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September 09th, 2015

9/9/2015

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LET'S TALK GDP TODAY-----THE FED SAYS IT IS 2-3% MAKING IT SOUND LIKE THE ECONOMY IS GROWING.  Rather, it is all financial manipulation and real economic growth does not exist---unemployment has soared as Obama plays Bush and jukes the economy for Wall Street and global corporate profits.

People will say stocks and bonds are not tied to the GDP but what they are missing is the interest paid on bonds and bond sales.  Like the subprime mortgage fraud where Wall Street used MERS to sell property securities over and over and over and over-----the profit to Wall Street comes in the turnover and fees paid each time.  The same is being done with these bonds---municipal and corporate.  So, the 2-3% GDP reflects A WHOLE LOT OF BOND SECURITIES BEING FLIPPED AS IF THEY WERE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE LOANS.

They knew the crisis of the economic crash would keep people from consuming so they made the only market in town -----the stock and bond.  This is why 80% of wealth went to 5% of people.

If Obama and Congress were working for main street----they would have created policy that made GDP about actual products made in the US----they did the opposite---all stimulus went to overseas corporate expansions and these FED stock and bond deals.  Below you see why the FED's use of zero interest was so important in making the GDP about financial manipulation.  When a corporations can earn profits from simply playing the stock and bond market---it does not have to 'work'====meaning manufacturing products which is again why unemployment is today over 20%.

THIS IS ALL DONE DELIBERATELY AND EVERY TIME A LABOR OR JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS TOUTS OBAMA'S RECORD ON GDP AND INFLATION----THEY KNOW THESE FIGURES ARE FAKE AND THESE POLICIES KILL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.


The FED and Clinton neo-liberals made the entire economy these several years a game of wheeling and dealing on the market giving corporations the ability to ignore creating jobs and products for profit.  These are all Republican policies to enrich corporations at labor and justice expense.  The FED's mission to stabilize the economy and gain full employment in the US is completely ignored.  THEY ARE JUKING THE STATS.


Like loans, bonds return interest payments to the bond holder. In the old days, when people actually held
paper bonds, they would redeem the interest payments by clipping coupons. Today, most bonds are held by the financial planning institution, and interest is automatically accrued for the life of the bond.

Bonds are usually resold before they mature, or reach the end of the loan period. This is how bonds rise and fall in value. Since bonds return a fixed interest payment, they tend to look more attractive when the economy and
stocks market decline. When the stock market is doing well, investors are less interested in purchasing bonds, and their value drops.


  Post-Great Recession, U.S. real GDP has grown at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.2 percent. This is substantially below average. The average since 1947 is 3.3 percent. Accordingly, businesses are struggling to grow the top line. In the first quarter, sales for S&P 500 companies fell 2.4 percent; if consensus estimates are right, they will have dropped another 3.5 percent in the second quarter.
Enter financial engineering – in the form of share buybacks and dividend increases. We can also throw in mergers and acquisitions to the mix. Corporations need money to do all this. The bond market has more than helped.

The rush to issue debt is understandable. Several factors are in play.

1.  With FOMC members actively talking about their willingness to normalize rates, corporate treasurers – rightly or wrongly – are probably beginning to think the window might be closing.

2.  Thanks to the Fed and its zero interest-rate policy, rates are historically low. Ten-year Treasuries closed today yielding 2.28 percent. This not only gives corporations an incentive to lock in low rates but also forces investors to go up the risk curve and look for higher yields. Hence the high demand for corporate bonds. In each of the past three years, high-yield issuance has been north of $300 billion; this year is on track as well.

________________________________________________
If your goal is to impoverish the American people to the point of third world society then measuring goods and services in the US would be a sad state as no one consumes in the third world except the 5-10% of people working for the 1%.  These global corporate pols KNOW there will be steadily declining consumption and GDP will not climb as calculated.  We have since Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism gone to a service oriented economy from products already.  From Bush and now Obama almost all of that services is tied to financial services and the health care given through Federal programs Medicare and Medicaid....THE PEOPLE ARE NOT CONSUMING IN THIS 2-3% GDP ECONOMY.  That is how unemployment can be soaring-----and corporations not producing anything----and the GDP is boosted to 2-3%.  IT IS ALL FAKE.

Now, if you are creating a global corporate tribunal rule by ending US sovereignty and Constitutional rights of citizens and going with a Trans Pacific Trade Pact where immigrant workers are sent all over the world to work---including American workers now being treated like these immigrants----you need a global economic indicator-----not the GDP.

Below you see that these several years maybe 5% of Americans have benefitted at all in these policies.  These are the labor union pension funds having union members thinking they are doing OK when this coming bond market crash will wipe them out.  It also includes the politicians working for Wall Street given stock options and making them feel they have wealth.  I suspect this is fueling the loyalty of Baltimore's pols working to kill the City of Baltimore.  All of these gains will be lost as well as public listing for stocks ends soon.


The Real Reason Why The Stock Market Is Soaring?

January 28th, 2013
   
Michael Snyder: You can thank the reckless money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing for the incredible bull market that we have seen in recent months.  When the Federal Reserve does more “quantitative easing”, it is the financial markets that benefit the most.  The Dow and the S&P 500 have both hit levels not seen since 2007 this month, and many analysts are projecting that 2013 will be a banner year for stocks.  But is a rising stock market really a sign that the overall economy is rapidly improving as many are suggesting?  Of course not.  Just because the Federal Reserve has inflated another false stock market bubble with a bunch of funny money does not mean that the U.S. economy is in great shape.  In fact, the truth is that things just keep getting worse for average Americans.  The percentage of working age Americans with a job has fallen from 60.6% to 58.6% while Barack Obama has been president, 40 percent of all American workers are making $20,000 a year or less, median household income has declined for four years in a row, and poverty in the United States is absolutely exploding.  So quantitative easing has definitely not made things better for the middle class.  But all of the money printing that the Fed has been doing has worked out wonderfully for Wall Street.  Profits are soaring at Goldman Sachs and luxury estates in the Hamptons are selling briskly.  Unfortunately, this is how things work in America these days.  Our “leaders” seem far more concerned with the welfare of Wall Street than they do about the welfare of the American people.  When things get rocky, their first priority always seems to be to do whatever it takes to pump up the financial markets.

When QE3 was announced, it was heralded as the grand solution to all of our economic problems.  But the truth is that those running things knew exactly what it would do.  Quantitative easing always pumps up the financial markets, and that overwhelmingly benefits those that are wealthy.  In fact, a while back a CNBC article discussed a very interesting study from the Bank of England which showed a clear correlation between quantitative easing and rising stock prices…

It said that the Bank of England’s policies of quantitative easing – similar to the Fed’s – had benefited mainly the wealthy.


Specifically, it said that its QE program had boosted the value of stocks and bonds by 26 percent, or about $970 billion. It said that about 40 percent of those gains went to the richest 5 percent of British households.

Many said the BOE’s easing added to social anger and unrest. Dhaval Joshi, of BCA Research wrote that  “QE cash ends up overwhelmingly in profits, thereby exacerbating already extreme income inequality and the consequent social tensions that arise from it.”

So should we be surprised that stocks are now the highest that they have been in more than 5 years?

Of course not.

And who benefits from this?

The wealthy do.  In fact, 
82 percent of all individually held stocks are owned by the wealthiest 5 percent of all Americans.

_______________________________________________
These posts are not flashy-----nothing is more boring than government statistics but if people do not understand when pols are lying, cheating, and stealing and moving the nation to third world status----they simply remain apathetic.  Please, take the time to understand these figures---how they have changed since Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism captured the Democratic Party and joined Bush neo-cons in working for wealth and power.  THEN, EDUCATE OTHERS IN YOUR COMMUNITY AS TO WHY THESE STATS ARE JUKED.

If you look below you see another way in which the FED jukes the stats.  Real GDP includes inflation figures and if the FED manipulates the inflation to say it is zero----then GDP looks to be higher than it is.  If you are already at historic lows in having GDP from .5%- 2% then this kind of juking has a large effect.  Imagine if the REAL inflation rate over 5% were factored into REAL GDP.


When you read in the newspaper or listen to radio or TV news and they say GDP is rising----which figure are they using?  Do you know?  I know, you may not care but you must understand if you are to be a citizen voting for pols that are not lying to you!  The other thing you see below is cost of product.  Think about what factors heavily into product sold if the American people cannot afford to consume-----FUEL.  The top cost to corporations is FUEL....and these several years as natural gas has competed with oil-----FUEL has never been cheaper----ERGO, THE RISE IN GDP.  Between the financial gaming creating interest ------foreign sales of US houses----and this FUEL as product----THAT IS THE ONLY THING SHOWING AS GDP AND IT WILL GET WORSE AFTER THE COMING ECONOMIC COLLAPSE.

This is how all of the wealth generated since Obama has gone to the top 1% and it is all deliberate.  Obama and Clinton neo-liberals had the same choice as FDR did after that Great Depression from the same Wall STreet frauds and government corruptions----claw back the fraud and invest it in the public sector as public works projects which would have created private business growth as well----A MAIN STREET RECOVERY-----or they could continue down the road of dismantling America as with Bush and make it all about Wall Street financial markets.  O'Malley and all Maryland pols super-sized Wall Street deals especially in Baltimore to move towards third world society.




Difference Between Nominal and Real GDP


Posted on August 29, 2012 by
admin Last updated on: August 29, 2012

Nominal vs Real GDP
 

There are a number of economic measures that are used to determine variable aspects of an economy. GDP is one of the most commonly used economic measures that represent the strength of an economy by showing the value of the total goods and services that are produced by a country. There are different forms of GDP calculation known as real GDP and nominal GDP, which are calculated slightly differently to one another. The following article provides a clear understanding of how each form of GDP is calculated, how they are different to one another and what they represent about a country’s economy.

Nominal GDP

GDP is the measure of the total goods and services produced by a country. One very important part of the GDP calculation is the price that is attached to the goods produced. Let’s take one glove producing factory’s GDP as an example. The factory produces 1000 gloves a month, at $5 per glove then the GDP for this factory for one month would be $5000 (which will add onto to the country’s total GDP). If the glove cost just $4, then the GDP would be just $4000 even though the same amount of gloves was produced.

Keeping the above example in mind,
nominal GDP does not take into account the changes in prices and is calculated at current market prices for that month or quarter. This means that the nominal GDP calculation does not take into account inflation or deflation (inflation is when the price levels of all goods and services keeps increasing and deflation is when price levels keep falling).

Real GDP

Real GDP, on the other hand, takes into account the effects of inflation and deflation. For example, the nominal GDP of a country was $800 Billion in 2011, but this year the country’s GDP is $840 Billion and shows an increase of 5%. The country’s inflation level is currently at 2%. To calculate the real GDP this 2% inflation would have to be stripped out to give a real GDP of $823 Billion. Since this value does not include inflationary effects it can be compared to GDP values across a number of years.

Nominal vs Real GDP

Real GDP and nominal GDP are both very important calculations made to understand the strength of a country’s economy. The nominal GDP measures the value of total goods and services produced in an economy in current monetary terms, whereas real GDP measures the value of goods and services after removing all inflationary effects.

Nominal GDP is useful in understanding the actual value of goods and services that a country produces or that a person can afford at the current period of time, and shows what currency can actually buy. Real GDP is useful because it shows the actual production of goods and services and not the fluctuations in the value of the currency or changes in price levels.

Summary:

What is the difference between Real GDP and Nominal GDP? 

• GDP is one of the most commonly used economic measures that represent the strength of an economy by showing the value of the total goods and services that are produced by a country.

• Nominal GDP does not take into account the changes in the prices (due to inflation/deflation) and is calculated at current market prices for that month or quarter.

• Real GDP, on the other hand, takes into account the effects of inflation and deflation and shows the actual value of the total goods produced.

_____________________________________________
The reason GDP is misread in the US is first, it was developed when we had a product-based society with a strong middle-class and lots of consumption of products.  As we were made more poor----product consumption dropped and these corporate pols simply moved to juking the stats to make it seem the US was doing fine.  We have been second world since Reagan/Clinton in most measures and Bush/Obama are determined to take the US third world.  As I said above, global corporate pols are now trying to introduce a new GDP measure and making it sound 'progressive' as usual------and that is where all this social and green business comes into play.  Remember, Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons are privatizing all that is public to global corporations who are now installing their own vision of what our society will look like-----so they may say a policy is sustainable and it ends up closing all schools in Baltimore.  They say that is a social good.

Maryland leads in installing this PROGRESSIVE POSING AS SOCIAL POLICY OF COURSE.  Imagine anything O'Malley would push as policy being anything other than Wall Street and killing labor and justice.

Main Street is left out of how the GDP is calculated today.  The Inflation Rate does not look at things like food, health care, home energy and water with prices that are now at 200% inflation and inflation figures into calculations of GDP.  Everyone knows how much food prices are climbing----child care----water and BGE bills are climbing-----and health care costs---THESE ARE MAIN STREET COSTS OF LIVING AND THEY DO NOT FACTOR IN GDP.  THIS IS WHY GDP TODAY IS 2-3%====looking only at costs as reflected on corporations.  All of this happened when Reagan/Clinton neo-liberals joined Republicans to make policy market-based------ergo, nothing that hurt corporate profits.  Before then, during the progressive America of the 20th century-----policy was social-based meaning policy must take into consideration what is good for society.

What O'Malley and University of Maryland College Park are doing because it is raging global corporate----is developing that global economic indicator while making it look like it is the old-school social-benefit GDP model. 

THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL BENEFIT POLICY-----IT IS GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TAKING CONTROL OF ALL GOVERNMENT AND CREATING THEIR OWN DEFINITIONS OF WHAT IS SOCIAL GOOD.

Think about sustainable economics as they move to International Economic Zone policy especially in Baltimore.  Sustainable has been used to eliminate communities to draw density to cities RIGHT ON THE WATERFRONT all while building FOXCONN health care and biotech facilities all geared to global sales and services.  None of this is sustainable -----and these new stats simply hide the fact that the American people will no longer be able to consume REAL products.


THIS IS WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU ARE MOVING THE US TO A GLOBAL COLONY WHERE PEOPLE ARE TOO IMPOVERISHED TO CONSUME.  THEY USE THESE STATS IN THIRD WORLD ECONOMIES.

'Main Street' economic conditions misread by GDP, researchers say

Date:February 19, 2010Source:University of Maryland

Summary:The GDP severely overstates the standard of living as experienced on Main Street, say researchers who worked with state officials in Maryland to adopt a more accurate, index, the GPI, or Genuine Progress Indicator. 

Traditional gauges of economic activity severely overstate the standard of living as experienced on Main Street, say University of Maryland researchers, who have worked with their state officials to apply a more accurate and greener index.


Maryland recently became the fourth U.S. state to adopt the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as a supplement to the traditional state-level economic index, the Gross State Product (GSP).

"This is not merely a question of dueling statistics -- the difference in the two figures can be startling and represents very different pictures of our standard of living," says Matthias Ruth, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER), which calculated the GPI for the state.

"In 2000, the classic economic measure showed Maryland more than 50 percent wealthier than we actually were, as measured by the GPI." Ruth explains.

"The traditional measure is inflated by costs that are counted as if they were benefits, such as the conversion of agricultural lands and coastal areas to strip malls and developments," Ruth adds. "It failed to capture many aspects of life we value -- from environmental quality to livable communities."

To account for the costs and benefits excluded by the GPS, the GPI formula measures 26 economic, social and environmental factors.


"This tool allows us to account for the environmental and social costs of problems like air pollution, crime and income inequality, as well as the values of benefits like clean water, education and volunteerism," says Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley.

Armed with the more comprehensive GPI data, officials will have a more meaningful guide to policy, Ruth concludes. He adds that this data might have made a difference had it been available back in 2000.

"We might have moved more rapidly towards sustainable practices -- may have invested more in communities that hold together, rather than roads that spread us apart, invested more in local jobs rather than an economy that moves them to far-flung places on this globe, may have invested more in energy technology that harnesses local, renewable resources like wind and solar, instead of burning more nonrenewable fossil fuels," Ruth says.

As members of the working group of Maryland officials that selected the measure, Ruth and his colleagues at CIER coordinated data collection and calculated the GPI back to 1960. They also developed a unique interactive online modeling tool that allows policy-makers and citizens to forecast economic progress through 2060.

GPI Findings and Forecasts

Into the 1970s, the difference between the GPI and the Gross State Product was relatively small. But by 2000, the GSP was more than 50 percent greater than the GPI, Ruth found. "A goal now should be to identify and reverse those drivers that made the two diverge," he concludes.

Ruth also developed a unique dynamic modeling tool that enables policymakers and the public to forecast how environmental, social and economic policies and investments will affect prosperity in 2060.


The CIER modeling shows that by 2060, maximizing efforts to create green jobs, clean energy savings and smart growth could each double the GPI. While several nations and three U.S. states (Vermont, Minnesota and Ohio) have calculated their GPI, no other jurisdiction has developed a publicly accessible modeling tool.






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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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