Oil price, gas price, stocks, unemployment and bubbles - looking like 2008 again

[Zippyjuan]

people who believe the economy is related to the stock market prices are dumb and will be duped again when the market crashes and the job losses are worse than 2008

if the recovery was so good I wonder why I havent seen a raise in 4 years

How often did you get a raise during better economic times?

[oyarde]

Folly , unemployment numbers now are still worse than the great depression , there are currently , at least 6 people available for ea job , then , it was five , it will never , get better without drastic spending cuts , which will not happen in my opinion.

[devil21]

Cramer was extremely bullish on equities tonite and was just plain telling everyone watching to go long on everything.

That's usually a contra indicator for me but it's an election year and the Fed will print to keep things afloat and keep the markets looking good or at least stagnant until the next administration takes over (Obama or not). Then the Fed can threaten the next administration if they don't appoint who the bankers want as Chairman. I don't see any bubbles being allowed to burst till January. Then it's on the new administration's hands anyway and the next bubble to burst will be massive. Whether it's bonds or equities won't matter and Ill still be happy with my PMs.

[Zippyjuan]

Folly , unemployment numbers now are still worse than the great depression , there are currently , at least 6 people available for ea job , then , it was five , it will never , get better without drastic spending cuts , which will not happen in my opinion.

In the Great Depression one in four was out of work. The average family relied on a single wage earner- if he was out of work, the entire family was out of work. Many families today have two working so if one is out of work, the family still has income. There were also no unemployment benefits to cushion those out of work in the depression. It isn't easy today- I am not pretending that it is, but it is certainly not worse than the Great Depression.

Another number to compare:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1198...ot-percentages

The number of people affected at the peak of the depression was 13.5 million unemployed vs today's official number of 11.6 million.

It probably does not need to be pointed out that the population of the US today is much larger than it was in the 1930's.

More comparisons:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/cont...eat-depression

A frequent meme propounded in the economic blogosphere is that U6 unemployment, running near 17% now, is a truer measure (and there are good reasons to believe it is), so that means we have unemployment already approaching Great Depression levels of 25%. Left out of the comparison is the fact that U3 and U6 measurements didn't exist during the 1930s. So, is the 25% unemployment peak for the Great Depression a fair comparison to U6 unemployment today?

N. Andrews compared historical versions of unemployment statistics with the modern U3 and U6 versions, published as "Historical Unemployment in Relationship to Today" , has an answer. He writes:


For the period of 1900 - 1947 we have two unemployment statistics available, Unemployed Non-Farm employees and Unemployed Civilian Workforce. These two data sets pose a challenge as they were developed during a period of ever-changing data collection methodologies. The data in the sets has been adjusted by the sources listed in Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 in an attempt to sync the data sets with the methodology that was put in place as of 1940 and was the basis for methodologies since. We can compare the two available data sets ... and we see that the Unemployed Non-Farm employees and Unemployed Civilian Workforce measures of unemployment appear to be a close analogue of modern U3 (Unemployed Civilian Workforce) and U6 (Non-Farm employees).

Based on that research, he was able to generate a mathematical formula to calculate U3 and U6 unemployment for the entire period since 1900. He found that at the peak of the Great Depression, U3 was 25.2%. U6 was 37.6%.

Here's the resulting graph:

[JuicyG]

Cramer was extremely bullish on equities tonite and was just plain telling everyone watching to go long on everything.

That's usually a contra indicator for me but it's an election year and the Fed will print to keep things afloat and keep the markets looking good or at least stagnant until the next administration takes over (Obama or not). Then the Fed can threaten the next administration if they don't appoint who the bankers want as Chairman. I don't see any bubbles being allowed to burst till January. Then it's on the new administration's hands anyway and the next bubble to burst will be massive. Whether it's bonds or equities won't matter and Ill still be happy with my PMs.

Here`s the tricky part. They can`t print exactly because it`s an election year. If they start printing, gas prices will skyrocket and kill the economy, thus having opposite effect to one intended. Brent is already at 125$ and going up. Some say it could reach 300$ in an Iran war scenario. It would be total mass murder to slap QE3 on top of that.

Bernanke`s still saying printing is in the cards for this year because he wants market to believe it, but that`s about it.

[Brian4Liberty]

Well, it looks like the drop is right on schedule...