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Will the global economy implode in 2016?
We're hosed - I have stocked up on canned goods
My private security guards will shoot the paupers
We'll be good or at least coast along
I have no earthly clue
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MODS CURE JOKES
Nov 11, 2009

OFFICIAL SAS 90s REMEMBERER

Numlock posted:

I work in the Oil Services industry and I'm shocked I still have a job.

I'll probably be making GBS threads unicorn eggs if I still have the same job by this time next year (unless we glass the middle east or something).

And lo, a new neoconservative is born. Arabia delenda est.

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Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




Numlock posted:

I work in the Oil Services industry and I'm shocked I still have a job.

Nature of the beast. Maritime and Oil, those two always rock the boom and bust bullshit hard. They pay well but don't plan on working in the same place forever. Get out now while you still can.

e_angst
Sep 20, 2001

by exmarx

Ratoslov posted:

Good news! Digital video doesn't get grainy as it ages. :v:

True, it'll have to be filtered by the documentary makers who are trying really hard to convey "this is where it all went wrong"...

Personal perspective: I think things will be okay, but probably rough for a year or two. My stock options that have already vested are eating poo poo right now due to the current downturn, and I was really hoping to cash some of those out to pay down some stupid credit card debt that I got into last year. Basically, 2016 (and possibly 2017) will be a year of belt-tightening and paying down debts. My job's pretty secure, though, and I have enough savings to deal with a catastrophe if it comes.

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


Good piece by Ha-Joong Chang this morning in the paper about China.

quote:

Don’t blame China for these global economic jitters

The US stock market has just had the worst start to a year in its history. At the same time, European and Japanese stock markets have lost around 10% and 15% of their values respectively; the Chinese stock market has resumed its headlong dash downward; and the oil price has fallen to the lowest level in 12 years, reflecting (and anticipating) worldwide economic slowdown.

According to the dominant economic narrative of recent times, 2016 was the year when the world economy would recover fully from the 2008 crash. The US would lead this recovery by generating growth and jobs via fiscal conservatism and pro-business policies. Reflecting the economy’s robust growth, the US stock market reached new heights in 2015, although disrupted by the mess in the Chinese stock market over the summer. By last October, US unemployment had fallen from the post-crisis peak of 10% to 5%, bringing it back close to the pre-crisis low. In a show of confidence, last month the US Federal Reserve finally raised its interest rate for the first time in nine years.

Not far behind the US, the story goes, have been Britain and Ireland. Hit harder than the US by the financial crisis, they have, however, recovered handsomely because they kept their nerve and stuck to the right, if unpopular, policies. Spending cuts, focused on wasteful welfare spending, accelerated job creation by making it more difficult for people to live off the taxpayer. They sensibly didn’t give in to the banker-bashers and chose not to over-regulate the financial sector.

Even the continental European economies have been finally picking up, it was said, having accepted the need for fiscal discipline, labour market reform and cutting business regulations. The world – at least the rich world – was finally set for a full recovery. So what has gone wrong?

Those who put forward the narrative are now trying to blame China in advance for the coming economic woes. George Osborne has been at the forefront, warning this month of a “dangerous cocktail of new threats” in which the devaluation of the Chinese currency and the fall in oil prices (both in large part due to China’s economic slowdown) figured most prominently. If our recovery was to be blown off course, he implied, it would be because China had mismanaged its economy.

China is, of course, an important factor in the global economy. Only 2.5% of the world economy in 1978, on the eve of its economic reform, it now accounts for around 13%. However, its importance should not be exaggerated. As of 2014, the US (22.5%) the eurozone (17%) and Japan (7%) together accounted for nearly half of the world economy. The rich world vastly overshadows China. Unless you are a developing economy whose export basket is mainly made up of primary commodities destined for China, you cannot blame your economic ills on its slowdown.


The truth is that there has never been a real recovery from the 2008 crisis in North America and western Europe. According to the IMF, at the end of 2015, inflation-adjusted income per head (in national currency) was lower than the pre-crisis peak in 11 out of 20 of those countries. In five (Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK), it was only just higher – by between 0.05% (Austria) and 0.3% (Ireland). Only in four countries – Germany, Canada, the US and Sweden – was per-capita income materially higher than the pre-crisis peak.


Even in Germany, the best performing of those four countries, per capita income growth rate was just 0.8% a year between its last peak (2008) and 2015. The US growth rate, at 0.4% per year, was half that. Compare that with the 1% annual growth rate that Japan notched up during its so-called “lost two decades” between 1990 and 2010.

To make things worse, much of the recovery has been driven by asset market bubbles, blown up by the injection of cash into the financial market through quantitative easing. These asset bubbles have been most dramatic in the US and UK. They were already at an unprecedented level in 2013 and 2014, but scaled new heights in 2015. The US stock market reached the highest ever level in May 2015 and, after the dip over the summer, more or less came back to that level in December. Having come down by nearly a quarter from its April 2015 peak, Britain’s stock market is currently not quite so inflated, but the UK has another bubble to reckon with, in the housing market, where prices are 7% higher than the pre-crisis peak of 2007.

Thus seen, the main causes of the current economic turmoil lie firmly in the rich nations – especially in the finance-driven US and UK. Having refused to fundamentally restructure their economies after 2008, the only way they could generate any sort of recovery was with another set of asset bubbles. Their governments and financial sectors talked up anaemic recovery as an impressive comeback, propagating the myth that huge bubbles are a measure of economic health.

Whether or not the recent market turmoil leads to a protracted slide or a violent crash, it is proof that we have wasted the past seven years propping up a bankrupt economic model. Before things get any worse, we need to replace it with one in which the financial sector is made less complex and more patient, investment in the real economy is encouraged by fiscal and technological incentives, and measures are brought in to reduce inequality so that demand can be maintained without creating more debts.

None of these will be easy to implement, but we know what the alternative is – a permanent state of low growth, instability, and depressed living standards for the vast majority.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/21/dont-blame-china-global-west-economic-recovery-asset-bubbles

mila kunis
Jun 10, 2011
Has inequality and income disparity been mentioned by anyone major at Davos?

Freezer
Apr 20, 2001

The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.

Junior G-man posted:

Good piece by Ha-Joong Chang this morning in the paper about China.

While I agree with the general gist of the article the Chinese did create some spectacular asset bubbles of their own, on par with any that the west has created, but with way less accountability. And Chinese money is inflating bubbles elsewhere, contributing to the mess.

Freezer fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jan 22, 2016

District Selectman
Jan 22, 2012

by Lowtax

MODS CURE JOKES posted:

My suggestion to you, SA, is to move to a place where they're about to start manufacturing some sweet high-tech poo poo (big ups to Our Benevolent Oligarchs, Elon Musk and Terry Pegula).

Yeah, if people under 50 could learn how to manufacture astrospace things, that would be cool. Old boomers keep retiring and dying. Literally everyone I worked with at NASA ~one year ago~ has retired or died. If you want a job forever, you just need to learn how to make space stuff and you're golden, I promise. Competency is barely a requirement anymore.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

District Selectman posted:

Yeah, if people under 50 could learn how to manufacture astrospace things, that would be cool. Old boomers keep retiring and dying. Literally everyone I worked with at NASA ~one year ago~ has retired or died. If you want a job forever, you just need to learn how to make space stuff and you're golden, I promise. Competency is barely a requirement anymore.

Where do you go to make space things? I'm a CS major and would really be interested in writing programs for space things. Space is cool and good and I want to go there.

WorldsStongestNerd
Apr 28, 2010

by Fluffdaddy
If the people that run things won't reform the economic system and insist on inflating bubbles, I at least hope we can inflate something useful like space or alternative energy sectors instead of goddamn housing again.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

Freezer posted:

While I agree with the general gist of the article the Chinese did create some spectacular asset bubbles of their own, on par with any that the west has created, but with way less accountability. And Chinese money is inflating bubbles elsewhere, contributing to the mess.

The real reason that China is a bit of a red herring is that the cause of the next recession doesn't really matter. They happen as just a normal part of the economic cycle, so if it's not China or cratering oil prices then it'll be something else that eventually slows growth. The problem isn't that we may or may not be going into another recession, it's that none of the structural issues from the 2008 crisis were dealt with and the global economy is fragile as gently caress as a result. Any sort of slow down in the near term is going to hit a lot of people very hard, and a slow down is inevitable even without anything disastrous happening. There's a reason the ECB responded to panic in the stock market with, effectively, "we will do literally anything."

Edit- This is also why it's silly when people talk about an economic downturn in the near future as if it's doom saying or whatever. It's fairly rare for growth to just truck along for 8+ years. We're basically "due" for this to end, and it's incredibly worrying that the Fed is still more or less in crisis mode after all this time just to maintain a very weak recovery.

Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Jan 22, 2016

The Dipshit
Dec 21, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

District Selectman posted:

Yeah, if people under 50 could learn how to manufacture astrospace things, that would be cool. Old boomers keep retiring and dying. Literally everyone I worked with at NASA ~one year ago~ has retired or died. If you want a job forever, you just need to learn how to make space stuff and you're golden, I promise. Competency is barely a requirement anymore.

gently caress it I'm down. I can even throw in a degree of competence.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Helsing posted:

That assumes that some kind of left liberal reformism is the only solution to the crisis. I find that plausible from an ethical standpoint but not necessarily an economic one. Could be that some authoritarian political system will stumble onto a workable economic formula for the 21st century. Stranger things have happened.

Well more technically it could possible be market socialist reformism as well. As for authoritarian governments figuring it out, I guess anything is possible but in all honesty the current crop of authoritarians seem primarily interested in maintaining power above all else and economic policy seems distant in the background. If anything these regimes often have to rely so much on nationalism and emotional appeals, because they don't really have much else to bring on the table.

It isn't to ignore the problem of how this situation was started in the first place, but ultimately I don't really see much if any progress being made.

Paradoxish posted:

The real reason that China is a bit of a red herring is that the cause of the next recession doesn't really matter. They happen as just a normal part of the economic cycle, so if it's not China or cratering oil prices then it'll be something else that eventually slows growth. The problem isn't that we may or may not be going into another recession, it's that none of the structural issues from the 2008 crisis were dealt with and the global economy is fragile as gently caress as a result. Any sort of slow down in the near term is going to hit a lot of people very hard, and a slow down is inevitable even without anything disastrous happening. There's a reason the ECB responded to panic in the stock market with, effectively, "we will do literally anything."

Edit- This is also why it's silly when people talk about an economic downturn in the near future as if it's doom saying or whatever. It's fairly rare for growth to just truck along for 8+ years. We're basically "due" for this to end, and it's incredibly worrying that the Fed is still more or less in crisis mode after all this time just to maintain a very weak recovery.

That is the issue isn't it, that another downturn isn't that remarkable but in many ways it doesn't seem to many consumers we already left the last downturn, and as you said there are probably even less policy options now then there were then. Most European governments that were indebted during the crisis are still racking up deficits even when times are suppose to be "good" and the world is looking for a engine for growth that may not really be there. Once the US economy slows down without fiscal stimulus to back it up, there isn't really any where to turn to but hope that India some how can figure out how to carry the world on its back (they can't and the Modi bubble will also eventually pop).

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN

Ardennes posted:

Well more technically it could possible be market socialist reformism as well. As for authoritarian governments figuring it out, I guess anything is possible but in all honesty the current crop of authoritarians seem primarily interested in maintaining power above all else and economic policy seems distant in the background. If anything these regimes often have to rely so much on nationalism and emotional appeals, because they don't really have much else to bring on the table.


In theory why couldn't we have a society where most people live in favelas, scraping whatever meagre income they can get from black / grey market activity, while an ultra wealthy few live in hyper automated gated communities? That kind of society could conceivably continue to progress economically and technologically while just sort of leaving a large portion of humanity in the dust.

One hopes such a situation would be politically unsustainable but economically I don't see why it couldn't function adequately.

MothraAttack
Apr 28, 2008

Freezer posted:

While I agree with the general gist of the article the Chinese did create some spectacular asset bubbles of their own, on par with any that the west has created, but with way less accountability. And Chinese money is inflating bubbles elsewhere, contributing to the mess.

It's also useful to compare how much new growth has been created by China per annum (as opposed to the share it occupies globally) -- so much of the global post-recession recovery was driven by Chinese growth, as opposed to, say, European or emerging market growth. As such, a slowdown in China puts a firm dent in the global economy's "recovery."

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Paradoxish posted:

The real reason that China is a bit of a red herring is that the cause of the next recession doesn't really matter. They happen as just a normal part of the economic cycle, so if it's not China or cratering oil prices then it'll be something else that eventually slows growth. The problem isn't that we may or may not be going into another recession, it's that none of the structural issues from the 2008 crisis were dealt with and the global economy is fragile as gently caress as a result. Any sort of slow down in the near term is going to hit a lot of people very hard, and a slow down is inevitable even without anything disastrous happening. There's a reason the ECB responded to panic in the stock market with, effectively, "we will do literally anything."

Edit- This is also why it's silly when people talk about an economic downturn in the near future as if it's doom saying or whatever. It's fairly rare for growth to just truck along for 8+ years. We're basically "due" for this to end, and it's incredibly worrying that the Fed is still more or less in crisis mode after all this time just to maintain a very weak recovery.

One of the issues there is that any downturn at all is going to hammer people that never quit getting hammered even harder. This is especially in light of the fact that the stock market, investors, and the rich are just demanding bigger returns every year on absolutely everything no matter what. They're squeezing harder and harder. This is going to make any downturn that happens even worse. Aside from that Wall Street never got over its gambling addiction and is looking for new ways to make huge bets while shuffling the losses onto everybody else. Meanwhile poverty is still on the rise, main street is suffering, the middle class is shrinking, and a tiny handful of people is owning more and more.

The biggest issue right now isn't the cycle of up and down. You can plan for that and make policies to assuage the worst of the problems. That's kind of the point of social safety nets. "Oh hey the last recession eliminated your job? It's cool brah we got you covered until you get yourself a new one." The super rich don't want that to happen because somebody getting a paycheck but not working isn't making them profit which slows down the blood funnel.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN

MothraAttack posted:

It's also useful to compare how much new growth has been created by China per annum (as opposed to the share it occupies globally) -- so much of the global post-recession recovery was driven by Chinese growth, as opposed to, say, European or emerging market growth. As such, a slowdown in China puts a firm dent in the global economy's "recovery."

This is particularly true in Canada, which is one of the few countries that has supposedly had "robust" growth since the crash. Our exports sector became very reliant on China and depending on who you ask it may be that our exceptionally high real estate prices (which inflate the paper wealth and thus purchasing power of our extremely over leveraged middle class) are at least partially driven by Chinese families who are desperate to park their cash somewhere safe.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?
Japan's central bank has moved to negative interest rates. This is probably what we're going to see if/when growth significantly slows in the US before the Fed feels comfortable that the economy can chug along without training wheels.

Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jan 29, 2016

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Paradoxish posted:

Japan's central bank has moved to negative interest rates. This is probably what we're going to see if/when growth significantly slows in the US before the Fed feels comfortable that the economy can chug along without training wheels.

If anything it is already happening, Q4 growth is projected to be a rather dismal .7%. Some of that result may be seasonal but low consumer demand and a strong dollar is going to eventually have an effect on the overall economy.

Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jan 29, 2016

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->
Couldn't that be a correction brought on by the China bubble bursting?

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Helsing posted:

In theory why couldn't we have a society where most people live in favelas, scraping whatever meagre income they can get from black / grey market activity, while an ultra wealthy few live in hyper automated gated communities? That kind of society could conceivably continue to progress economically and technologically while just sort of leaving a large portion of humanity in the dust.

One hopes such a situation would be politically unsustainable but economically I don't see why it couldn't function adequately.

You've come quite close to describing the Victorian era, which we rapidly seem to be regressing to.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

Fojar38 posted:

Couldn't that be a correction brought on by the China bubble bursting?

There are a lot of long-term indicators that point to a slow down in the near future. China is getting all of the attention, but China shouldn't be dragging the US economy down that much. The only truly positive thing going on right now is employment, and employment notoriously lags (the peak from the 2008 recession happened after the crisis, for example, and unemployment is often very low right before a recession). That's even more worrying now since so much of the new employment from the last few years has been in service and retail, two sectors that are going to get devastated if consumer spending slows.

What's disconcerting is how hard the Democrats have been banging the drums about this recovery when they really should have known better. It's going to look bad for them if the economy becomes the big news story in the second half of this year.

Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jan 29, 2016

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->
I got the impression that around August of 2015 it started to look like a crash in China was not only likely but also imminent, and I remember that it sundered stock markets globally including in the USA. In that sort of panicked environment I can see people becoming more cautious, investing less, etc, until China either bottoms out or is severed. I also understand that corporate profits are low because a ton of idiots invested in China.

What other indicators are showing that the US economy is being dragged down by domestic factors? I heard that the US economy is basically the only major economy that's doing okay right now.

Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jan 29, 2016

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?
The biggest issues right now are a rising dollar along with rising oil prices and slowing purchases of durable goods (auto sales are down from their peak, for example). The manufacturing sector may also technically be in (or at least flirting with) a recession already. The issue of the dollar going up and import prices declining isn't a domestic issue, but it's an indication that we can't stay insulated from the global economy. Again, though, there's nothing inherently weird or disastrous about any of this. We've been in an almost eight year period of growth. It's going to end.

Edit- I'm also just very suspicious of employment numbers as an indicator of the health of the economy, because historically speaking you can't use them to predict anything. If unemployment starts going up it doesn't mean that you need to worry about a recession, it means you're probably already in one.

Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jan 29, 2016

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug
Employments numbers are talked about a lot because that matters a gently caress ton to most people. As we saw during the down turn your average working stiffs just don't have the resources to survive for tremendously long if their job goes away. If the "literally the number of jobs that exist currently" number goes down that fucks over a ton of people. It gets especially touchy in this environment of "we must cut funding to everything, all the time, forever" and shrinking benefits to encourage people to go find work.

It matters because if the number of jobs is low then the people who control said jobs can control everybody else while keeping costs down. It's also problematic as the savings of everybody but the rich have been making GBS threads out while debt is piling up. The obscenely rich are sitting on trillions of dollars worldwide and they aren't sharing so the rest of us have to live as best we can on the leftovers, which the obscenely rich are hoarding and also not sharing.

Grondoth
Feb 18, 2011

MODS CURE JOKES posted:

As a transplant from the NYC-area to Buffalo, I can honestly say that the stock downturns have no real consequences to our put-putting economic engine... but that's because Buffalo has been economically depressed since the first Great Depression. :v:

Actually it's doing pretty well right now. You didn't see it after all the manufacturing went away but we still decided that people couldn't drive downtown.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Employments numbers are talked about a lot because that matters a gently caress ton to most people.

I think you're misunderstand me. I wasn't saying unemployment isn't important, I was saying it's a poor indicator for anything other than the health of the economy as of few months ago. Companies expand during periods of growth and then shed those jobs during contractions, which means that things are usually already going badly by the time you notice anything worrying with unemployment numbers. You can see the effect here:



Basically, unemployment peaks after a recession and bottoms out shortly before one. It's like watching the stock market to try to figure out if bad times are coming - by the time the market has really priced in a downturn, we're already there.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug
No I got the point it's just that that's brought up a lot because that's what every that isn't rich cares about; whether or not I'll have a job this year. CEO McRichpants isn't going to go hungry but his secretary's kids might starve if that job vanishes.

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


ToxicSlurpee posted:

When China has its coming implosion and damages the world economy expect to hear a bit of "we need a world government to make sure this doesn't happen, people are literally dying because of greed" and a cacophony of "PROTECTIVE TARIFFS!!! ISOLATIONISM!!! TRADE IS BAD!!! GLOBALIZATION IS AWFUL!!! XENOPHOBIA HATE HATE HATE THE CHINESE ARE AWFUL AND DID THIS ON PURPOSE ALSO IRAN IS INVOLVED SOMEHOW!!!" Meanwhile those 62 people that effectively own everything are going to mysteriously and suddenly own more while money they touched just happens to find its way into the pockets of people that find reasons to justify austerity.

It's funny because the mainstream Serious People opinion on China for years now has been that none of the normal rules apply to it and it's completely unreasonable to expect it to be a liberal democracy which respects free trade like any other country. And then the result is a dying shitshow economy, as bad an internal situation on civil and human rights as it ever had, and Putinesque expansionism in foreign policy

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Jan 30, 2016

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
Yeah, the number of articles about how everything was just Bigger in China, that they wouldn't stumble on a transition to creating a domestic consumption economy because Reasons, was annoying as hell, and I'm glad they're gone.

rscott
Dec 10, 2009
I would say that one problem with the American economy is that basically everyone thought lower fuel prices would translate into increased consumer spending, when in reality it's mostly going to paying down debt and recovering savings which are basically nil for most people

The stock market and is basically worthless for determining the health of the economy though. Dow went up 400 points on poo poo gdp growth because that means the feds won't raise rates again and turn off the spigot of free money for them to throw around in the casino

Ardennes
May 12, 2002
A major problem for the US at this point is that almost every major economy has seen already significant devaluations, it is going to be nearly impossible to push a weak dollar policy. Of course, a real fiscal policy is now impossible. QE may cushion the fall a bit, but there is little evidence that loose monetary policy is actually enough to address looming structural issues with the US economy.

If anything it looks like a case of a coming "great stagnation." Growth is slowing but it is going to be even harder for the US if not most major economies to pull themselves out of it because there simply no longer any possibility of fiscal stimulus. Do you see the US House passing a major stimulus bill if there is a recession? Then there is the question of who else is going to pull the world out of increasing stagnation if not for the US? Let's be honest, it isn't going to be Europe and probably not China, Europe still hasn't recovered and China is in it's own crisis. Moreover, Abenomics has been a near complete failure. Otherwise most emerging markets are looking pretty dire at the moment beyond India.

Of course, India's growth is probably not going to last and also its economy is still too small to have a major impact on the world (at least right now).

Ardennes fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jan 30, 2016

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Ardennes posted:

A major problem for the US at this point is that almost every major economy has seen already significant devaluations, it is going to be nearly impossible to push a weak dollar policy. Of course, a real fiscal policy is now impossible. QE may cushion the fall a bit, but there is little evidence that loose monetary policy is actually enough to address looming structural issues with the US economy.

If anything it looks like a case of a coming "great stagnation." Growth is slowing but it is going to be even harder for the US if not most major economies to pull themselves out of it because there simply no longer any possibility of fiscal stimulus. Do you see the US House passing a major stimulus bill if there is a recession? Then there is the question of who else is going to pull the world out of increasing stagnation if not for the US? Let's be honest, it isn't going to be Europe and probably not China, Europe still hasn't recovered and China is in it's own crisis. Moreover, Abenomics has been a near complete failure. Otherwise most emerging markets are looking pretty dire at the moment beyond India.

Of course, India's growth is probably not going to last and also its economy is still too small to have a major impact on the world (at least right now).

One of the biggest issues is money circulation. You can stimulate an economy by dumping raw capital into it. You can seriously just spend your way out of a recession. A bit of inflation happens but inflation is generally impossible to avoid entirely. A healthy economy also tends to have a low level of inflation anyway. Once money gets moving around it improves for everybody.

Right now money has a low velocity. A dollar isn't just a single dollar; if I give you a dollar for a sandwich you're going to take that dollar and spend it on something else. Too much saving is actually bad for the economy which is also why having public retirement funds and safety nets is a good thing. If you create a system where everybody needs to have multiple years of savings just to survive you have a lot of money sitting around doing nothing which is an issue. Which is another reason why a functional banking system is nice; to you that money is sitting there waiting for you but the bank gets to invest it.

Anyway as it stands money doesn't have enough velocity because the super rich are sitting on absurd amounts of it while using their money, power, and influence to prevent Keynsian economics. They're furiously worshiping economic policies that are at this point well known to not work at all. They have their fingers in everything and have it set up that they can't lose. You saw this in the Great Recession; their gambles paid off? loving right, more money! Their gambles failed? They had passed off the liability already and bought insurance against it failing so loving right, more money!

The blood funnel just constantly sucks money out of the economy and then sits on it. Money has no movement other than "out."

asdf32
May 15, 2010

I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

One of the biggest issues is money circulation. You can stimulate an economy by dumping raw capital into it. You can seriously just spend your way out of a recession. A bit of inflation happens but inflation is generally impossible to avoid entirely. A healthy economy also tends to have a low level of inflation anyway. Once money gets moving around it improves for everybody.

Right now money has a low velocity. A dollar isn't just a single dollar; if I give you a dollar for a sandwich you're going to take that dollar and spend it on something else. Too much saving is actually bad for the economy which is also why having public retirement funds and safety nets is a good thing. If you create a system where everybody needs to have multiple years of savings just to survive you have a lot of money sitting around doing nothing which is an issue. Which is another reason why a functional banking system is nice; to you that money is sitting there waiting for you but the bank gets to invest it.

Anyway as it stands money doesn't have enough velocity because the super rich are sitting on absurd amounts of it while using their money, power, and influence to prevent Keynsian economics. They're furiously worshiping economic policies that are at this point well known to not work at all. They have their fingers in everything and have it set up that they can't lose. You saw this in the Great Recession; their gambles paid off? loving right, more money! Their gambles failed? They had passed off the liability already and bought insurance against it failing so loving right, more money!

The blood funnel just constantly sucks money out of the economy and then sits on it. Money has no movement other than "out."

You have evidence that the U.S. is suffering from high savings rates? No you don't. Stop repeating fox-news-grade just-so stories.

Teriyaki Koinku
Nov 25, 2008

Bread! Bread! Bread!

Bread! BREAD! BREAD!

LeoMarr posted:

So Recession and fascism is on the rise throughout europe and most of the west. Welp


We said "Never Again.", but didn't remember that lovely economics had everything to do with it last time.

Whoops!

ToxicSlurpee posted:

One of the big contradictions of it all is that poo poo is only going to get worse until governments start running into the banks and cracking heads.

Except this will never happen, because the Masters of the Universe own the government they bought and paid for. Game over, dude.

Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jan 30, 2016

rscott
Dec 10, 2009

asdf32 posted:

You have evidence that the U.S. is suffering from high savings rates? No you don't. Stop repeating fox-news-grade just-so stories.

I think he's talking about the estimated $10-20 trillion parked in off shore accounts not really doing anything at all, even ignoring the effects that has on the value of the dollar through monetary velocity, the $2-3 trillion dollars in government revenue that could be reasonably expected to be recovered of that money through taxes is not insignificant when it comes to the world's overall economic growth.

Overall, it appears that we have reached the end of what supply side monetary policy can accomplish in propping up a top heavy, ridiculously unbalanced economy. The best thing the US government could do right now is to print money and hand it out to people who are going to spend it immediately. Inflation is the last thing anyone should be worrying about, if anything deflation could be an issue in the future.

rscott fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jan 30, 2016

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

rscott posted:

I think he's talking about the estimated $10-20 trillion parked in off shore accounts not really doing anything at all, even ignoring the effects that has on the value of the dollar through monetary velocity, the $2-3 trillion dollars in government revenue that could be reasonably expected to be recovered of that money through taxes is not insignificant when it comes to the world's overall economic growth.

Overall, it appears that we have reached the end of what supply side monetary policy can accomplish in propping up a top heavy, ridiculously unbalanced economy. The best thing the US government could do right now is to print money and hand it out to people who are going to spend it immediately. Inflation is the last thing anyone should be worrying about, if anything deflation could be an issue in the future.

That's exactly what I was talking about. Demand, as it turns out, is what drives an economy and as it stands worldwide demand is crapping out because people can't afford to buy much. When you have that much money being pulled out of the system and used to pull more money out of the system you have massive numbers of people who can't afford to much, if anything. With rising rent prices, rising cost of living, and stagnating wages the economy can't make any sort of meaningful improvements. Then you consider other things like the over $1 trillion and you've created a perfect economic poo poo storm.

Now you have billions of frustrated, angry people in the world. The world's right wing political movements are seeing that and going "it's those people who aren't like us! Let's get them!"

Shifty Pony
Dec 28, 2004

Up ta somethin'


rscott posted:

I think he's talking about the estimated $10-20 trillion parked in off shore accounts not really doing anything at all, even ignoring the effects that has on the value of the dollar through monetary velocity, the $2-3 trillion dollars in government revenue that could be reasonably expected to be recovered of that money through taxes is not insignificant when it comes to the world's overall economic growth.

Overall, it appears that we have reached the end of what supply side monetary policy can accomplish in propping up a top heavy, ridiculously unbalanced economy. The best thing the US government could do right now is to print money and hand it out to people who are going to spend it immediately. Inflation is the last thing anyone should be worrying about, if anything deflation could be an issue in the future.

That "parked" overseas money is still doing things. Most of the companies run investment arms using the money, even loaning it to the parent company which is fine to do as long as appropriate interest is paid by the parent company (to itself). About the only thing it can't be used for is to straight up pay stockholders which is why there is a lot of noise about having a repatriation holiday from the business class.

The problem is that right now there isn't enough investment options for the amount of money floating around. The demand isn't there to support capital expansions and there is so much money seeking any sort of return that lots of asset classes are way overvalued compared to the risk they involve.

Shifty Pony fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jan 30, 2016

asdf32
May 15, 2010

I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.

rscott posted:

I think he's talking about the estimated $10-20 trillion parked in off shore accounts not really doing anything at all, even ignoring the effects that has on the value of the dollar through monetary velocity, the $2-3 trillion dollars in government revenue that could be reasonably expected to be recovered of that money through taxes is not insignificant when it comes to the world's overall economic growth.

Overall, it appears that we have reached the end of what supply side monetary policy can accomplish in propping up a top heavy, ridiculously unbalanced economy. The best thing the US government could do right now is to print money and hand it out to people who are going to spend it immediately. Inflation is the last thing anyone should be worrying about, if anything deflation could be an issue in the future.

Yes he probably was. And it turns out that huffpost headline grabber is almost irrelevant because the figure is probably exaggerated and/or the money is actually being put to use and/or it's not bad if it is true. For example 3 trillion of really truly "hoarded' cash is sitting in foreign reserves (and more circulating black markets etc) and this is considered a great thing. If the rich actually have a few trillion more in Scroodge McDuck vaults that they don't want to spend that's good for the same exact reasons.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

That's exactly what I was talking about. Demand, as it turns out, is what drives an economy and as it stands worldwide demand is crapping out because people can't afford to buy much. When you have that much money being pulled out of the system and used to pull more money out of the system you have massive numbers of people who can't afford to much, if anything. With rising rent prices, rising cost of living, and stagnating wages the economy can't make any sort of meaningful improvements. Then you consider other things like the over $1 trillion and you've created a perfect economic poo poo storm.

Now you have billions of frustrated, angry people in the world. The world's right wing political movements are seeing that and going "it's those people who aren't like us! Let's get them!"

Stop perverting Keynes into an economic cargo cult. A hell of a lot more than financial demand drives the economy.

asdf32 fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jan 30, 2016

My Imaginary GF
Jul 17, 2005

by R. Guyovich

rscott posted:

I think he's talking about the estimated $10-20 trillion parked in off shore accounts not really doing anything at all, even ignoring the effects that has on the value of the dollar through monetary velocity, the $2-3 trillion dollars in government revenue that could be reasonably expected to be recovered of that money through taxes is not insignificant when it comes to the world's overall economic growth.

Overall, it appears that we have reached the end of what supply side monetary policy can accomplish in propping up a top heavy, ridiculously unbalanced economy. The best thing the US government could do right now is to print money and hand it out to people who are going to spend it immediately. Inflation is the last thing anyone should be worrying about, if anything deflation could be an issue in the future.

Of course its doing something: its being invested and producing economic growth.

It'll come back and pay taxes when it realizes that those foreign banks aren't nearly as safe as American banks.

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Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN

asdf32 posted:

You have evidence that the U.S. is suffering from high savings rates? No you don't. Stop repeating fox-news-grade just-so stories.

asdf32 posted:

Yes he probably was. And it turns out that huffpost headline grabber is almost irrelevant because the figure is probably exaggerated and/or the money is actually being put to use and/or it's not bad if it is true. For example 3 trillion of really truly "hoarded' cash is sitting in foreign reserves (and more circulating black markets etc) and this is considered a great thing. If the rich actually have a few trillion more in Scroodge McDuck vaults that they don't want to spend that's good for the same exact reasons.

:lol:

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