Economic News: The Good, The Bad and the Bogus
Published April 24, 2007
This was great and made a lot of sense and drove the recovery from the recession. But now the real estate market is on a slide in many parts of the country. A lot of people overextended themselves and bought bigger houses than they could really afford. Others bought houses with poor credit or low income under very aggressive, even deceptive lending practices which got them into starter homes with zero down and no credit or even income qualifications in many cases. People put all their savings into their homes and now they're seeing those homes declining in value and difficult to sell. In some cases they're also having trouble meeting variable rate or even balloon rate payments. Defaults and foreclosures are up and new home sales are down.
As a result, for a full two years people have been dipping into their savings rather than adding to them. It hasn't been by a huge amount, but with -.4% savings in 2005 and -1.1% savings in 2006 there's some reason to be concerned. Disposable income is only up 1.3% in that same period, so more than just that negative savings rate is going into paying more interest and dealing with debt and other expenses. It has to be frustrating for consumers who feel this squeeze. Their wages are substantially higher, they've got a nice new house, but their budgets are tighter than ever and they're putting less money away than they were a few years ago. With the housing market weak, the equity they've built up in their houses is effectively devalued, though that value will come back if they can hold out until the market inevitably comes around again.
The Good News
Ironically, the good news is in the areas which are often the focus of cries of despair from those whose view of the economy is flavored by their political agenda. Their two big issues are usually the 'Trade Deficit' and the 'Income Gap'. They may have to find different issues to beat their drum about, because the numbers on these two indicators are better than they've been in years.
I'm not going to go into whether the trade imbalance between the United States and trading partners overseas is a real problem or even meaningful. I think the concept is basically outdated in a global economy, but many people still swear by the idea that roughly the same amount of value in goods and money should go out of the country as comes into it. For years we've been in a situation where we have had more net outflow than income. Our money went overseas and their products came here, and not enough of our goods went out of the country to bring in foreign money. This trend has been going on for a while, and is a pet peeve of the doom and gloom crankisphere as typified by Lou Dobbs. They may have to find a new complaint, because the latest numbers from the BEA show that not only did our exports increase 9.2% in 2006, but imports were even down by 2.2% last year. That's a 11.4% improvement in our balance of trade in one year, which is pretty damned impressive. The figures also show a substantial improvement in the ratio of services exported to services imported, suggesting that the much feared job outsourcing is largely offset by new work opportunities being brought to this country from overseas.
Dave Nalle has been a magazine editor, freelance writer, capitol hill staffer, game designer and taught college history for many years. He is Vice Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, working to promote liberty in the GOP. He designs fonts for a living and lives with his family just outside Austin. You can find his writings on politics and culture at Republic of Dave, on conspiracy theories at IdiotWars and on design and fonts at The Scriptorium.
- Economic News: The Good, The Bad and the Bogus
- Published: April 24, 2007
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Politics
- Filed Under: Culture: Business and Economics, Politics: Policy, Politics: U.S.
- Writer: Dave Nalle
- Dave Nalle's BC Writer page
- Dave Nalle's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
Admittedly I don't hear about a lot of people getting 7%+ raises, so I suspect that the figures include a lot of people who are reclassified or move from one job to a better paying job.
IMO the most interesting figure here - and I probablu should do an article to follow up on it - is the rather large amount of insourcing of work from overseas which the BLS reported. We hear about all the outsourcing of US jobs, but not so much about the fact that other countries are hiring US talent in pretty large numbers to perform specialized services for them.
Dave
Dave - using the BLS figures that you quote the difference between average CEO and worker compensation grew from 61,464 to 62,257 for the year
this contradicts your statement: *So the wage gap which some have gone so far as to suggest justifies a revolution and signifies the death of the middle class, is actually slowly closing...*
perhaps what you meant to say was that the rate of growth of the gap is slowing -- ?
A valid way of looking at it, troll. I wasn't looking at the actual gap, but at the rate of increase in salary. The rate of increase for CEOs is substantially lower than for average workers, but of course because the base salary for CEOs is higher, the actual dollar increse is greater. The trend needs to go a bit farther to actually start closing the gap for everyone.
I may not have emphasized it enough, but it's the lowest wage earners who have gained the most, not those already in the middle income group, with the exception of those in certain sectors - like computer related work. Computer workers already earning in the $30-$40K range gained more in straight take-home pay than the average CEO, and people working in the service sector or other low paying jobs gained more per capita than most middle income workers.
The point of it all being that the economic forces which are bringing higher salaries are helping everyone, not just CEOs. And the $2000 that a service industry worker had added on to his yearly salary means a lot more to him than that same $2000 added onto the salary of a CEO means to that CEO.
Dave
Globalisation.
The Lotus Garden restaurant near my place in Sydney serves the very same type of crispy skin duck as the Crispy Duck restaurant in Soho, London. These countries are 13,000 miles apart, yet the food seems almost identical.
Yum. I love globalisation.
Sad to tell you, Stan, but most Chinese food gets shipped frozen in bags from the same central distributorships in China and then the frozen sauce and ingredients get thrown together in a Wok for 5 minutes and they serve it. The same in Sydney or London or Austin. If you're lucky they at least use fresh veggies. It all tastes the same because the sauce was probably all cooked in the same big vat in Kowloon.
Dave
Eeeeh Yah. Have you been to Kowloon?? Bloody hell ... that's it then, I'm eating Japanese at Kirra-kaze next week.
I haven't been to Kowloon, but I've seen pictures. Does that count?
Dave
Maybe my good news from this article had a secret impact. Can I take personal responsibility for pushing the Stock Market over 13,000? It happened right when I wrote this.
Dave
STM, you're lucky. We rarely get the best Italian fresh produce here in Canada. Italian restaurants there are not the same as here.
Dave, sure. Why not?
Alessandro: with so many Italian migrants here, much of the stuff is made fresh in Australia - you can buy fresh pasta and locally ground coffee etc almost anywhere - so it's all very authentic. We even export dried pasta to Italy! Fresh food here really is fresh too, pretty much straight from farm to market to plate.
It's a miracle what our farmers have done in a country that has been suffering drought for six years. They have had to adapt traditional farming methods to suit the peculiarities of this continent, which is a very harsh place sometimes. Amazing really. They are struggling but they are heroes.
the author of this article is either an idiot or a propagandist, most likely a propagandist disguised as "a smart independent researcher." the REAL economic news is a nightmare and it's apparent to everyone that serious trouble is in store for mainstreet America.
This guy is retarded. Look at this article and it's clear he watches highly leveraged financial news all day where the hosts are paid to talk only optimism. Then he goes and writes this pathetic article. He's probably never had a real world financial worry in his life.
hey louse - cut it out...although Dave might be a real nally as you indicate he did live on peanut butter and crackers once while trapped in the Student Ghetto
Also, he smells like CIA, specifically employed as an "opinion shaper."
...and I bet that he designs his fonts to conceal codes
Laos, it's clear you didn't even read the first paragraph of the article, where I point out that my observations come from doing the exact opposite of what you ascribe to me. Do try to pay attention.
And if you disagree with my points, feel free to check my sources. You'll find them pretty reliable and neutral.
And troll, it was spam and crackers, not peanut butter. Oh how I wish I had been able to find some lovely peanut butter.
Dave
oh yeah - I must have repressed that disgusting image
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Now I feel inadequate because I only got a 5 percent raise last year and apparently other compugeeks did better. I demand equal pay for equal work, dammi