Economic rebound or meltdown coming?

Economic Rebound or Meltdown This Year If the government would lie to you about unemployment numbers, push propaganda on you about so called global warming that has already been disapproved by 87% of the world’s weather scientists, tells stories about Behganzi, the IRS scandal, the fast & furious debacle, border agents that were murdered, our southern border being penetrated by terrorist, the Fort La Hood shootings, why on earth would we want to believe anything they say about the economy? Yet here we are with yet another spin on how the economy is in rebound when all the signals say otherwise.

Weak figures With all the weak spending figures through the holidays last year (Best Buy down a whopping 11% in third quarter of 2013 compared to 2012), growth in 4th quarter online sales fell 10.3% compared to 14.8% in 2012 (stats from IBM Digital Analytics), could it be the reason for all this weak spending is a lack of real income growth in your wallet? According to Sentier Research, median household income, adjusted for inflation, has been essentially flat since 2010, and is still down significantly from the boom years of 2006 -07.

Wall Street Journal The economics editor of the Wall Street Journal David Wessel blasted out a column recently expressing his surprise at how poorly the American middle class is faring today with this bug eyed fact, “Adjusted for inflation, the typical man/woman who worked full time made less in 2012 ($49,398) than his analog did in 1987 ($50,166).” He added it will be a lot worse this year because of the high cost of Obamacare and the 21 new taxes that go along with it! Plus capital gains have went from 35% to 43.8%! The feds are like the mafia, always got their hands in your pocket!

Grain of Salt This is why we have to take anything that is espoused from the talking heads of the left wing persuasion for claims of a sharp “rebound” as just so much fed propaganda! After all there is an election cycle headed our way in 2014 and they want it to appear that all is lollipops and roses! That is not what 7 out of 10 Americans happen to think however. A recent poll done

by CNN/ORC showed that 70% think the economy is in very bad shape and more than half expect it to stay that way for at least the next year! Unless the country has to

endure more national disasters like Hurricane Sandy or devastating tornadoes like the Midwest tornadoes of 2013! The prevailing attitude among most Americans is summed up by a recent headline in USA Today: “Many feel like the recession still hasn’t ended.” In other words they feel they are being lied to by this administration!

Excitement Money Driven While the ongoing excitement over the stock markets is starry eyed dreaming (QE3 is manipulating it), many in the financial community are just creating lots of hype on stats that, quite frankly, weren’t that outstanding, mediocre at best! Perhaps the more salient fact to consume is that home sales are still the slowest in five decades! Before the financial crisis, Americans were buying well over a million new homes each and every year. When it was announced, however, by Andrew Klips at Equities.com that new home sales had jumped to an annualized rate of 444,000 in Oct. of 2013, it is still well off the boom years before the financial crisis.

Financial Analysts Say The financial wizards that be are also cheerleading the so called declining unemployment rate when in fact this stat is also manipulated.

A Politically Skewed Manipulation With a politically skewed manipulation of the real unemployment figures getting whittled down to 6.3%, when the real unemployed are figured in it looks like a more truthful picture is found at the logical number of 22.5%. The manipulation of the numbers by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) makes it look like the Obama Administration is making headway when in fact real unemployment, when you count in the totals for workers that are no longer looking, runs to 1920's depression levels of the previous real number of 22.5% that John Williams of the "Shadow Government Statistics" who has railed for years that the fed twists the numbers to make them say what they want them to say.

What is a Depression?

The media in the financial world usually defines a financial depression as being a loss of 10% in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is more than anything just a rule of thumb. Ronald Reagan once said, "Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours."

Numbers Are Skewed for Political Reasons

In a world where the very thought of trying to analyze a macroeconomic happening measured in dollars in a world where cash is electronic debt, property is still declining in value, capital investments flows freely across economic borders, cheap labor immigrates across our southern borders uninhibited, and politicians leave the government's biggest expenses off the books has become increasingly absurd over time. How could you ever try to figure out if the economy is expanding or contracting when the numbers used are skewed for political purposes?

When the Economy Fizzles Asset Prices Will Drop The massive artificial stimulus from the government, 700 billion a year in fed borrowing and 900 billion a year in money printing so the fed can buy up their own debt is certainly boosting the stock market, but is doing little to jumpstart the economy. The most direct beneficiaries are the investors in the stock market, not the average working stiff, if he is indeed working.

House of Cards This house of cards these lame brained academics in DC are trying to hold together with well-wishing, a wing and a prayer will probably be able to keep asset prices up,

and supposedly the economy growing, even if at a snail pace, this year. All they are doing is adding more TNT under the house of cards that will eventually blow what is left of the economy to itty bitty pieces! In other words the more the fed puts into this massive fake recovery the bigger the nuclear blast at the end!

Bottom Line The bottom line is that the real economy is not doing well at all, shuttered businesses everywhere, small companies not hiring due to Obamacare, banks not lending, taxes have got everyone screwed down to paying for higher & higher taxes and cost of living just about everywhere you look; the economy is not working and the working Joes know it! Thing is if we were truly in a recovery we should have seen it in holiday sales. We should see it in bigger paychecks. We should see it in quality jobs for recent college grads. Fact is if we do not see the recovery in the real economy we are not in a real recovery at all! DC can spin to anyway they want, but if Congress is still coughing up money for unemployment four years into the recovery and millions are still at the federal trough sucking up food stamp bennies does this sound like a recovery to you? My kid said to me the other day-the future is so bright I have to wear shades!