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shargash commented on the blog post Jobs Report: Smaller-than-Expected Gains, Topline Rate Ticks Down to 8.2%
It is also important to remember that these are seasonally adjusted numbers. The US economy has actually lost several million jobs so far in 2012. But, since the economy always loses jobs in Jan-Mar, the BLS adjusts the number upwards based on some rather arcane calculations.
IMO, the BLS adjustments were too large this year. The main reason we lose jobs in the winter is the weather. But this winter was scarcely a winter in most of the US, meaning the seasonal adjustments should probably have been much smaller than the BLS actually used. Instead, the January adjustment number used by the BLS was the largest in about 50 years.
This is an election year, and the BLS reports up to the president. I don’t expect any bad employment reports before December, and any that are disappointing are likely to be released on holidays. :)
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shargash commented on the blog post Democrats Continue to Push Speculation Angle on Gas Prices
What happened in 2008 proves that oil futures speculators are responsible
Nonsense. The world economy was on the verge of collapse by late 2008. Letters of credit weren’t being honored. World shipping had practically come to a halt. Demand for oil collapsed. So did the price.
Why was oil so expensive before the collapse? In 2005, world oil production averaged just under 74 million barrels of oil a day. In 2012, we are still under 74 million barrels per day. In 7 years, there has been no growth in conventional oil supply, and yet the global economy has grown considerably. All the excess production capacity is gone, and we’ve turned to ethanol and synthetic oil (Canadian tar sands, mainly) to keep up.
Any time the world economy grows, oil prices are going to go up, then come back down again when high oil prices kill the economy. You can complain about speculators all you want, but it is just diverting people from addressing the real problem — the world can no longer increase oil production to keep up with economic growth.
And that’s not such a bad thing. While expensive oil hurts the economy (and make American SUV owners very grumpy), the CO2 from cheap oil is hurting the entire planet.
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shargash commented on the blog post Live Blog of #OccupyWallStreet: Day Seventeen, The Occupation is the Message
A single message at this point is a mistake. The important thing to do now is expand the protest. Single points are inherently limiting. The protesers in Tahrir square didn’t have a single message (and American commentators complained endlessly about it). The protesters in Israel started with a single message, but quickly dropped it as the movement grew.
Also, organized political parties should STFU. They can offer support, but they should not try to coopt the movement. This is what the Moslem Brotherhood did in Egypt. If organized Democratic groups coopt the movement, they will “Tea Party” the movement, and we’ll be right back in the “my corporatist party is better than your corporatist party” snake pit we’ve been in for decades.
I would also add that the underlying problem is too complicated for a simple formulation, and not well enough understood for everyone to agree on any one formulation. Too much money in politics? Sure. But it is more than that. Predatory corporations? Neoliberal trade policies? Unequal distribution of income? And that’s just a beginning.
The movement needs to be all-encompassing. To name it is to limit it. If it is limited, it will be crushed or coopted. Of course, there are many who desire exactly that.
