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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (117430)	7/24/2012 4:08:20 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Does this look like a recovery to you? ------------ Richmond Fed: Recession This report is just plain bad: The pullback in manufacturing activity in the central Atlantic region deepened in July, after edging lower in June, according to the Richmond Fed’s latest seasonally adjusted survey.* The index of overall activity was pushed lower as shipments and new orders declined further into negative territory. Employment remained in positive territory, but grew at a pace below June’s rate. Other indicators also suggested additional softness. District contacts reported that backlogs, capacity utilization, and delivery times continued to contract. Moreover, manufacturers reported that finished goods inventories grew at a much quicker pace, while raw materials were nearly unchanged. Yuck. The headline number was -17. But worse were the internals; shipments went to -23, new orders collapsed to -25, backlogs are non-existant at -27 and capacity utilization went from -4 to -16. Employee count went from 8 to 1, stall speed while workweeks went into contraction, from 0 to -7. Finally, prices paid eased but prices received fell more. Zero pricing power. And it's not just goods-producing either. The service sector was terrible as well, with revenues falling an astonishing 22 points to -11. Employees went negative at -3, down 9 points. Retail sales dropped to -18, down 21 points in a month and expected demand clawed at the cliff, remaining just slightly positive at 4 (from 18 last month.) Shopper traffic has now gone from zero in May (neutral) to -6, the third straight month of bad news. Retail pricing in the service sector as a whole is anticipated to (and has) risen while retail pricing has gone in the toilet -- both realized and expected forward. (That's not going to work out well for service firms!) Richmond is a survey I watch closely as we get service-sector numbers as well, and they just plain suck. This, along with Philly, screams *RECESSION!*

To: tejek who wrote (117430)	7/24/2012 4:27:20 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 149317

You should read the article RW posted on middle class families: economix.blogs.nytimes.com A Closer Look at Middle-Class DeclineBy DAVID LEONHARDT Luke Sharrett for The New York TimesPresident Obama visited the McLaughlin family in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, while campaigning in the state in July. No one can accuse the presidential campaign of ignoring the American economy or the plight of the middle class. Yet the scale and the complexity of the problem are typically lost amid the charged back-and-forth between President Obama and Mitt Romney. THE AGENDA: ECONOMYMiddle class stagnation and inequality. For the first time since the Great Depression, middle-class families have been losing ground for more than a decade. They, and the poor, have struggled particularly badly since the financial crisis led to a global recession in 2008. The idea that living standards inevitably improve from one generation to the next is under threat. Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture — about work, progress, fairness and optimism — are being shaken. Arguably no question is more central to the country’s global standing than whether the economy will perform better in the future than it has in the recent past. Over the next few months on this blog, several colleagues and I will look in some detail at the challenge and at possible ways forward, and we’ll encourage you to weigh in with questions, ideas and other feedback. Later in the presidential campaign, I’ll produce an article with my take, with the hope that it will serve as a jumping off point to further debate. This article will be one of a handful that The Times produces on the biggest issues facing the country as it chooses its leader for the next four years. We’re calling the series the Agenda. Heading into the project, I see the economy’s problems along these broad lines: Since median inflation-adjusted family income peaked in 2000 at $64,232, it has fallen roughly 6 percent. You won’t find another 12-year period with an income decline since the aftermath of the Depression. This unhappy phenomenon has two major sources. First, economic growth in this country has been relatively slow in recent years, which means the total bounty that the American economy produces, to be shared by all of its citizens, has not been growing very rapidly. Even before the financial crisis began in 2008, economic growth in the decade that started in 2001 was on pace to be slower than growth in any decade since World War II. Then of course came a deep recession that caused the economy to shrink. In addition to the slow growth in overall size of the pie, the share that has been going to anyone but the richest Americans has been declining. The top-earning 1 percent of households now bring home about 20 percent of total income, up from less than 10 percent 40 years ago. The top-earning 1/10,000th of households — each earning at least $7.8 million a year, many of them working in finance — bring home almost 5 percent of income, up from 1 percent 40 years ago. In the simplest terms, the relatively meager gains the American economy has produced in recent years have largely flowed to a small segment of the most affluent households, leaving middle-class and poor households with slow-growing living standards. Why has economic growth slowed and income inequality soared? We invite readers to make their own case or simply to raise questions and possibilities. To do so, you can post a comment below or send an e-mail to agenda@nytimes.com. In the next installment, we’ll start to dig into the causes.