a cue from minimum wage hike laws, the Administration could…