Slashdot Mirror

The big news media companies are dying.

Say it enough times and it must be true.

no one expected the economy to do well. not obama, his administration, or people that laughed when he was going to get more than 2%.

You mean the economy that was doing about as well under Obama as it is now? Trump loved to tweet about stock market records, but a 10-year graph of the Dow will show a pretty consistent rise in performance. There was a short blip in 2011, a year-long pause from late 2015 - late 2016, and another pause from Feb 2018 - today. These bull markets do not last forever though -- this is the longest on record. I would expect a "correction" and transition to bear market soon. I doubt there's actually anything the President could do about it either.

Or you know, pretty much constantly since 1980. Men have been falling behind in education, employment, and all kinds of places pretty much nonstop for decades, especially since the 2008 recession. But it's important that you let everyone know that you are overtly not down with the patriarchy, you're part of the solution, facts and context be damned, you've got an absolute dichotomy to prop up, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds.

https://www.macrotrends.net/25...

I know it's fashionable for conservatives to pick at the Leftist policies of the United States' most prosperous state but you're just making things up here. PG&E was doing great prior to the two big waves of fires that came through California https://www.macrotrends.net/st... and they would have zero liabilities in the case of these fires if they had maintained things the way they knew they were obligated to.

"Meanwhile, state and federal regulations basically conspire against them."

So we're convoluting state and federal policy now as a means of damning California? Most of our big open territory in this state is Federal.

"And they're made liable for any fires in the area of their equipment, whether it was actually their equipment or not..."

Citation needed.

"Meanwhile, California's idiot density is going up year over year as people with an actual functional brain flee the state."

Right, Californian's are idiots. What state are you from? Wait, it doesn't matter because it's not as prosperous as California.

"It's just the intellectually retarded leading the intellectually retarded out there."

Shit, I'll take our imperfect system over a Red state's any day of the week. At least we're able to generate meaningful wealth without the maximum exploitation of all of our public land as Texas does. We could certainly learn a thing or two from other blue states but I'm guessing that's not where you're at.

This fee is said to help pay for Verizon's anti-spam efforts.

Said the company with $32B in net income (profits):

Verizon net income for the twelve months ending September 30, 2018 was $32.258B, a 102.54% increase year-over-year.

Seriously, how much could anti-spam efforts cost them?

A few million for some good programmers and spam AI, which is probably off the shelf at this point.

This fee is said to help pay for Verizon's anti-spam efforts.

Said the company with $32B in net income (profits):

Verizon net income for the twelve months ending September 30, 2018 was $32.258B, a 102.54% increase year-over-year.

Seriously, how much could anti-spam efforts cost them?

• 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
• 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
• 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
• 2015: No results on Google
• 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

So how good is their track record?

• Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
• Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
• HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
• Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
• AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
• Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
• Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
• Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
• Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
• Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
• Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
• Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
• Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
• Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
• Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
• LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
• Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
• SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

Final tally:
7 correct
3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
9 wrong
4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.

• 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
• 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
• 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
• 2015: No results on Google
• 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

So how good is their track record?

• Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
• Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
• HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
• Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
• AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
• Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
• Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
• Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
• Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
• Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
• Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
• Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
• Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
• Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
• Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
• LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
• Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
• SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

Final tally:
7 correct
3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
9 wrong
4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.

• 2018: Uber, Twitter, Faraday Future, LeEco, Net Neutrality, HTC, SoundCloud
• 2017: Yahoo, Yik Yak, Twitter, Theranos (kinda obvious), HTC, Gearbox Software, Blackberry
• 2016: Yahoo, HTC, Blackberry OS, Groupon, Rdio and Tidal
• 2015: No results on Google
• 2014: Radio Shack, Blackberry, HTC, Zynga, AMD

So how good is their track record?

• Radio Shack (2014) - bankrupt 2015, 1 year after placed on list
• Blackberry (2014, 2017) - still around, but effectively dead since they no longer make phones as of 2016
• HTC (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) - still around, though its market share has dropped below 1%
• Zynga (2014) - still around, seems to have stabilized since 2014
• AMD (2014) - still around, best performing stock of 2018
• Yahoo (2016, 2017) - swallowed up by Verizon in 2017, so premature call in 2016, full credit for 2017
• Blackberry OS (2016) - killed in 2016 when they ceased making phones
• Groupon (2016) - they had a bad 2016, but were in the black in 2017
• Rdio and Tidal (2016) - Rdio died 2016, Tidal was swallowed by Sprint in Jan 2017, so we'll give Ars credit for this one
• Yik Yak (2017) - died 2017
• Theranos (2017) - died in 2018, kinda obvious it was dead
• Gearbox Software (2017) - still around, though I can't find recent financials
• Uber (2018) - still around, but took massive losses (-$2.8 billion) in 2018
• Twitter (2018) - as much as I hate twitter, they seem to have recovered in 2018
• Faraday Future (2018) - still around but looks likely to die this year
• LeEco (2018) - still around but on life support, will give Ars credit for this one
• Net Neutrality (2018) - dead, but kinda obvious
• SoundCloud (2018) - still around, but still losing money, and expected to keep losing money through 2019

Final tally:
7 correct
3 premature by one year, one obvious (Radio Shack, Yahoo, Theranos)
9 wrong
4 unknown (Gearbox, Uber, Faraday Future, SoundCloud)

So they're batting around .500. Not exactly stellar.

Just to back this up, Facebook had a net income of $19.5 billion for the last 4 quarters. A $1 million donation is 0.005% of their net income. It's equivalent to someone making $100,000 a year donating $5. Hardly newsworthy.

a commentator who said, "Most Americans would answer the protest 'no blood for oil' with 'why not?"

(Which Bush? Which war? I assume you are referring to Operation Desert Shield, under George Bush Jr, in 2003.)

A commentator may have said that, but it is not true. Americans did not think invading Iraq was about oil. At the time, oil prices were very low so such motivation would have been weak. They were convinced that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons, that he was behind the 9/11 attacks, and that he held a store of chemical weapons. The public wanted revenge for 9/11 and were willing to attack whatever strawman the government assigned the blame to. They knew from experience in the prior war in 1991, that oil prices were not going to go down.

You mean those years of ~2% GDP growth? Not the 3%+ that's happened since he was sworn in as President? Or maybe the DJIA that was ~flat from 2014 to the day after the election, rather than the ~40% run-up since then? Or maybe consumer confidence that bumped up 10% in the months right after the election? Those economic recoveries?

Wage growth is up.

Unemployment bottomed out at 5% for the last year of the Obama Administration, then plunged after the election.

GDP was plunging during 2015/2016 and has since turned around.

The DJIA plateaued during 2015 and 2016 and exploded after the election.

NASDAQ followed the same trend as the DJIA, indicating the flat-line in growth was economy-wide, not just specific sectors

Manufacturing job growth is at a 23 year high

Basically you're making stuff up - the facts do not support your positions.

Wage growth is up.

Unemployment bottomed out at 5% for the last year of the Obama Administration, then plunged after the election.

GDP was plunging during 2015/2016 and has since turned around.

The DJIA plateaued during 2015 and 2016 and exploded after the election.

NASDAQ followed the same trend as the DJIA, indicating the flat-line in growth was economy-wide, not just specific sectors

Manufacturing job growth is at a 23 year high

Basically you're making stuff up - the facts do not support your positions.

Well, now we have a bunch of professions that no longer work full time, simply because idiots can't figure out how their stupid ideas would be handled by businesses.

It looks like U-6 and U-5 have been falling slightly faster than U-3, which is the opposite of what you said.

Yes, it bewilders me, too. I've suggested a partial subsidy to make up the difference (e.g. 50% of the employer's healthcare costs incurred for a non-full-time employee for the portion represented by the hours discounted from full-time). That would encourage full-time employment, but reduce the impact: maybe you have a 20-hour worker and the $6,800/year healthcare costs are now subsidized by $1,700, so the employee costs you an extra 85 cents an hour. If that's a 30-hour worker (32 legally receives full-time benefits IIRC), you get $850 of subsidy, and your cost increase per hour is 42.5 cents per hour.

Of course, that also cuts into your profits, thus reducing your corporate taxes (35%), so your ultimate end-of-year profit impact is 65% of that (55 and 28 cents per hour).

unless you're equally ranting about how immoral socialist policies are that cause these problems in the first place.

It's not socialist. Socialism involves social ownership: the Government would need to own the insurers, hospitals, or whatever. This is tax-and-spend government.

Government is a social contract: the governed empower the government to protect their rights and general welfare. Without government, people are infinitely free to go anywhere, take anything, and do anything. They can murder you, imprison you, take your property, and so forth. We give up those natural rights, placing them in trust of the Government, and so cannot murder, imprison, and steal; in exchange, the Government provides for the general welfare and protects our rights to life, liberty, and property.

As such, I have suggested Government must actively seek to provide the services which best provide for the general welfare while also reducing the cost of those services. Technical progress reduces the cost to produce the same thing, and the Government provides things to a population: the cost per person to provide a service should go down, or the amount of service (e.g. healthcare) should go up. If the Government is taking 10% of the population's income (property) and providing service only worth 5%, it is unjustly taking 5% of the population's property.

That doesn't mean we don't provide services; it means we need to stop seeing taxpayers (and certain classes of taxpayers) as endless sources of money and start considering our moral obligation to take their property only in good faith and with the greatest care to minimize the tax necessary to provide the services our society determines necessary and desirable.

This entire philosophy doesn't mesh with socialism because you don't have property in socialism: we all own it, so your property is our property. We can't unjustly deprive you of what is ours in the first place. The ideal that Government must provide a fair exchange--that taxes are necessary and may be high, but must not be higher than necessary to provide service--necessarily requires an individual right to property and an obligation for the Government to protect that right.

Well, that rain thing was this year extremely uneven distributed over the ares of the planet where you could grow wheat or rice ....

Wheat prices are a little above historic norms but not by much.

Buying wheat would be way cheaper than shipping ice 10,000 miles through equatorial seas. For every tonne of wheat, they need 4000 tonnes of fresh water. This is far above the world's average because of low humidity, high temperatures, and sandy soil. Nearly all of that needs to be supplied by irrigation.

given that the official unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.9%

No, no it isn't. The current U6 unemployment rate as of August 2018 is 7.40, and even that fails to count many people. Anyone who reports the U2 unemployment rate is repeating a blatant and willful lie, which makes them at best an accessory to that lie. Do your research.

You are a fucking idiot. You have your head so far up your ass you think Trumps done something other than enrich himself and a bunch of .01% who already had a majority of the wealth in this country.

https://www.macrotrends.net/13...

That's Trump riding Obama's coattails.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...

I get it... you like sucking Trumps dick. You don't have to remind us of that by lying every time you make a post.

MAGA is a hearkening back to the latter days of Coughlin when he went fascist, when conservative white guys were in charge of everything and they didn't have to worry about being displaced by anyone else. Racism, bigotry, nationalism, military dick sucking, authoritarianism, and anti-intellectualism.... that's MAGA; nothing less than fascism. Sadly, we have a lot of complete fucking idiots in this country too damn stupid to understand that.

Because this article didn't match my observations of closing and aging Best Buy stores all around me, I looked the facts up.

Their profits are roughly the same as they were a decade ago - before inflation adjustment. And they have less stores than they did at their peak. Any retail operation that isn't even maintaining is well on the path to dying.

Perhaps this article announcing their first new store in seven years this past April justifies the "thriving" label.

Given the collapse in other competition such as Circuit City, Radio Shack, Sears, K-Mart, etc, it is apparent that they have succeeded in picking up no customers from competitors when those competitors collapsed.

This is "thriving"? Was this article written by Best Buy's investor relations folks?

I'm not buying a refrigerator from Amazon. Trying to return it would be a nightmare. Sears is done and my local Lowes/Home Depot don't carry all the refrigerator/washer/drier manufacturers or models. Best Buy has a surprisingly large selection of appliances. They also had the lowest price last time I was in the market. Costco sells appliances too but they don't have display models. Is there any other major national appliance store? All I see in Houston is mom-n-pops and local/regional chains.

Because this article didn't match my observations of closing and aging Best Buy stores all around me, I looked the facts up.

Their profits are roughly the same as they were a decade ago - before inflation adjustment. And they have less stores than they did at their peak. Any retail operation that isn't even maintaining is well on the path to dying.

Perhaps this article announcing their first new store in seven years this past April justifies the "thriving" label.

Given the collapse in other competition such as Circuit City, Radio Shack, Sears, K-Mart, etc, it is apparent that they have succeeded in picking up no customers from competitors when those competitors collapsed.

This is "thriving"? Was this article written by Best Buy's investor relations folks?

If you look at median wage growth, though, it's pretty weak - not much wage inflation. In a tight employment market (4% unemployment), and a period of GDP growth, you'd expect more wage inflation.

"The current U6 unemployment rate as of May 2018 is 7.60." And let's face it, even that is a lie. The actual unemployment rate is somewhere between the U6 rate and the inverse of the labor participation rate, which is currently 37.3 — the participation rate currently being 62.7%.

Stop repeating this nonsense about 4% unemployment. It is a total falsehood.

Who remembers being told we are heading into a new ice age?

Sigh. In the 1970s, some people in the media claimed that there would be an ice age; scientists were in fact already talking about global warming https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm.

Why do we pay attention to this crap. It's just like a new fad diet.

Because this "crap" happens to be pretty accurate and pretty concerning. See e.g. https://xkcd.com/1732/, and look at changing sea ice levels http://nsidc.org/sites/nsidc.org/files/images/cryosphere/sotc/arctic-antarctic-anomaly-trend-1978-2017.png http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html.

Unemployment is the lowest in 67 years.

Unemployment was lower during the Clinton administration, which I'm pretty sure was less than 67 years ago.

See September of 2000, for example:

http://www.macrotrends.net/137...

And that the three main measurements of unemployment, the official overall, the U5 and the U6.

Here's the last ~12 years of profit for Amazon on a quarterly basis. It appears, to me, that Amazon has been profitable 42 of the last 49 quarters. That seems to be a bit different than the meme you're trying to push - a company that is almost always profitable (6 out of 7 quarters), versus one that has never turned a profit - and is a LONG way from doing so, too.

From your own link, the average farm in America spends $17,000 annually on energy for pumping water.

Actually, my link says the average farm in America that irrigates spent $17,238 in 2012 (though if you divide the $2.7 billion total pumping costs against the 229,237 farms that irrigate, that comes out to $11,778 by my calculator -- close enough for government work, I suppose).

There are just over 900 million acres of farmland in the U.S. That means the ~55 million acres that irrigate are ~6% of total farmland . The other 94% use only water from the sky.

Another way to look at it is that $2.7 billion total irrigation costs across 900 million total acres comes out to $3 per acre . Taking corn as an example, the national average yield of 175 bushels per acre at an exceptionally conservative spot price of $3/bushel (it was about twice that in the same time frame as the above irrigation numbers, and is still higher today) means your $3/acre irrigation expenses are just over one half of one percent of your $525/acre revenue.

Irrigation in the U.S. is minuscule any way you slice it. The only way to make it look even remotely scary is to throw out misleading numbers in a vacuum.

cheap oil is already gone

Huh, funny how if you drew a trendline, the price of oil fluctuates up and down, but has been essentially flat for the last 40 years. It's almost like your assertion can be disproven with a ten second search on the web.

Either way, it doesn't matter if automation uses more energy. It'll either happen (and use the energy), or it won't, based on the availability. If it does as part of a normal market process, then people will find other things to do in order to produce even more wealth instead of whatever gets automated and we'll all be wealthier as a result.

http://www.macrotrends.net/144...

US agricultural output is at or near all-time highs.
US industrial output is at or near all-time highs.

I trust you were around during the dot-bomb days of 1999 through 2001? Take a look at the NASDAQ from say, August 1998 to September 2001. You'll see most of the deflation of the dot-com bubble was in 20-30% chunks, and recoveries that only made back half the loss. That was a pop of a big bubble... 6800 to 4900 in 4 months. 6000 to 3600 in 5 months. 4000 to 2500 in 2 months. Then 3000 to 2000 in 3 months. That's a 70% loss in 14 months - all done with 20-30% slides, each time with a small (10-20%) gain preceding the next slide.

Yet here we are 20 years later with a full employment economy.

This only qualifies as full employment by the badly skewed and unhelpful unemployment statistic that the US BLS uses to hide how badly dysfunctional our economy really is.

The best available metric is the U-6 rate which currently stands at about 8%. This metric still does not include those persons who were forced into early retirement by the great recession and are now permanently out of the workforce, but not willingly. Estimates are that early retirements added approximately 1.5% to the unemployment at the height of the recession, but these numbers are not counted anywhere once the affected individual reaches the official retirement age. This has nonetheless Caused permanent damage to the economy, and ruined the retirements of some 3 million baby boomers.

The simple fact is that the 2001 crash coupled with the great recession did tremendous damage to everyone who is not upper middle class or higher.

When all is said and done, the great recession never ended for those in the bottom 25% of the income bracket. That is why there is still so much hatred in this country, and why there was enough venom to elect an openly racist, misogynist, con artist to the highest office in the land.

Hmm. http://www.macrotrends.net/133... disagrees with you - especially if you remove inflation and turn off the log scale.

Since 2000 there's been a lot of volatility - but that's over the course of a decade, not a week.

Even the 10 year daily chart shows the maximum gain is around 10-15% over the course of four weeks (in August 2011), although there was a 15% crash over two days in April 2013 - http://news.goldseek.com/GoldS... has some analysis of that.

So no, gold is nowhere near as volatile as Bitcoin. Not even close.

Though thousands of employees were added due to this acquisition and others, GE is balancing operations to account for the growing market in wind power generation and the tailspin of the natural gas market.

Natural gas supplies have increased dramatically in the past decade due in large part to innovative fracking technology, and the price of the gas has fallen precipitously.

Producers are flaring the gas off near producing fields rather than piping it to market.

Contrast that to the US where Libertarian principles are at the helm, the best tax package in history for US citizens is about to get passed, the US stock market is at its highest ever, and there is full employment.

Lets see - a minimum trillion dollar increase in the deficit - solid Libertarian principle there! And the Tax Policy Center finds that the richest 1 percent of Americans would reap 48% of the benefits (they pay 36% of Federal taxes). Yep. That sounds Libertarian alright.

Oddly, 10 months ago when it was those lousy Socialist principles at the helm, we also had the highest U.S. stock market ever, and full employment.

Actually, it is the situation in the USA. Unemployment in America is at 4.1% while 5% is considered "full employment". Anyone capable of working can find a job, although they may need to move.

The U-3 unemployment rate is not meaningful, and even the U-6 is inadequate (this is by design.) The current U6 unemployment rate as of October 2017 is 7.90. Tell us again about "full employment", please.

Gold has at least been around for a long time, and has investment value because it is so easily recognizable and assayable, and has established value in every culture.

In Roman times, an ounce of gold traded for the best suit of clothes. After two thousand years of inflation, deflation and manipulation - it still does.

Yet many people have lost life investments by buying gold at the wrong time. It is way too volatile.If You buy high and sell low, as so many do, that doesn't do much for you.

I actually have some precious metal investments, made in 1978. If I were to sell them today, I would make about 500 dollars per ounce. That's actually a loss, adjusted for inflation. http://www.macrotrends.net/133... So they sit, I don't even think about them unless in conversations like this.

Anyhow, if you buy low, and sell before you think they've hit their peak, you might do okay. But most people don't think that way. On the way up, they are counting their money, and congratulating themselves for how smart they are. Then after it peaks, they hang on, because it has to go back up, right? Then after it sinks below what they paid for it, they hold on in the forlorn hope it will rebound. Then they sell it at a big loss.

My guess is that if we are taking the apocalyptic fear version the investors trot out, yes, when the wheels fall off, you can buy a loaf of beard and some bullets for some gold. My hope is that I don't survive whatever causes civilization to collapse like that. Just bury those Krugerrands or Englehard gold bars in a concrete box in the back yard, and when the radiation dies down, dig it up and make your way in the brave new world.

Canadian and U.S. Money, like all fiat currencies, can be instantly devalued simply by the gov't choosing to print more at any time. It IS NOT a guaranteed store of stable value.

Now what would a "guaranteed store of stable value" be?

Who pays out the guarantee?

Not precious metals that had real price collapses between 1915-1933, 1941-1972, 1975-1978, 1981-2010 (with several smaller peaks and collapses since then), we are still down sharply since 2012. Nothing stable about this.

The dollar on the other hand declines in value (if you are foolish enough to hold "paper") at a usually predictable rate and gradual rate (no inflation jump in the last 100 years is remotely like the price fluctuations of metals) and allow you to offset inflation with Federal bond purchases. U.S. Federal bonds have never been defaulted on, even interest payments have only been delayed (for a short time, a technical default) a couple of times. So far.

To answer my rhetorical question above, it is the U.S. Government.

Hard money cults do not trump actual data. (No I used that word in an ordinary sense, he does not own the word).

Tar sands are about $43 per barrel to break-even [oilsandsmagazine.com], and they are in Canada which means they are not part of the Green River shale formation in the USA.

So you're agreeing with me that using the tar sands is more expensive than shale oil but it was done during high oil prices and the Green River was not. That destroys your argument doesn't it?

A lot of the reason we are not producing out of the Green River formation is because of what was mentioned above (cheaper for us to produce in other US regions), and political roadblocks [house.gov] to actually developing that resource.

You like to ignore facts, don't you? Crude oil prices peaked at $144 in May 2008. In fact prices has been steadily rising since 2002. May 2008 was 6 months before Obama was elected and George W Bush was still president. The Green River formation crosses into the Republican states of Wyoming and Utah. Yet your reason why it was not developed was Obama who was not elected yet stood in the way. Or is it that your $30/barrel cost was wrong?

In the last year the US$ has risen a whopping 1.5% vs the RMB. Hardly anything to write home about. US is increasing interest rates, good for the dollar, China is experiencing the biggest slowdown for 3 decades, tends to be bad for a currency. Yet only 1.5% change. http://www.macrotrends.net/132... take a look at how the US dollar has done against other currencies.

Holy fucking whoosh, dude. Parent is making a joke.

From the recession that Dubbya left us in, the unemployment rate skyrocketed. President Obama steadily brought it back down throughout the entire term of his presidency. We can't go much lower than where we are now.

Any job creation we're seeing certainly isn't the work of Donald. These jobs are the result of plans that were well in the works long before Lying Donald came along.

So parent is obviously making a joke.

P.S. - Thanks, President Obama!!

So he did nothing?

Read more carefully:

he has done little to nothing of what he said he was going to do, none of it in any way close to exactly how he said he was going to do it, and everything he has done, he has compulsively lied about due to his tendency for braggadocio and irresponsibility.

Pretty much says he has done things, but failed to do it as he said he would, and lied about it.

If I had wanted to say he had done nothing, I could have said that, but no, I merely stated he had done little to nothing, and none of it was exactly how he said he was going to do it, and I certainly wouldn't have said that he has lied about everything he has done if he had nothing.

Stopped chemical weapons being used in Syria

Lied about stopping Chemical weapons being used in Syria, lied about his wasteful airstrike on an airport that was back in operation almost immediately, and certainly did not fulfill his promises on it. In reality, the Syrian Civil War is still a humanitarian crisis, and the use of Chemical weapons, no matter how deplorable they are, is only a small fraction of the tragedy.

And of course, Trump claimed he would solve the problem, which he hasn't, making his failure a lie. That he had previously denounced such missile strikes as he ordered as theater only harms your defense of him.

Increased S&P 500 by 5% (Real money gained by middle class)

Not directly attributed to anything he did, so...huh Thanks for showing the braggadocio though...the trend was already up and really, trying to assert it is real money gained by middle class? Ah, lies.

Unemployment claims at a 17 year low

A fuller perspective shows the lie.

Unemployment claims have been dropping steadily. Attributing it to Trump is like claiming that he put out a fire that was already mostly extinguished. Of course, he also claimed the same employment numbers were lies before relying on them for his own benefit, so there's another broken word of his. You really can't win with this, either Trump takes responsibility and admits that the complaints he made about unemployment statistics were false, or Trump has still left 90 million Americans without a job.

Illegal immigration drop by 75-90% depending on your source

Or you could at that some more. That isn't even getting into his already demonstrated lie about a Wall, his executive order, and his false sanctuary cities claims. Not to mention the toddlers and senior citizens added to his dangerous criminal list.

His handling of that has been yet another cavalcade of deceits, failure, and incompetence.

Supreme court nomination everyone agrees is good

Well, there's a lie. Your hyperbole betrays you. All it took is one.

There are others. 45 in the Senate alone.

Thats quite a bit for 3 months.

That's quite a bit of lies for 5 Sentences. No wonder Trump is your hero

If you still claim he did nothing, then y

The economy cycles every 8-10 years. We're 9 years into a growth phase, it's only natural another recession is coming.

That doesn't seem right. Look at the historical record this century: http://www.macrotrends.net/131...

Recessions have been in 1920, 1923, 1927, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1957, 1960, 1970, 1974, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008. That's an average of one recession every 5 years, usually plus/minus 2 years.

If you limit your view of the economy to just the last three recessions, then you do indeed get an average of one every 9 years plus or minus 3 years. But then you'll need to tell us why you think the last three recessions are a better predictor of the future than any other possible interval.

I'm not sure where you are getting "half again more people unemployed"--unless you are doing something really silly like comparing absolute numbers of people instead of rates.

Almost half again larger percentage of people unemployed. My bad. The total population has grown, so in absolute numbers, more than half again more people are unemployed now than then.

If you're talking about labor participation as measured by (1 - U6), then this is where you parted from reality. That number went from 92.8% when Clinton left office to the [much worse] 83.5% when George W Bush left office, and then *recovered* under Obama to the current 90.8%. It did not "fall *a bit*" under W and then "a bit more" under Obama.

Look again. The U6 rate started increasing in the last year of Pres. George W. Bush's administration, but it did not actually peak until November of 2009, almost a year into Pres. Obama's presidency. I'm not saying Pres. Obama caused that, mind you; it was very solidly headed in that direction as a result of brain-damaged deregulation of the banking industry under Pres. Clinton that triggered a crash late in the younger Pres. Bush's term.

Unemployment numbers are a bit worse off today than they were when Obama took office,

No, they are not. You're talking about the U6 rate and it was at 14.9% and today it is at 9.7%

http://www.macrotrends.net/137...

Well that depends, do you think that 4.9% is accurate

Yes

when there are 95m people not in the labor force

Who knows for what reasons? Plenty of people choose not to work, so have to assume the research is based on scientific methods.

and food stamp numbers have gone up by 20%.

From what 10 to 12 stamps? This number means nothing on it's own.

Or do you think that the 10% is more accurate? Keeping in mind that 10%(U6) is the rate far more accurate then the U3,

No it isn't, it is a different metric.

but keeping in trend over the last 10 years when you compare everything with U3 and U6 data the rate works out to being roughly 15%(14.7% if you don't want to quibble).

U6 includes U3, ie U3 is a subset of U6, so the 9.5% U6 figure is the highest possible number.
This page seems to show they're all going down.

Not forgetting that the 4.9% can't be independently validated either, even using the official figures since the "self-reporting" number is very hit or miss. Gallup's unemployment rate numbers which are nationally sampled put's their U3 rate at around 5.9%.

That's also valid, as long as you stick with one method when doing comparisons. Both 4.9% and 5.9% are still in the ideal range.

Now, figure that 20% of that 95m are retirees that still at a higher rate in the 1970's when women weren't in the workforce like they are today. Couple that with extremely stagnant wages for the last decade. Toss in that even the white house's own explanation that the U3 number is low because boomers are leaving the workforce, and that pushes the U3 unemployment rate lower.

I'm not sure what you are saying. People choosing not to work (ie retirees, children etc) shouldn't count as unemployed, since the purpose of an unemployment rate to measure how many job seekers there are out there. So if it's low it's because it is actually low.
The Government doesn't try to produce these figures purely to fool the public, they are used to gauge the health of the economy and how effective policy works. They are produced by people who's job it is to report accurate data. If they say it is 4.9%, and some other people say it's 5.9%, then either one sounds ok to me. 5% unemployment is considered economically ideal since you need some unemployed people available for new businesses to hire.

The bigger problem is not so much unemployment, but the support available to unemployed people to get out of that situation. My country has similar unemployment rates (5%), but it isn't an issue because we have access to free health, public housing, welfare etc so unemployment isn't necessarily a life changing experience.

By what measure have the last 8 years sucked? Just curious, but please be objective and stick to the facts.

Stock market did well: http://www.macrotrends.net/135...
GDP slowly rising: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
Unemployment steadily decreasing http://data.bls.gov/timeseries...
Steadily decreasing gas prices: https://blog.gasbuddy.com/Reta...
Believe it or not, decreasing crime rate: http://www.nationalreview.com/...
No major new gun control laws or other major trampling of the constitution
Many additional safeguards on disadvantaged segments of the population
And finally a reasonable record of kept campaign promises: http://www.politifact.com/trut...

To be sure not a perfect record; for example:
Middle East and Syria in particular - probably would have happened regardless
Relations with Russia and China - hard to say what could have been done differently
"Affordable" Health Care Act - although we couldn't live with what we had we should have done better. At least children are covered now...
Education - we owe our children and future more
Care for the environment - oils spills and global warming
Race relations and policing - Black Lives Matter

If you want to pin a failure on Barack Obama, blame him for not finding a way to reach out to congress - let's face it that situation is f'd up. Barack can't get an A on his report card because he failed that test. While maybe the most powerful person around, the president of the US certainly is not omnipotent. I challenge anybody to say they could have really done better.

January 2009 U-6 was 14%. Right now "unadjusted" U-6 is 9.9, and 9.8 after "seasonal adjustment".

You'll notice they try the exact same trick when you're the one bullshitting them. I'm not a goldbug myself, but I can respect when they put their money where their mouths are instead of just posturing for internet points. Who's deciding that you've beat them with their own arguments, you or the market?

What exactly are traumatized victims of abuse daring you to bet on?

The price of oil didn't drop until this last year, and had zip to do with that. See the chart http://www.macrotrends.net/136...

Except that gold has outperformed the DJIA since the end of the gold standard under Nixon (Aug 1971), so it's not as though people of my "ilk" are without basis in our consistent criticism of fiat currency systems and inflation.

Yes, but gold also fluctuates with respect to the CPI.
http://www.macrotrends.net/134...