We should be at 7.5% unemployment

[MaggieMae]

I agree it has always been difficult. Now it's even harder due to the financial reform law. The SBA doesn't help most businesses, too much red tape and social engineering. Selling an idea to a government bureaucrat or a banker is next to impossible. Good for franchises and urban outreach, but not for innovative leading edge entrepreneurs.

READ THE LINK. The SBA has made a record number of loans since 2009. Correction: Guaranteed said loans.

Show me an innovative leading edge startup that got an SBA loan before demonstrating positive earnings. I haven't been able to find a single one.

Sorry, but I don't intend to do your homework for you. All I can suggest is that you show some of that old-fashioned American positive attitude and meet with an SBA member, show him/her your business plan, and then if you get turned down, come back here and bitch about it. Since you've never actually stated what it is you're looking for in the way of financial support, and for what, how the hell am I supposed to analyze all your complaints that you can't find any?

 

[MaggieMae]

Asterism does not care about the welfare of America; he simply hates Obama.

Frankly I'm sick of his whining that he can't get no satisfaction trying to build his business. (At least I presume that's why he chose to argue with me over SBA possibilities and the exhange we had over lines of credit.) Asterism needs to spend as much energy as he has on a message board by hitting the pavement if his problem is personal. I return to my brother-in-law as an example. (He's also an uber conservative, Obama-hating Palin-loving person, but I forgive him for that because I like him, and he gets out there and gets it done.) He has taken 3 different routes with his business, after twice watching it slowly fail. Between the used car dealership and his current business of used trucks only and winning a franchise for snow removal equipment, he also invested (thanks to the bank he has dealt with for 30 years) in snowmobile sales and service. Unfortunately, that was one of those off years when Vermont got NO SNOW. But he was never deterred and never once thought of himself as a complete failure, so he kept on truckin'. Pun intended.

I should also mention that my BIL was a high school English teacher before he ventured into the car business, so that was quite a jump but apparently the bank thought he was a good risk anyway.

 

[william the wie]

Roubini is an economics professor and that Shiller of the Case-Shiller index, ranks right up there with Reinhardt as one of the leading economists in the nation and perhaps the world. Reinhardt is a research geek who likes to stay home with hubby and presumably her kids but the other two are available. So who are the other contenders?

Krugman who fused two ideas of Ricardo's from 200 years ago to get a Nobel Memorial?

Merton or Sholes both of whom helped blow up LTCM thus convincing the Nobel Memorial committee to go with research that would not and in most cases could not blow up accounts as with Krugman?

Who exactly are these oh so competent experts who in dealing with money flows were unable to get themselves seriously rich through their investment and thus prove their competence?

 

[MaggieMae]

Roubini is an economics professor and that Shiller of the Case-Shiller index, ranks right up there with Reinhardt as one of the leading economists in the nation and perhaps the world. Reinhardt is a research geek who likes to stay home with hubby and presumably her kids but the other two are available. So who are the other contenders?

Krugman who fused two ideas of Ricardo's from 200 years ago to get a Nobel Memorial?

Merton or Sholes both of whom helped blow up LTCM thus convincing the Nobel Memorial committee to go with research that would not and in most cases could not blow up accounts as with Krugman?

Who exactly are these oh so competent experts who in dealing with money flows were unable to get themselves seriously rich through their investment and thus prove their competence?

So there were only two? Who knew?

 

[asterism]

Yeah, their Magic 8 Ball got stuck. Good grief, are we back to that nonsense? At the time, when all the hidden waves were beginning to break, the predicted 8% seemed reasonable. No one knew how much worse it would get because no one knew how much individuals and businesses had invested in the ongoing success of the housing market. When all hell broke loose and the house of cards came tumbling down, obviously unemployment was going to be worse than predicted. That's hardly a "policy" failure.

Those predictions were not reasonable:

Shiller, Roubini and many others were predicting deeper downturns long before the bubble peaked in 2006.

Michael Lewis in "The Big Short" tells the story of many non-famous people who profited from the bubble bust that they predicted would happen as early as 2003 in many cases.

As NN Talib said (to the best of my recollection), "If you didn't see the 2006 peak beforehand and take advantage of it, don't talk to me. Your opinion is worthless." Obama consulted almost exclusively with people whose opinions were provably worthless to make those predictions. And except for Jamie Dimon who is an unofficial and casual adviser Obama still tends to avoid talking to his own supporters who can find their butt with both hands when it comes to economics.

So at the time of the first inkling that an economic tsunami was headed our way, and with every economics Ph.D weighing in, Obama should have made selections to your liking instead of his own? At the time, NO ONE knew how bad it would get and EVERYONE was making "predictions." He basically could have just put all the names in a hat and chosen whose advice to follow. If certain high profile people warned of the problem eight years before it actually happened, was anyone else listening? No. However, you people continue to want to blame OBAMA once the shit hit the fan.

Who can magically fix the economy? No one - Full version - Oct. 15, 2010

"The public has been sold this notion that somehow we can control the economy -- that we can fine-tune it so we don't get inflation on the upside, we don't get recessions on the downside, [that] when something happens, they can step in and offset it," says another long-time Washington insider, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. "The economics profession is painfully aware that this is just not true, and [that it] has a terrible impact on politicians, Presidents in particular."

^^Long article, but well worth the read.

I don't want to blame Obama for the shit hitting the fan. I blame him for the results of his actions, and that is that things got worse doing things his way. Your article that you have cited multiple times is correct, but it was correct back before the stimulus too, as I was saying and that's the problem. He didn't have the ability to "fix" the economy and his snake oil sales job just undermines his credibility. You'll note that the President you defend so righteously still thinks he can fix the economy, it just takes more government than he previously brought.

How about you read the article and understand that this is what fiscal conservatives have been saying all along?

Oh, and "every" PhD? Hardly. That said, there's a reason why generally they talk about business but don't do a whole lot of it themselves. That doesn't mean every researcher is wrong (Adam Smith never held a "real job"), but these aren't the absolute authorities on how economics works either.

I'll try to paint an analogy with a conversation I had with one of my economics professors, a former advisor to Carter:

"So by your logic, this gas station should do xxxxxxxx."

"Yes."

"Well then why don't you just buy the damn thing and do it yourself?"

"Because I make more money in my current position than he does."

"But couldn't you double profit in a year and sell it and come back to the university?"

"Not worth the risk to take the pay cut for that year."

He's right, it's not worth the risk for him personally and that's why his formulas and theories remain just that - formulas and theories. It's also why he's so sure about them, his livelihood has never depended on them.

 

[asterism]

Asterism does not care about the welfare of America; he simply hates Obama.

That is a personal attack and it will be ignored. I harbor no hatred towards our President and while I didn't think his economic ideas would work I was hoping I was wrong.

I care about the welfare of America, so much that I hired more people despite the disincentive to do so.

 

[asterism]

Yeah, their Magic 8 Ball got stuck. Good grief, are we back to that nonsense? At the time, when all the hidden waves were beginning to break, the predicted 8% seemed reasonable. No one knew how much worse it would get because no one knew how much individuals and businesses had invested in the ongoing success of the housing market. When all hell broke loose and the house of cards came tumbling down, obviously unemployment was going to be worse than predicted. That's hardly a "policy" failure.

Plenty of people (including me) said the stimulus was going to fail and even said that it was going to make things worse and that's exactly what happened.

Sheesh, you seem so blind to obvious facts that you can't even concede a correct prediction.

People like you continue to make that incorrect assertion based on your extreme bias, in my opinion. Report after report proves that the stimulus DID work, including the latest quarterly analysis by the CBO. You can link on the full report here:

Stimulus Provided Large Jobs Boost, CBO Report Concludes

Also, even conservative journalists who have no political bias will say that the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to: Jump start the economy. It was never intended to be sole remedy.

Robert J. Samuelson - Our economy's crisis of confidence

People are super-sensitive to the latest news, for good or ill, because their vision of the future is blurred and their bias is gloomy. Having underrated economic risk during the boom, Americans may be overrating it now. Unfortunately, perceptions can become self-fulfilling.

The Obama administration is grappling uneasily with this reality. It can rightly claim that its economic policies quelled the near-hysteria of late 2008 and early 2009. But the success was partial, and the administration isn't getting much credit even for that.

I've had enough "extreme bias" accusations to just now let it roll off my back. You cite a flawed report from a group that never ever got any cost estimate right (research the CBO's view on how much Medicare would cost) as proof that the prediction put out by President Obama's own Council of Economic Advisors was wrong but only because they didn't truly understand the problem?

Really?

 

[asterism]

READ THE LINK. The SBA has made a record number of loans since 2009. Correction: Guaranteed said loans.

Show me an innovative leading edge startup that got an SBA loan before demonstrating positive earnings. I haven't been able to find a single one.

Sorry, but I don't intend to do your homework for you. All I can suggest is that you show some of that old-fashioned American positive attitude and meet with an SBA member, show him/her your business plan, and then if you get turned down, come back here and bitch about it. Since you've never actually stated what it is you're looking for in the way of financial support, and for what, how the hell am I supposed to analyze all your complaints that you can't find any?

Fair enough. I'm not going to give you enough information for you to personally identify me, so bear with me a bit. There's a company out there called Zynga which makes games for Facebook and MySpace. Their primary competitor is a company called PopCap which also makes games. In 2008 I approached some tech types and developed a game which was a spin on the Bejeweled Blitz structure (a well known classic cipher game that nobody owns, it's that old) with a "spin." All I needed was some operating capital to market it. Denied at all levels but the tech types still had built a functioning game. They were able to sell the core to PopCap and the game is called "Bejeweled Twist." They got that because I can't legally or ethically claim ownership of it. But I took the risk and it didn't pay off. They got jobs and PopCap gets another game, one that they were working on already. I see the modifications that the team I hired brought, so it's a hybrid of their game and mine but still all legally theirs. Sometimes things work out that way, no harm and no foul.

In that case the SBA just flat out refused. Literally wouldn't even consider my plan for marketing it and then having a backup plan of presenting it to either Zynga or PopCap and just getting the money back.

"It won't work."

Well, it did.

I no longer have the option of doing something like that at all again unless I personally finance it since the financial reform law has effectively shut down the private investor group that invested in my idea. I figured such a concept was not something the SBA would be comfortable with, but I never figured a private investing "club" with a central core legal structure would be told that they are now a bank.

Here's another one:

Earlier this year I noticed that Google is phasing out their program of wholesaling Cable TV commercials. I presented the idea that a company should market these services locally to every banker in the region, and none of them thought it was a good risk. True, it's a risk and I understand how weary bankers are about taking risks in a bad economy. Again, not even worth the SBA specialists' time to even hear about it past the initial paragraphs of my idea. "We don't invest in startups" was the interrupting comment.

So while I was doing my normal routine of my existing business, I found some interested investors. "Let's see what happens with Dodd-Frank first." I got a call the day after the law was signed and was told, "if banks can't do it then neither can we because we're effectively a bank now."

Since then I've saved up and I'm moving forward with my idea but all the capital is going to come out of my pocket. It's a risk, and one I'm willing to take. But 15 people haven't gotten hired yet and we missed some key opportunities, one of them being the new Legoland theme park being built right now, with a huge marketing effort being launched next month.

In the end it'll all work out. 12 of those 15 people I wanted to hire in January are still here and I'll probably still hire them. But they missed out on 10 months of income they could have had developing a campaign that I already had the inside track on getting if only I could have afforded to hire them then. Well all but 3 of them, those 3 moved away. One of them is a farmer now. But to get there I have to save because access to capital is not what it used to be. So I'm saving.

What are you doing?

 

[asterism]

Asterism does not care about the welfare of America; he simply hates Obama.

Frankly I'm sick of his whining that he can't get no satisfaction trying to build his business. (At least I presume that's why he chose to argue with me over SBA possibilities and the exhange we had over lines of credit.) Asterism needs to spend as much energy as he has on a message board by hitting the pavement if his problem is personal. I return to my brother-in-law as an example. (He's also an uber conservative, Obama-hating Palin-loving person, but I forgive him for that because I like him, and he gets out there and gets it done.) He has taken 3 different routes with his business, after twice watching it slowly fail. Between the used car dealership and his current business of used trucks only and winning a franchise for snow removal equipment, he also invested (thanks to the bank he has dealt with for 30 years) in snowmobile sales and service. Unfortunately, that was one of those off years when Vermont got NO SNOW. But he was never deterred and never once thought of himself as a complete failure, so he kept on truckin'. Pun intended.

I should also mention that my BIL was a high school English teacher before he ventured into the car business, so that was quite a jump but apparently the bank thought he was a good risk anyway.

Oh, I'm going to respond to this screed.

But first, I'd like to say kudos to your brother in-law. He's the heart and soul of what funds this government. Go sell your tax increases to him.

But let's also clarify that he was only a good risk to the bank because he needed money to expand. He didn't get money to start. Banks don't generally lend money to start, unless there is a security interest and/or a franchise involved.

But I'm going to respond, because you are absolutely full of shit about me. Sorry to say, but now I understand why so many people hate you.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Horsecrap, guys. The folks who know say our unemployment would be 50% higher than what it is now without the actions of Bush and Obama in 2008 and 2009. You have absolutely nothing to counter that, absolutely nothing.

Who are these "folks who know?" Are they the same ones that completely misread the state of the economy when they made the predictions that didn't pan out? Looks like they didn't know too much after all.

A fucking men!

Those that assume a far worse event would have occurred if not for....are just pulling shit out of their ass. We don't and can't know as much.

You have the wack talking points so far up your butt that it is spilling out your mouth. We certainly can predict that much worse would have happened, most economists agree with that, so your internet opinion is just nonsense.

Slink off.

 

[Trajan]

The without recovery plan is looking pretty good right now at 9 percent. Too bad we went with the recovery plan.

 

[Trajan]

Well I see the Fed is now saying the the high unemployment numbers are here to stay for quite awhile.
Gloomy Fed employment forecast overshadows upbeat GDP data
Gloomy Fed jobs forecast overshadows upward revision on U.S. economic growth - latimes.com
The artice states that the American worker is facing competition from robots, computers and foreign workers.
And as this goes on, the US trade deficit grows.
So instead of putting 100% of the blame on Obama, Free Trade is certainly to blame and of course the outsourcing of American jobs overseas.

soooo how many jobs will take off if the cuts expire and American bus.'s reaches a point where they are the highest taxed in the developed world?

free trade is to blame too? you do realize that say, Colombia already imports here for free yet the dem congress has sat on dropping the barriers we pay some as high sas 16% to export to them....who makes or grows the items we would send to them? We do.

 

[william the wie]

I love it when I see claims of proving the null hypothesis (post 150). If this is accurate then it is the greatest advance in mathematics and number theory in at least 1,000 years. Please expand on this formerly believed to be impossible statement of logic?

 

[JakeStarkey]

Indeed, William Wie, your comments certainly fall within the definition of a null hypothesis. The prediction that an observed difference is due to chance alone and not due to a systematic cause; this hypothesis is tested by statistical analysis, and accepted or rejected.

depts.washington.edu/genetics/courses/genet372/w2000Terms.html

In other words, the economists argued cause and effect and projected from there, while you mutter about chance or happenstance.

Once again, gently but firmly, slink off until you have something worthy to offer.

 

[william the wie]

Demonstrate cause, demonstrate effect and explain how the non-linear effects of moral hazard do not apply. Great starting points are:

"The Essence of Chaos" Lorenz

"The (Mis)behavior of Markets" Mandelbrot

"Fooled by Randomness" Taleb

No one has been able to prove the General Equilibrium Hypothesis or Efficient Market Hypothesis. For example the fat tails of all financial and non-financial markets such as the 2008 meltdown do exist and are impossible under either or both General Equilibrium and efficient markets. So first demonstrate that these experts use other means to make case and dissect their math. Go for it.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Nah, you made some stupid assertions. Support them before you jump me. We don't play that game where you make an assertion, and then ask everyone else to trot out the evidence to refute.

So offer your assertion, support it, and we will go from there.

 

[asterism]

Frankly I'm sick of his whining

Ignore is your friend. Nobody is forcing you to respond. If you're sick of my "whining," then stop reading.

that he can't get no satisfaction trying to build his business. (At least I presume that's why he chose to argue with me over SBA possibilities and the exhange we had over lines of credit.)

You need to learn how to read.

Asterism needs to spend as much energy as he has on a message board by hitting the pavement if his problem is personal.

Got any other advice since you seem to enjoy talking down to people? Should I hit that pavement now? Way to show your character. You've pretty much demonstrated the Progressive world view.

I return to my brother-in-law as an example. (He's also an uber conservative, Obama-hating Palin-loving person, but I forgive him for that because I like him, and he gets out there and gets it done.) He has taken 3 different routes with his business, after twice watching it slowly fail. Between the used car dealership and his current business of used trucks only and winning a franchise for snow removal equipment, he also invested (thanks to the bank he has dealt with for 30 years) in snowmobile sales and service. Unfortunately, that was one of those off years when Vermont got NO SNOW. But he was never deterred and never once thought of himself as a complete failure, so he kept on truckin'. Pun intended.

I should also mention that my BIL was a high school English teacher before he ventured into the car business, so that was quite a jump but apparently the bank thought he was a good risk anyway.

Your kind are all alike.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Asterism has pretty much expressed the Neanderthal view of the far right wack wing.

Please give us your assertion and trot out the credible evidence.

 

[Micky G. Jagger]

They actually made things worse.

Present your case.

 

[asterism]

They actually made things worse.

Present your case.

It's in the chart.