Or so their chief economist says.
Any thoughts on the prediction, and/or how seriously to take it?
Since they have shown they will mislead clients and bet against them, why do we trust them now?
I don’t trust them at all, but I have no power to do anything about it. Personally I think they’re a bunch of crooks, who should be in jail somewhere.
The United States economy, and the US dollar, long term, is going down the tubes. The country is doomed and will be bankrupt because of 3 principle reasons.
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Too much borrowing and too much debt causing the US dollar to become worthless and unable to buy anything from foreign countries, including energy, food, and including consumer goods. No money, no buy.
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Overpopulating/overcrowding. The US is undergoing record immigration, it is bringing in millions more immigrants each and every year. The population of the US is now over 300 million, it will be over 400 million by 2050, and over 1 billion by the end of the century. Overpopulation always results in poverty.
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The United States is getting rid of its industry. It is moving all of its manufacturing, all of its factories to foreign countries. Within a few decades NOTHING!!! will actually be made in the United States.
A country, any country, with no industry, no manufacturing, no jobs, a worthless currency, too much debt, too many people, not enough food or water, will end up being a poor, dirty, starving, energy deficient, third world nation.
- certainly US debt is an issue, but not a crippling one
- overcrowding? In the US? So the vastly more populated India and China must be experiencing what the US is experiencing, yes? Oh, wait, no,
- Bollocks. Simply false. Just because the US doesn’t make your watch any more doesn’t mean they don’t make anything.
And even if it was true, so what? Why is earning money from selling objects more important than making it selling ideas or services?
This analysis is very short term, I believe he said 6 to 9 months. And it is a very technical analysis, based on understanding how businesses do business.
I think it’s pretty likely that the “fairly bad” hypothesis is where we’ll end up going short term, I’d give it 60%. The “really bad” hypothesis is, I think, much less likely, if only because there are still one or two arrows in the government’s quiver to prevent that outcome. I give it 20%. The last 20% I give to something a little better than the “fairly bad” one, where growth is still 2% or so, but joblessness does not increase further or even decreases slightly.
I’m doing my part, I’m having my kitchen and bath gutted and remodeled. I hope it helps.
Roddy
I kept hearing that economists were saying the chances of a second recession were extremely low. But apparently some are changing their views.
GDP growth of 1-2% isn’t unlikely in my non-professional opinion. We have no demand and no security, so no production.
While I’m pretty bearish on the economy myself, we have to be careful to not extrapolate current trends linearly into the future. That’s always wrong. That kind of thinking is what led ‘futurists’ to predict mass worldwide starvation by now, and a population explosion that would turn the earth into a starving impoverished planet. It didn’t happen that way.
There are always feedbacks. Things get too far out of whack, and forces build, political and economic, to correct them.
The forces can be international, however. This feels like one of those eras when major transitions in power occur. Like the ending of the British and French colonial eras, or the rise of the U.S. as a world superpower. I have a feeling that when this all shakes out, the world is going to look significantly different. I just don’t know how.
I think you are on pretty solid ground, there.
This doesn’t make any sense. One hundred years ago, when China and India were infinitely poorer than today, they were not overpopulated. Even today, in China at least it is the rich coastal cities that are the most populated, and the least populated areas are the poorest- and this is in a country with limited freedom of movement, so you can’t say it’s because all the rich.
Incidentally, you will find America follows the same patterns- high immigration and population states are among the richest, and all of the poorest have low immigration and population.
The current overpopulation is a modern phenomenon (in the 1960s China worried about low birthrates, and encouraged women to bear more children!), as is the current rise in the economies. I won’t say overpopulation is driving their increased living standards, but it certainly does hurt it.
Overpopulation and too much immigration, esp when combined with a declining currency, combined with increased debt, combined with an infrastructure that is not keeping up with its added population, and combined with its net losses of factories and jobs, ALWAYS!!! necessarily results in poverty and a lower standard of living.
The US is adding about 50,000 more immigrants to its population each week, week after week, month after month, year after year. The US population is increasing, via legal and illegal immigration, by a couple of million more people every year.
In order just to stand still and maintain a certain economic level and maintain a certain employment level, that means the US must add about 200,000 new additional jobs to its economy every month, month after month. IF no jobs were added, then the next month the US would have to double up and add 400,000 new additional jobs the following month. It is not happening. In fact, the US has LOST jobs in the past several years.
A country that adds so many millions more immigrants to its population HAS to be adding a corresponding number of new jobs, else, the standard of living will decline, and the country will become poor.
Besides the basic need to add 200,000 new jobs each month, the US would also have to add additional infrastructure, build new roads, build new schools, new bridges, new dams, new hospitals, new factories, new houses, new stores, new office buildings, enough to serve a new additional large city of 200,000 people each and every month, month after month, and it is not doing that, which causes overcrowding in its schools, hospitals, highways, etc. The US is not keeping up with its additional people.
Until and unless, the US pays off its debt, balances its budget, balances its imports and exports, develops enough new energy to serve additional hundreds of millions more people, doubles its existing highways and bridges and hospitals and schools and factories, then it is doomed to bankruptcy and poverty.
Look, if you want to increase your population and add another 100 million more immigrants, then you’d also better create 100 million new jobs and build enough new highways and bridges and schools and hospitals and police and libraries and parks and stores and houses and factories and offices in order to take care of all the added people and overcrowding that is going to happen.
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if they are “betting” in dumb “research” pronouncements (like the Jim O'Neill, Baron O'Neill of Gatley - Wikipedia claim that Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria will be among largest economies of 21st century) then it’s easy to see that it’s utter BS. But if they are putting their own money on the line, then there must be something to it. The folks who got their guy into the White House must have some notion about what is really happening in the world beyond the usual propaganda spin.
Your reasoning is circular. The reason those jobs must be added is to provide jobs to the immigrants If the jobs are not created and the immigrants are unemployed no one who has a job is harmed. If the half of the immigrants find jobs then their production is added to the economy. Statistics such as per capita GDP might be harmed, but the actual economy is helped by immigration as long as some of the immigrants find work.
Think of it this way; if Robert Reich walked into this room the average height would plumment, but no one would get any shorter.
Did the OP actually read his own cite? There’s in nothing about “crashing” in there. It’s says: slow growth, or back into recession. Is that supposed to be news? That’s pretty much what everyone is saying. It would help if you’d just quote a little from the cite, where the author lists the two scenarios for the next 6-9 months:
I HAVE A GIANT ORANGE PENIS!!!
Putting something in caps with 3 exclamation marks doesn’t make it true. Can you give a single cite that shows a country having a massive increase of poverty because of the factors you mention? I can think of a couple of monetary collapses, but nothing linked to immigration as well. Then demonstrate that it’s an inevitable occurence.
I don’t necessarily disagree that it’s a potential problem but you are overstating your case in the absence of any supporting evidence IMO.
Don’t bother engaging Susanann. She pops into every thread with the same nonsensical rant about tangientially related issues.
The Goldman Sachs economist referenced in the OP is talking about short-term scenarios, and I don’t see any evidence that GS is putting its money where its mouth is and getting out of volatile holdings.
I generally agree with everything you say but the benefit of having a manufacturing industry is that you can employ labor that cannot provide a service taht is demanded internationally. Which wouldn’t be a problem is we weren’t also importing so much.
You can thank the Republicans for that Susanann. But somehow I am sure you will figure out how to blame this in the Democrats.
I always thought it was the other way round - poverty leads to overpopulation. The richer a country gets, the more its birth rate drops.
I gotta say, when driving from O’Hare to my friends’ wedding in Davenport, Iowa, I didn’t really get the feeling the US was overpopulated. Hell, I grew up in the UK (and in the SE of the UK, which I am guessing has the highest population density) and I didn’t get the feeling the UK was overpopulated.
If you look at Wikipedia’s list of states by population density, it seems like there’s fuck-all relation between pop density and wealth. Leaving out places with 5,000 square kilometers or less (most of which are fairly wealthy city-states), the top 2 are Bangladesh and the Palestinian Territories (both miserable), followed by Taiwan and South Korea (well-off), followed by Lebanon and Puerto Rico (middling). Look at the other end, and the bottom ten are basically either too cold or too dry for many people to live there, whether wealthy (Australia and Canada) or poor as hell (Namibia and Mongolia).