What you're arguing is that all economists don't know **** about economics, and it's better to make uneducated guesses than educated ones. Somehow I don't think that's a very good argument.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are you claiming all economists agreed with Obama's projections?
No, I'm saying I doubt there are any economists that haven't made a bad projection that compares to the one the Obama team made. Have you seen any comprehensive reports that accurately predicted the depth of the recession?
I find Peter Schiff pretty accurate and he did a good job predicting the depth of the recession back in 2006 (he claims it will last years in the video I posted; not sure if you consider time an accurate measure of "depth"). <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LfascZSTU4o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
He also claims hundreds of other crazy things and has been wrong on all of them. If you make enough doom & gloom predictions, you'll eventually be right by random chance.
Peter Schiff actually was spot on about the real estate bubble and the faux wealth affect it created and the explosion that ensued. Most of his funds though were invested in the emerging market stock markets which lost even more than the S&P 500 in 2008.
Sure, there are people who saw this recession coming better than others, but as Major noted I'm sure that people like Schiff have also been very wrong (I've seen evidence a long time ago but have nothing to show you now without a search). Still, he doesn't really give a comprehensive report there, and I'm not sure he did at all. It's easier to predict doom and gloom but harder to get exact numbers, and you're criticizing Obama's team for not getting the numbers right. I guess the point is, if you apply the same scrutiny to Schiff as you do to Obama's economic advisers, you'll end up ignoring all of them and not listening to any educated guesses. That's not what you want. I'm not advocating ignoring Schiff and people like him, I'm saying listen to both sides, and if they disagree try to figure out why and see whose argument makes the most sense. When it comes to the stimulus, I haven't seen any real arguments that it didn't work to create jobs. Even the people against it thought it did what it was designed to do but won't be worth it in the long run. So again, that chart is pretty worthless.
Sure - he was predicting a crash of the US economy and stock market back in the early 2000's, when both then had 5-6 years of sustained growth. In 2009, he predicted: http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/20/magazines/fortune/okeefe_schiff.fortune/index.htm Schiff is predicting a wicked post-party hangover. He sees a multiyear recession ahead marked by rampant inflation, a steadily weakening dollar, soaring commodities prices, slumping U.S. stock indexes, and falling wages. Outside of the commodity prices (and maybe the weakening dollar, depending on where you measure from), he whiffed that. Wages have been rising, the market is up 100%, we've had zero inflation, and the dollar is about where it was prior to the whole crisis starting. He's what people call a "perma-bear". No matter what happens, he always predicts doom ahead. The nature of the global economy is boom and bust, so eventually he will be right, and that's when he becomes famous and everyone talks about how smart he is. But in the meantime, he's wrong the rest of the time - and that's demonstrated by the fact that his actual investments have sucked and lost tons of money for people. Meredith Whitney is another person that became famous when she accurately predicted the banking collapse, but has been wrong basically ever since.
this months release: good news on job creation, but UE ticks back up to to increased labor force: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm In case anybody cares (and I know at least one person with multiple ID's who does), I figured out why the uolj/newyorker/tallanvor MPD bullsh-t about part-time jobs was wrong last month, after reading this month's release. The error (lie?) that he made was that he took the number of part time jobs from the HOUSEHOLD survey (the A table) and was subtracting it from the total number of jobs created from the ESTABLISHMENT survey. (the headline jobs number - from the B table). There's also some other uncertaintly, even within the A table, of the way they count parttime employment which is why "full employment by implication" is not even featured in the A table. Two different data sets - that's why the BLS didn't feature your fabricated number. Sorry wakkoman..
^ yes, I'm sure you're feverishly digging through the houshold survey (under which we "lost" 190,000 jobs - again, which is why it's not the headline number) to find a straw to grasp. Then you can login as uolj and try to salvage something. I look forward to not responding in the future as you reply to yourself 6 times in a row. STAY ALERT!
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm Feb - March numbers (in thousands) employed - 139573 - 139864 = 291 part-time for economic reasons - 8340 - 8433 = 93 part -time for noneconomic reasons - 18220 - 18417 = 197 93 + 197 = 290 Not that hard of math Sam and all from the household numbers.
employed = -190 part-time for economic reasons = 167 part-time for noneconomic reasons = -135 It's done for you by the BLS on the link I posted
Interesting. You made lots of claims based on the household survey last month, involving lots of extrapolation to find data that wasn't there, yet this month you won't even rely on it for the data that is there. STAY ALERT
