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Townhall
Finance
The
Government's Newest Stupid
Human Trick
By John Ransom
Aug 27, 2013
Okay,
so you can call me the
glass-is-half-full-of-it kind of guy.
But
don’t say that I didn’t warn
you.
That
second-half rebound that economists
were talking about in the first half of the year? Well, it hasn’t
materialized.
Like
you I’m shocked.
My
shock, however, has to do with
the fact that the media gets snookered year after year with the
“consensus”
forecast from analysts, stock pickers, QE types and economist on the
government
dole, who say that in the second half, the economy will be much
brighter than
it was in the first half.
Durable
good orders just came out
for the first month of the second half—a month also known as July-- and
boy,
did the data stink.
“The
Commerce Department said
Monday that orders were down 7.3% in July from the previous month,”
reports the
Los Angeles Times, “the first drop since March and the biggest falloff
since
August 2012. Orders had been up a revised 3.9% in June. Analysts had
projected
a 4% drop last month.”
And
with a government so compelled,
seemingly, as the Obama administration is, to cook the books for every
number,
forecast and data point, one has to wonder whether the data for July
was as good
as the bad estimate that the Commerce Department just released.
Remember:
I’m a
glass-is-half-full-of-it kind of guy.
Good
is bad and bad is good
especially when it comes to goods, durable or otherwise.
You
good on that?
Good.
Because,
most assuredly, the stock
market is good on it.
Durable
goods are just the latest
bad data point that the stock market will adore. They'll adore it
because it
means that quantitative easing (QE) could go on for quite a bit longer.
Behind
the scenes, Federal Reserve
regional presidents are bickering about the necessity and wisdom of
more QE.
Today the risks associated with QE, like inflation, for example, are
beginning
to outweigh any possible short-term benefit that QE supposedly brings.
That’s
because – I’ll say it again
folks – our problems are not economic; our problems are political.
That
problem that we have where the
economy is only creating part-time jobs? That’s a political problem,
not an
economic problem.
That
problem where we enjoy an
all-time high money supply, yet that money isn’t circulating in the
economy?
That’s
a political problem, not an
economic problem...
Read
the rest of the article at Townhall
Finance
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