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Merry Christmas, all:)
Hi Spelly, Obama wants us to fail so he can get the "CHANGE" he wants.
Wishing you and yours the best, you too Samisu.
Say hi to Mule, for me, if you see her.
Do you? Were you holding any MGMX waiting for Lamb to do what he said he was going to do?
LOL Million!! Change what? The name of the company, AGAIN? How many times now?...another R/S, the last one put MGMX at $2.00. Odds are whatever, it's to short "change" longs AGAIN. Day after day I see loads of buys, yet the PPS drops, does Lamb have his printing press "changing" the float? Get real Million, at best this is a high risk. History shows, Lamb can't be trusted.
The Real Culprits In This Meltdown
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.
Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.
But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."
Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.
And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.
As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.
Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.
Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.
In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.
But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.
At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.
The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying for Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a whole new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact, the social experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great Society and New Deal in size and scope.
There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our peril. If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons. And taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the road.
But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if misguided, acts.
Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government solutions.
While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.
Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government's fingerprints all over it.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709
His large Nashville home, utility bills and jet travels have drawn flamethrowers over the last year and a half. Now, it's a 100-foot houseboat he bought this summer.
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080915/NEWS01/809150337/1006/NEWS01
SALICORNIA>>oops sorry, try this link>this was in our Sunday paper>
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2008/07/27/scientist_raises_interest_in_seawater_farming/
salicornia has the potential to feed the world, fuel our vehicles, and slow global warming.
http://c1.zedo.com/jsc/c1/ff2.html?n=162;c=48/1;s=44;d=16;w=720;h=300;t=Advertisement
Ask MGMX dead if thy got called back.
Great idea, oh and up my taxes, and can you get us a bigger government...and invade Pakistan...do what you can to slow big business so we can have more job losses....FINE, but only if it will help Allgore save the world from another killer half a degree in the year 2100!!!
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=70308
Spelly, do you bike your kids to school? Walk to the store? Have you stopped eating (farting)beef? Stopped using AC? Stopped using products not produced locally? Can you stop?
As I said, I want the US off oil, but not for fear the island I'm on is going under.
Why worry? Democrat's Messiah says the water will reced.
Even if you don't believe in the threat of global warming, what harm could it be to localize your life style?
----------
Get real Spelly, we are doing.....well not counting congress..and it's due to $4 gas not Allgore's doom and gloom.
I've cut my gas use by 33%.
Doom and gloomer's scare is to blame for $4 gas and high food costs, not the quarter of degree global temps are to go up by the year 2100.
Allgore BS is starting to stink> There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24036736-17803,00.html
=======================
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Don%27t-believe-it.html
Spelly, did Allgore tell you about venus and mars' global warming?
Sorry about the job loss, Spelly. We had BIG cuts in Florida too, to cut sky high property taxes.
Sad thing, all the old coots with the highest pay, that goof off got to stay, smart hard workers with lower pay and less seniority got the boot.
I still think green nuts that stop anything that will get the price of gas down, are doing way more harm than good. The high price of gas, as I said, is choking us at $4(not $15) right now. Temps going up a quarter of a degree in the next 100 years I don't think is as pressing. Bush's call for offshore drilling is what is bringing the price down. We can't change over night, we ARE cutting back and making changes. Like T.Pikens said to Allgore, getting off foreign oil is page one, getting off oil is page 2. I guess your call, Iraq was all about oil, has been proved to be a false claim or we wouldn't be in this $4 gas crunch. If true why did Bush push ethanol...Don't tell me, just another head fake. If true Bush sells less at $4 than he did at $3. Is gold not at $1200 a Bush head fake. Allgore's cries as he flies his private jet and drives a big SUV and his big house seems to be a big "head fake" to me.
Gold down another $28, Oil down again, now this!!!!!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080722192345.htm
'Airplane!' director eyes Michael Moore
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11959.html
Did you sell at .20?
Pump it, any word from Mr.Lamb? After years and years, millions and millions in shareholder funds, still nothing to show, but pumpers.....sad.
Don't perpetuate this guy if this is all longs get.
Pumpers of this stock thrive 100% on green investors and 0% on money Mr. Lamb made.....has he ever made any*.....anybody know of any? Mary, do you? Million?
*for shareholders, not counting from shareholders;)
I saw that, and why? The little guy says no to SUV's>step one in going green, Spelly, is cutting back. Step 2 take all the money going out the window importing oil to hurry >ALL< other cleaner ways, let the best man win. What's good for the little guy in the USA is good for the world.
I say let them drill in Alaska....IF they pay half to fund setting up to go green.
How about that? Half of Alaska's oil bucks going into going green rather than OPEC.
Who's gas would Americans want to burn. We need more competition for US gas bucks....I see none, I see no lines at any pumps. OPEC should jump at upping output at these prices...but they don't.
There is no oil replacement. <<<BS, Prince Charles is running his car on a substance converted from white wine. I'd rather use the oil;)
I filled up yesterday 10% was ethanol. We can grow any number of things we can turn into fuel. Hydrogen goes boom too. The list is long.
Have you seen the spike in electricity rates? In Texas it spiked over 1000%<hog wash
As is>>Those flood waters are so toxic that people are told not to set foot in them let alone drink it. Most municipalities have water treatment, Spelly.
I agree pollution sucks. When I was a kid the Ohio River stunk, bad. I'm shocked how nice it is now, I still wouldn't drink it.
I was griping about all the incandescent power saving light bulbs we use going to the landfills and the mercury in them. Was told it's still less pollution then the coal not used would put out. A drop of mercury goes a long way when it comes to pollution, I guess the bulbs have very little in them and they last so long. I still think it might not be such a good idea.
I think yards with grass do way more harm when all the crud people put on them washes down the street, not to mention the water needed to keep them green... top that off with the cost of maintenance and it's just a nutty frustrating endeavor.
Do you have a big yard, Spelly?
Barely publicized??? So's their PPS drop, yikes!
Should see a nice pop in PPS when they turn and shorts cover.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=299718849952830Are
Volcanoes Melting Arctic?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: While the media scream that man-made global warming is making the North Pole ice-free, another possible cause is as old as the Earth itself. They just have to look deeper.
To the delight of Al Gore and the rest of the Gaia groupies, scientists at the National Snow & Ice Data Center in Colorado are predicting that the North Pole will be completely free of ice this summer. The apocalyptic headlines already are starting to appear.
"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important," says the center's Mark Serreze. "There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water."
From a media standpoint, this is another sign of the apocalypse — proof positive of man-made climate change. But we've heard this before.
In August 2000 the New York Times ran a piece claiming the pole was free of ice for the first time in 50 million years, long before SUVs roamed Earth. As earth scientist Patrick Michaels noted, "It was retracted three weeks later as a barrage of scientists protested that open water is common at or near the pole at the end of summer."
As reported in the June 26 edition of ScienceDaily, a research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) has uncovered evidence of massive undersea volcanic eruptions deep beneath the ice-covered surface of the Arctic Ocean. "Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to the WHOI team.
The WHOI researchers found that evidence of a series of strong quakes and eruptions as big as the one that buried the ancient city of Pompeii took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain range snaking 1,100 miles from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.
Their first glimpse of the ocean floor 13,000 feet beneath the Arctic ice through visual and sonar images showed an ocean valet filled with flat-topped volcanoes over a mile wide and hundreds of feet high that remain active. They're not like Mount St. Helens or Krakatoa, but more like the less bombastic, oozing Kilauea variety that slowly built the Hawaiian Islands.
Robert Sohn, WHOI geophysicist, lead author and chief scientist of the July 27, 2007, Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition, estimates that exploding mixtures of lava and gas were expelled at speeds of more than 500 meters a second.
Sohn says the large volumes of CO2 gas that belched out of the undersea volcanoes likely contributed to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Is it possible that it these eruptions, part of an "ongoing process," have played a part in whatever melting there has been of the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets?
Scientists at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory have put together a chart showing Arctic ice relatively stable until a precipitous decline began in 1999 — the very year the Arctic eruptions started.
Icebergs breaking away and polar bears supposedly drowning are good theater, but they do not reflect reality. In April, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) published a study, based on last September's data, showing Arctic ice has shrunk from 13 million square kilometers to just 3 million.
What the WWF didn't mention was that by March of this year the Arctic ice had recovered to 14 million square kilometers and that ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska was at its highest level ever recorded. Ice freezes. Ice melts. That's what ice does.
At the other end of Earth, we're told the Larsen B ice shelf on the western side of Antarctica is collapsing. That part is warming and has been for decades. But it comprises just 2% of the continent. The rest is cooling.
At the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, hosted by the Heartland Institute, keynote speaker Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute and the University of Virginia debunked claims of "unprecedented" melting of Arctic ice. He showed how Arctic temperatures were warmer during the 1930s and the vast majority of Antarctica is indeed cooling.
Earth is not a museum, but a geologically active place that reminds us frequently how relatively puny our activities are. The WHOI's voyage to the bottom of the sea shows it is climate alarmists who are skating on thin ice.
thanks Mary, we miss you.
some say all the snow is going to melt this summer, I think all the polar bears moved to wall street.
Best wishes,
max
Hey Mary, we just had the longest day of the year...did you turn on your AC when it hit 52?
You want to argue global warming doom%^)
Check out the BTUs a good size volcano puts out..YIKES!!...how much can volcanic ash cool us? Ask Dino. Could upping by a degree or two in 100 years or stopping oil 100% save us if we get a big one? We live on a crust over a molting core.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/26/eavolcano126.xml
Top thermal off with global warming fears from the sun we add on and improve our use of. How about fear from rising seas, when we could get all the power we need from tides and waves....and CO2 fears when wind is providing more and more power. This doom and gloom I admit is getting people to take necessary action faster, but I also feel it is blown way out of proportion like the right now, doom and gloom effects of high priced oil~vs~global warming.
Everybody(!!!us and them!!!) that can screw us on oil is, plenty of gas, I see no lines at the pumps. Of all the reasons oil is so bad, global warming is last in line for my worries about oil.
We need to get off of mid east oil first, have that pay to pave a new clean way.
Speed up all the things we are doing now and make a new America with the American ingenuity that can save the world.
Quit putting effort into throwing your country under the bus, pitch in and help.
You skipped>Our gas consumption here in the US is down. Big SUV plants are closing>
So I disagree with your>>the solution will have to come with United State's leadership.
btw> all your absolute claims have snags, your wording could pull the rug out from many arguments. Most all your points are valid, they just don't hold water.
The power of the American market, American know how and smart American entrepreneurs is how we are working on it, right now, as we post. The US Gov did puts incentive in place long ago, unfortunately at $3 a gal. people still wanted big hog SUVs. Not at $4.....or$15;)
It might cost more to make a hybrid, NOW, than a Hummer, like all things they will come down in price as R&D and start up costs are paid off. The return over the life of the car is what will pay off big time, not how much goes into making it. More and more of them are hitting the streets, at a faster and faster rate. A 3 month wait for new hybrids isn't>>More green smoke being blown up everyone's arse. It's a fact of life as we do what you say we are not.
That huge dead zone around the nickel mine does suck. What percentage of all the nickel mined so far went into batteries. Small I bet. It's better than the entire earth fried to a crisp or under water.
Your>How about all that war money stayed in the US< avoided my point> a call to use your and my oil money going into Saudi pockets to speed up oil's replacement.
You also avoided my claim that green goofs have the US in a much bigger mess NOW with high oil prices, than this so called global warming. My Island is not under water like in Al Gores movie, the price of oil is much harder on people, right now.
You also skipped the fact your hero All Gore flies in an old gas hog private jet and his BIG house is using more power this year than last.
..and my question on how you get your kids to school or how you think we should get our crops to market was skipped.
Good day Chevy, Most of the earth is covered with water, the sun will do it's thing, Evaporation and rain will never stop. This so called global warming will only make for more evaporation, will it not? What goes up must come down. The temperatures do fluctuate in the oceans and this does effect weather patterns. Those water wars Spelly was calling for last year seem that much more goofy with the floods I see on TV. Every month so far this year we have had more rain than that same month last year. Still we have water restriction. No watering your yard from 8AM till 6PM and only one day a week, it was 2. I have flowers in pots that look sick from too much water....and I have not watered them in weeks.
Also>>Of the more than 7,500 desalination plants in operation worldwide, 60% are located in the Middle East. The world's largest plant in Saudi Arabia produces 128 MGD of desalted water. In contrast, 12% of the world's capacity is produced in the Americas, with most of the plants located in the Caribbean and Florida. To date, only a limited number of desalination plants have been built along the California coast, primarily because the cost of desalination is generally higher than the costs of other water supply alternatives available in California (e.g., water transfers and groundwater pumping). However, as drought conditions occur and concern over water availability increases, desalination projects are being proposed at numerous locations in the state.
Talk is cheap, gas isn't!
<<We, Americans, are too afraid to offend people with the gory details of the consequences of global warming<<<Ha, so says Mr.Gloom'N Doom..You're kidding aren't you?..Like your hero Al Gore who flies around on his old, gas hog, private jet and lives in a big house that uses more power this year than last, does? Get real, Spelly!
I told you we'd choke well before we hit your $15 gas prediction. You green goofs that stopped nukes and drilling here have got us in one hell of a mess, much more than this global warming nightmare you say we are in.
Our gas consumption here in the US is down. We have a 3 month wait for new hybrids. Big SUV plants are closing. It's not going to happen overnight. Till then lets not send our hard earned money to the Saudis who pay $2 to pump what they sell to us for $140.
You said nothing about my bug poop story, will that help? Yes it will.
How about more fuel efficient cars, or electric cars, or hydrogen fuel cells, or mass transportation? Or drive less like America is. I've cut back by over 30%.
You, I bet, don't want nukes to power plug in cars.
How will you get your kids to school? How will their food get to the store?
How about if our oil money stayed in the US to speed up the transformation to the many ways we can replace oil?
Would beat the gory details of your dire prediction and Al Gore action.
$4 gas is your "massive education blitz," thanks for stopping nukes, ethanol, and drilling in the US.
From The TimesJune 14, 2008
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'
Some diesel fuel produced by genetically modified bugs
Chris Ayres
“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”
He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.
LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. “How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?” he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being “prerevenue”.
Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”
Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.
For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.
The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.
Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.
The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.
However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.
That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.
“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.
Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? “It’s not the same as with food,” Mr Pal says. “We’re putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we’re done with them, they’re destroyed.”
Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”
Power points
— Google has set up an initiative to develop electricity from cheap renewable energy sources
— Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome, has created a company to create hydrogen and ethanol from genetically engineered bugs
— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels
Algeria, Angola, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam will also be awarded oil extraction deals in Iraq. Why not just the US, Spelly?
Washingtonpost.com
Why We're Gloomier Than The Economy
Consumer Anxiety Outstrips the Data
By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 18, 2008; A01
Ask Americans how the economy is doing, and their answer is stark: It is not just bad, it is run-for-the-hills terrible. Consumer confidence is at its lowest level in almost 30 years. Only 12 percent of Americans think the economy is in good shape. On the Internet, comparisons to the Great Depression are widespread.
But the reality is different. According to most broad measures of how the economy is doing, it's not all that grim.
Soft? You betcha. In recession? Quite possibly. And a crisis in the financial markets has rattled nerves for months now. But so far, the economy is holding up better than it did during the last two recessions in 1990 and 2001. Employers haven't shed as many jobs, the unemployment rate is still relatively low, and gross domestic product has kept rising. Things are nowhere near as bad as they were in the Great Depression, or even during the severe recession of 1982-83. The last time consumers were this miserable, in May 1980, the jobless rate was 7.5 percent and inflation was 14.4 percent. Now those numbers are 5.5 percent and 4.2 percent respectively.
This paradox has created a unique challenge for those guiding the economy, who worry that Americans' pessimistic views will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Two-thirds of the economy is consumer spending. So if people's negative outlook leads them to cut their spending, a steeper downturn could happen.
This has left economists trying to figure out why Americans' perceptions are so much more negative than the data analysts use to measure how things are going.
"We're saying that we feel a lot worse than we did at the depths of the last recession, when we had had 2 or 3 million job losses, that we feel worse than we did after
9/11," said William Cheney, chief economist of John Hancock Financial Services. "At some level, that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
But through the prism of daily experience, it may.
The run-up in gasoline and food prices, for example, appears to affect people's perception of how they're doing more than a similar price rise in other goods.
Eric J. Johnson, who studies behavioral economics at Columbia Business School, offers this example: Someone who has to pay an extra $25 to fill up his car is reminded of that cost once a week -- or more often if you count the times he is driving down the road and sees the $4 per gallon price in giant numbers on a sign. Technically, he is no worse off than if his rent had increased by $100 a month. But it feels a lot worse.
"Things that you buy more frequently and that have large percentage increases will weigh more in people's perception of inflation," Johnson said.
Not only that, but increases in the price of gasoline and food affect almost everyone.
"If the unemployment rate goes from 5 to 7 percent, that affects 2 percent of the population," said Michael Feroli, an economist at J.P. Morgan Chase. "If gas prices go up, almost 100 percent of the population feels terrible."
Another possibility: Americans have been unnerved by the financial crisis that was a major cause of this broader economic slowdown. The credit crisis has spilled from one part of the financial markets to another. At times, the wheels of global capitalism have appeared to be at risk of coming off.
Although trouble in the financial sector is not the same as a generalized disorder of the economy, ordinary Americans may not make that distinction.
Another factor is that homes are losing value -- and this reduces the wealth of more people than a plummeting stock market like that of 2001. Currently, 68 percent of Americans own their home. In 2001, only 21 percent owned stocks directly.
Moreover, housing values literally hit closer to home. A person's stock holdings can seem like a paper abstraction. But the value of the four walls that a person calls home is more tangible and can seem more secure even though it may be every bit as volatile.
Wellesley College economist Karl E. Case and two co-authors researched how changes in the value of homes affect what people spend and got a curious result: When home prices are rising, people spend more money. When they are dropping, they don't spend less money. With stocks and other assets, by contrast, spending both rises and falls with prices.
"People spend more when house prices go up and worry more when prices go down, but don't actually spend much less," Case said. "That could explain why consumer spending numbers have been much more robust than you would expect if you look at consumer sentiment."
Some analysts attribute Americans' negative views on the economy to media coverage, which tends to play bad news more prominently than good news. There is ample research proving that, say, a drop in the stock market or rise in the unemployment rate gets more extensive news coverage than a move in the reverse direction. (In other news, newspapers tend to cover plane crashes more extensively than a safe landings).
But that has been true during past downturns. There is no obvious reason that it would be more pronounced now than in 2001 or 1990, when consumer confidence did not drop as much as it has recently.
The biggest reason for people's gloom might be because of what they're used to. In the 1980s and '90s, memories of the double-digit unemployment and double-digit inflation from the 1970s were still fresh.
"People expected very little out of the economy," said Richard Curtin, who has administered the University of Michigan's survey of consumer sentiment for 35 years. "Compared to what their frame of reference was, the performance of the economy was absolutely tremendous."
But now, coming off two decades of prosperity and low inflation, Americans have come to treat low unemployment and inflation as givens. We have gotten so used to things being good, in other words, that even when conditions become somewhat bad, it feels terrible.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/17/AR2008061702463_pf.html
HA! RIP OFF, did they ever start?
Where'd all our MGMX money go, Mr. Lamb?!!!!!!
How much did you use and what did you do with it, Mr. Lamb?
All of it and nothing, is my guess.
What was BWNR before it was MGMX?
Spell said gas was going to $15, I said no way, we'd break well before. Your "peak oil" has pushed, and not just the Americans, to take actionS.
A little slow, but to think Americans can't find a way out of this mess and we are doomed, is the way of fools who sit on their hands, cry, and blame others and do ZIP.
We have plenty of oil in the US, and 1000s of ways to up our miles per gal !!!AND!!! Oil isn't the only way to power our cars. If anything, America's "demand" has peaked. Now we act before India and China's demand pulls us under.
"Climate chaos" stopped me from wanting to read the book you posted. Can you just make your point? What chaos? Like the 500 year floods we see on TV this week? What was the last big flood from? Why are we not still in an ice age?
Your doomZZZZday financial collapse, as big as it is, is a small percentage of all loans that the banks and new home buyers made that were bad. Too many good loans to ever see banks vanish. If a bank goes belly up another will be glad to fill in. The effects are magnified by fears from, out of proportion reporting by the media and people like you.
I'm not saying we don't have a problem, or that it isn't a big problem, I just don't think it's the day of reckoning.
How Do We Go from Empire to Earth Community? You see the US as an this "Evil Empire", not the great country that it is... and you want an Earth Community, then turn around and cry we don't want US jobs to go overseas, cry about free trade, and back a Presidential candidate that want's to trash NAFTA. We are much more of a world market than you think. Like China and India's climbing oil demand hitting us at the pump. The use of corn for fuel effects the price of corn around the world....etc, etc. We need to come to grips with it.
You and Spell, please speak your mind, your cut and paste of other's opinions> the world is going to end and we have no way out, are a bore. Look for solutions, not who to blame.
Have a good week, if we have a week;)
How's the doom and gloom business, Spelly?
Did you call off the water wars? How about $1200 gold? $15 gas?