Much Ado about nothing ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Much_Ado_About_Nothing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Much_Ado_About_Nothing
It would seem that despite the lack luster performance of the U.S.Congress which exited 2013 with approval ratings in the teens, once more we are served more basically insignificant legislation which does little to address the major issues with a near depression labeled euphemistically as a recession.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/politics/congress-spending/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 - http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/politics/congress-spending/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Washington (CNN) -- Shaking off three years of partisan
freeze, Republicans and Democrats unveiled a $1.012 trillion spending
deal Monday night that would roll back some spending cuts, raise federal
worker pay and have a surprisingly broad effect on Americans' everyday
lives, from the light bulbs in lamps to the lines at airport security.
comment: and where is the meat and potatoes in this warmed over chaotic mix of unrelated legislation which is a band-aid over a serious wounded national economy? There are neither.
One may find a strong analogy here to the Obama Health care fiasco which did not provide a working health care system and will put tens of millions at without health care while trumpeting a few million who have applied. Where's the beef in this bill? There is none.
Increases of funding, all with the idea of cutting costs, do not even mention the end of funding to the unemployed which still have not received a break or promise they will ever get back help. The jobless rates when accurately calculated -- computer versus spin doctor numbers of those seeking work from a non-existent program for many who could not even apply if it were there, are completely false. The real numbers depict an almost 500,000 job loss at the end of 2013 with 20 - 30 thousand in construction biting the bullet. The real numbers of unemployed are hidden because many have just quit looking and therefore are off the radar.
The world is full of gleaming media hopeful stories i.e. Canada... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/canadian-jobs-december/article16277977/ - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/canadian-jobs-december/article16277977/
Canada’s labour market ended last year with a whimper, though 2014 could herald better times for job seekers. The
country shed a surprising 45,900 positions in December while the
jobless rate climbed three notches to 7.2 per cent, leaving it similar
to year-earlier levels. And how about Mexico? Wading past the headlines of happier times for Mexico in 2014 we find a blow to the throat here... http://talk.baltimoresun.com/topic/247284-twenty-years-later-nafta-fails-mexico/ - http://talk.baltimoresun.com/topic/247284-twenty-years-later-nafta-fails-mexico/ Pretty fascinating article. America is inundated with desperate
illegal Mexicans not because, according to right wing fever dreams,
there is some sinister Mexican plot to overrun America, but because
Mexico has overwhelmingly failed to provide a decent standard of living
for its people. Mexicans toil at auto, computer, and
various electronic factories that have sprouted throughout their nation,
yet wages remain low and the poverty rate is at nearly the same level
(currently 51.3 percent) where it was when NAFTA was first enacted (then
52.4 percent).
Mexico's wages were 12 percent of American wages in 1994. Today,
Mexican wages are 18 percent of American wages. In some economic
sectors, Chinese factory workers are actually paid higher wages than
their Mexican counterparts.
Latin America's overall poverty rate has fallen by roughly 40 percent
since 1990. Mexico's poverty rate has barely budged over the same
period. Mexican immigrants have sent tens of billions of dollars in
remittances to their kin in Mexico over the past two decades (they http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2013/04/02/remittances-to-mexico-drop-11-pct-in-february/ - sent $22 billion in remittances
to their homeland in 2012 alone). This money has had no significant
effect on changing the impoverished fates of their Mexican kindred.
And the Brits? Well, once again much ado about nothing in terms of expectations of prosperity versus some grim realities.
http://www.forexlive.com/blog/2014/01/13/what-a-difference-a-year-makes-as-british-optimism-rises-13-january-2014/ - http://www.forexlive.com/blog/2014/01/13/what-a-difference-a-year-makes-as-british-optimism-rises-13-january-2014/ Conclusion and the point: America is not doing all that well as money continues to pour out of the country, outsourcing of labor to Southeast Asia, China, and Japan versus real jobs for middle class Americans who cannot live on what they make at MacDonald's (who recommend not eating their food to employees) or Walmart which cannot even equal benefits to those below the poverty line. Wall street continues to float on a bubble where stocks are valued sometimes more than a hundred times their real value on a Gold Standard memory with paper certificates floating in the air backed by a system which is totally based on borrowing money which in many cases doesn't exist.
The chance for a pop of the balloon which sails so high in the sky without a single string connected to the ground? A pretty solid one with a pretty big needle.
You are not going to read the truth about our economy in the advertising or federal headlines to promote the idea of a Pollyanna world which does not exist. We live in a nation of "We are gonna" versus "We have done it." Two more years of the same or worse is not good news at all and the chances for a devastating stumble are very high.
Medclinician
------------- Medclinician - not if but when - original
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