Blog+Reflections

Today on beat the press I read about the Respect the Seasonal Adjustments. It said that in august the shopping non-durable goods only went up 1 percent. August is a big spending month because people are shopping to go get back to school stuff. It also said that may states held sale-tax holidays so people will go out and spend money. It says that only the august sales will be boosted it they have theses holidays spending sales.
 * Respect the Seasonal Adjustments**

Today I read on beat the press is will the $30 billion as addition will be enough for Medicaid spending in the United States. We have to keep in mind that this is a time frame of 10 years it from 2010 to 2020. He also said that they should have given us a comparison of the total stats spending. He said "State governments are collectively projected to spend close to $30 trillion over this period". That means that the many that they want to give for Medicaid will not be enough.
 * How Much Is $30 Billion to the States**

The Washing post found that we can save $54 billion over the next decade. They can save money by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits. Also the Los Angeles times headlines said that if the medical malpractice cut down on the lawsuits we can save so much money. It will reduce the annual spending on health care about 0.5%. If they cut back on prescription drug they will save 3%. The united states have to most people who get prescription drugs.
 * The Washington Post Touts Benefits of Limiting Malpractice Insurance**

This week beat the press said that after about 6 months consumer are going back out and shopping. They said that consumer might have shopping because the stock market went up. It wasn’t the only reason why they went back to shopping because not a lot of people had money in the stock market. They said that "three quarters of families had less than $35k in the stock market.” I think they are going shopping because of the holiday season is coming up so they want to get there shopping done before everything is gone.
 * The Post Still Hasn't Noticed the Housing Crash**

Germany has low unemployment rates into a failure. They thought it was a good idea to shorten work hours than lying off workers. The unemployment rates went from 7.8 percent to 7.7 percent. It didn’t go down that much. He said if our leaders were smart like the German leaders less people would be unemployed. he says it like " Imagine Barack Obama's approval rating if the unemployment rate today was anywhere close to its 4.7 percent average for 2007", that would be a big improvement. The NYT said that the plain would be a big failure because "German government's measurement of unemployment (which counts part-time workers as being unemployed) rather than the harmonized OECD measure that is directly comparable to the unemployment data in the United States."
 * NYT Drags German Miracle Through the Mud**

Today I read that the price to buy a used car is going to go up. It is going up because of the C4C. This increase in price is making it harder for the sales man to sell used cars because the people don't want to pay that much money when they can buy a new unused car for a little more. The big jumps in used car prices went up between August and September. I agree with the people that aren't buying used cars because I would rather buy a new unused care for a little more than buying a used car.
 * Cash for Clunkers Pushes Up Used Car Prices**

In beat the press the New York Times said that American wages are out of line. We have a large trade deficit. They said that the dollar is overvalued. But if we lower the value of the dollar the wages for people will get lowered and they will not have even money to buy thing because the prices of everything will still go up. It is "possible that U.S. goods are not competitive because profits are too high."(Beat the press American wages out of line) If they lower the prices of the good more people will buy stuff and the dollar will not be overvalued.
 * American Wages Out of Line**

In beat the press I read that the TARP money can't be used as a pay down because the money will be repaid therefore it will never be spent. It also talked about what a loan is. Loans are when they go to a bank and ask them to borrow money but the key word is borrow that means that they have to pay the money back to the bank that why it is called a loan and not handing money out. But if you use TARP money the government will not be getting any money because the TARP will not be spent. So the Obama’s administration cannot use TARP as a funding to pay down dept.
 * TARP Money Cannot Be Used to Pay Down the Debt**

You would think that the retail price would go up year by year just like the economy. But when the economy went into the recession nobody wanted to go shopping. During the holiday season last year it fell by 3.4 percent. But the NYT said that this year it is not expected to be as bad. But what I think is that it will be bad because nobody has money to go shopping. They would rather save their money instead of spending. But we will see what will happen.
 * NYT Misinterprets Retail Sales**

Today I read about is that Toyota CEO is working for less. They work for the governments limits. I also that I read is the GM is having a hard time find a CEO. People probably don't want to work for less money than the job can offer. I don't blame them for not wanting to work because maybe they would find a better job with better pay. At the end of the article they suggested that the "CEOs in the united states have simply priced themselves out of the market."
 * Toyota's CEO Works for Less**

The morning edition had a interview with David Wessel he is the wall street journal economics editor. In the interview he told that listeners that “he is hopeful that the December employment report, will be release this month that will show that they are adding jobs.” In the article they think the employment rate wouldn’t go up because “ Weekly unemployment claims have averaged well over 460,000 in the four weeks between the November and December surveys .” They will not generally not add jobs if the claims are over 40,000 per a week. I hope what the article is say is wrong and what David Wessel saying is right because a lot of people are out of a job and if they hire more people the people will have a job so that will have money. I am keeping my hopes up for people. I hope this economy will start getting better. It Is Not a Jobless Recovery, It is a Growthless Recovery ** The NYT put out an article that millions of workers were likely to face prolonging joblessness as a result of the recession. If they made a chart saying how long it took the economy recover the jobs lost. They said that it is taking the longest to recover job in this recession than in other years. I think if the government doesn’t start doing a better job more and more people are going to be out of jobs and that mean they are going to be homeless because they can’t pay their bills. This economy needs to start getting better but before they get better people need to keep their jobs.
 * Economists Who Understand the Economy Are Not Hopeful that the Economy Created Jobs in December **

** Wrong surpises on Retail Sales ** The media reported that a 0.3 percent sale in rental went up. It showed a strong result compared with the consensus expectation of a 0.2 percent decline .But when I was reading the news was not as good as it may appear because since January the sales been down by 0.4 percent. So this is basically saying that in February the numbers are in line. But in January the numbers have been a reduction of than prior to believe.

Today I read that the Auto companies are worried that they can’t give there consumers cheap credit because of Senator Dodd’s bill. But the post doesn’t think that the Auto companies aren’t worried about giving there consumers cheap credit. They are mostly worried about not making money. I agree withthe post because that what I think the Auto companies are worried about not making money. We need to wait and see to what will be coming up.
 * Are Auto Companies Really Worried that Financial Reform Will Prevent Them From Giving Consumers "Cheap Credit"? **

This article was about how much the budge is for California and Texas for the health care reform bill. It is saying that the budge for California is $500 million and the budge for Texas is $370 million. But it also says that they are not getting information about the bill only about the budget. I think they need to education the people more about the bill instead of saying the budge is first. I guess we need to keep in touch with this article to see if any more interesting news comes up. This week I read about the history of beat the press. It first came out April 1, 1996 but the name of it was reading between the lines. He started writing it because “ I felt at major media outlets were often obscuring rather than explaining major economic issues.” They found this website over ten years ago. That is a long time a lot of people like this website. I like it because some of the stuff he says makes me laugh. This past week they had its 14th anniversary and beat the press is coming home to the Center for Economic and Policy Research website. I am so happy for them.
 * Meaningless Budget Numbers on Health Care**
 * Beat the Press Coming Home to CEPR's Website **

**Inventing a Surge of Job Seekers ** The number of people looking for jobs went up 200,000 from last month. Economists say that it a good thing that it is going up. They said that it is a good thing that it is going up because people are looking for jobs. But isn’t it a bad thing to because they aren’t getting hired. They are also saying that it isn’t uncommon that it went that it went up that high in labor forces.

On April 14 was the last day that beat the press will be on American Prospect website. They have a new website that I will have to use for the rest of the year. I guess new thing are great. They wanted to thank all the people that are part of TAP. They were on this website for four years. That was long. Next week blog will be on the new website. Let’s see how this goes.
 * And, I Am Out of Here! -- Thanks TAP -- See You at CEPR

Peter Peterson Wants to Cut Social Secuity** On the new web site he said that he is going to be away till the 25 of May. I don’t know how I am going to do my blogs because he will not be blogging. Bit for today I read that Peter Peterson wants to cut social security. He said that this can help a small part if the long-term fiscal shortfall. He also said that “this could lessen the risk of a big rise in interest rates and buy the country more time to handle other debt-related issues. I hope what he is saying will help the country, let’s see what will happen. Till next week . I am going back to April because he is on vacation. This week I read was that the Wall street journal told readers that the social security trust fund will record a “ deficit in 2010, returning to the black briefly, before permanently going back into the red in 2010.” But this isn’t true. They are going to stay in black until after 2020. The social security trust fund is showing a surplus of close to 100 billion dollars in 2010.
 * WSJ Is wrong: SS IS Not The red**

His colleagues told him that he said something wrong about Argentina’s economy shrank in the year following its default. What he said was wrong because Argentina’s economy shrank in the first quarter in 2002 but five years it continued to have a robust growth but until it caught up to the worlds recession. He also said if we are going to have a debate about Greece we should be talking about the remarkable recovery Argentina’s made instead of experts “telling us that the economy shrank 20 percent following the default.” ** He said probably not but we don’t realize that the Democrats would raise the taxes on the foreign earning of the U.S. corporations by 14 billion dollars over the next decade. The sum of this is about 0.05 percent of projects that will be imported over this period. This will also have an effect on our overall trading. The dollar relative to the euro will be from 1.2 euro to 1.203 euro. This will not have a big issue with the trade balance but a lot if politicians are most likely make a big issue out of it.
 * More on Argentina’s Devaluation and Default**
 * Would taxing Imports 0.05 percent improve the Trade Balance?