Escaping the Storm (2013)

commercial airline escaping a super-cell over Montana

Looking into the future is always a dangerous practice, but the 2013 economic outlook is “stormy.” 

By the end of this year the US should know if it escaped the clouds or not. 

Here is a general forecast for a perfect global storm which may occur in 2013 (Roubini):

Factors that might contribute to a massive global recession:

1. disorderly breakup of the Eurozone b/c of monetary instability.
2. another recession in the U.S. (2013) b/c of gov't instability.
3. slow growth in China, hard landing.
4. emerging markets stumble (Brazil, India, Russia, Africa, where growth is stalling).
5. Middle Eastern risk of military confrontation re: nuclear proliferation.

There is still time to fend off these threats or even escape by heading the other direction like the airplane in the picture above; however, reading these predictions this morning gave me pause about prospects for 2013.

Fasten your seatbelts, and place seats & tray-tables in the fully upright position. There could be some turbulence up ahead!

©Mark H. Pillsbury

Herman Cain steps up attacks on Occupy Wall Street protests - latimes.com

quoted from the article: Nancy Pelosi and I agree on something:

Herman Cain steps up attacks on Occupy Wall Street protests - latimes.com: (Nancy Pelosi)"“I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen,” she said “We cannot continue in a way that does not — that is not relevant to their lives. People are angry.”"

'via Blog this'

Hope and change must be relevant to the voter's life. 7 out of 10 Americans believe that the President has not handled the economy correctly and now Nancy Pelosi says that change "has to happen." I agree with her. The next general election is a great place to start.

Stimulus Package a/k/a TARP and "shovel-ready" jobs

I heard President Obama joke: "Shovel-ready was not as . . . uh . . . shovel-ready as we expected..." The problem with that is . . . uh . . . he wasn't very funny!

Why does the POTUS just get a pass on this type of behavior? When the previous president would have been eviscerated for such an insensitive joke/comment.

No sir, the whole "shovel-ready" scam did not even occur; not even sure that GAO could measure what it turned out to be, but jobs did not spontaneously arise out of the vaunted stimulus package.

Was it a way to appeal to the old FDR notion of the WPA work creation on public works and infrastructure projects that admittedly need some work? Even construction jobs are much too sophisticated to just hand some out-of-work-dude a shovel and solve the economy's problems. It was immature and naive to think "shovel-ready" was a viable alternative to the economic woes of the country at that time.

What we need now is not the absence of uncertainty, which is so often written about in the newspapars. The economy needs a rolling-back of much of the Obama legislation and the freeing up of small business to start hiring again. Small business is not "afraid" of uncertainty, in fact, on the contrary, they are afraid of what the anti-business administration has accomplished since 2009.

http://tiny.cc/78ae5 (article link)
By CLIFFORD S. ASNESS (Wall Street Journal)
Suggests that drag on the economy in such legislation as Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare, is what actually slowed down hiring, which is still our most pressing problem, and something that POTUS still is not acknowledging. The economic engine will not run smoothly without full employment. Could the POTUS acknowledge that Keynesian solutions have not worked in the market and work with Congress to throw off the fetters on small business? Either he will, or the voters will force the point.