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NASDAQ closes at highest level since 2000

sawyerloggingon said:
70% over 3 years is a snails pace and careful investing if you consider how far and fast it fell in the bust
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Growth that fast in the stock market has only occurred two other times in the history of the country- under Clinton and under FDR. Obama is presently third of all time for stock market growth.
 
teamosil said:
Growth that fast in the stock market has only occurred two other times in the history of the country- under Clinton and under FDR. Obama is presently third of all time for stock market growth.
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The market crashed and everything was underpriced, the amazing part is how long it took to come back. I am not blaming obama so relax, I think people were scared to get back in and were not sure if it had hit bottom yet for a long time. People lost their life savings in the crash and you don't forget that, it takes a while to trust the market again.
 
teamosil said:
Growth that fast in the stock market has only occurred two other times in the history of the country- under Clinton and under FDR. Obama is presently third of all time for stock market growth.
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It crashed pretty damned hard right after Clinton left office, dont know that I would want to use that example for healthy business growth.
 
teamosil said:
Good. 4.5 million new jobs in just the past 27 months.

You're doing the same thing some of these other guys are- trying to paint an overly simplistic picture. Of course the stock market isn't the only economic indicator that matters. It is one of several important indicators. It is the one that conservative economists fixate on the most. More than liberals. But that doesn't mean it isn't important. It is. To a conservative, this should seem to be great news that the stock market is way up. To a liberal, it is still very good news, although maybe not as great.
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No, I'm not trying to paint an overly simplistic picture. I'm going off of history. The stock market has been the sole focus of government for some time, over the concerns of normal people, jobs, the middle class, etc. Decades now. One of several important indicators. Well give me the other "several" then! Government loves its banks, it will do anything to ensure their prosperity, even give away crap tons of our money when they break the system. I don't care about the banks and the influence they have bought in Congress (OK, maybe I am concerned about that latter part). Middle class is still evaporating, free market capitalism is still dead, the problems still exist. I will jump up and down when you're other "several important indicators" pan out. Till then you just have the rich getting richer and nothing else to show for it. Thanks for the status quo.
 
Ikari said:
No, I'm not trying to paint an overly simplistic picture. I'm going off of history. The stock market has been the sole focus of government for some time, over the concerns of normal people, jobs, the middle class, etc. Decades now.
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That's truish. Or rather, it was true until 3 years ago. Reagan, Bush1, Clinton and Bush2 were all hard core supply side trickle down guys. Their focus was almost exclusively on the stock market. Obama doesn't really fall in line with that. By the end of Bush2's presidency, it was obvious that that approach had failed and today there aren't really many economists at all left still preaching supply side. The Republicans still want to keep going that direction, but the Democrats was to stop and roll back to a more balanced place.

Ikari said:
One of several important indicators. Well give me the other "several" then!
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Well, in my view, you have three big buckets that matter- supply, demand and participation. There are lots of indicators of the health of each of them and none is perfect. For supply, you have indicators like credit availability measures, the actual amount of capital going into expanding companies, new companies, production, etc. But, the stock market is the primary indicator of supply.

For demand there are also lots of indicators. Revenues, median income, exports, etc. But, the strongest indicator is consumer spending. Consumer spending is driven by the middle class, which is driven by median (not average) income.

For participation there are tons of measures as well. We could have a huge GDP, but it could do us almost no good if just a handful of people were able to take part in it. Measures of the distribution of wealth, people in poverty, etc, are all indicators of participation, but unemployment is the primary indicator at present. That isn't a great measure really. Theoretically, you could have a booming economy where only a small percentage worked and robots did the rest for example, so long as the proceeds were being spread around somehow, and you would have both high unemployment and high participation. Or, you could have low unemployment, but everybody could be working minimum wage jobs, and you would have low unemployment, but low participation. But, nonetheless, in the current climate unemployment is a pretty good indicator of participation.
 
teamosil said:
Obama doesn't really fall in line with that.
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Are you mad!? Functionally Obama is a Bush clone.

Middle class growth, real term earning power, social mobility, wealth disparity, etc...these are the true economic markers. You're just making things up now because it's Bush II....I mean Obama. Unemployment isn't a great measure!? It is supposed to be one of the major variables on which we servo the system! The other being inflation.
 
Ikari said:
Are you mad!? Functionally Obama is a Bush clone.
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That is simply absurd. He has been pushing hard for tax hikes on the rich. That is exactly the opposite of trickle down. He has fought hard for tax cuts for the middle class- again, the opposite of trickle down. He has pushed hard for regulation of the financial sector, consumer protection, increased spending on education and other programs that boost up the middle class... I can't think of a single economic policy he has pushed hard on that didn't boil down to reversing course on supply side economics.

Ikari said:
Unemployment isn't a great measure!? It is supposed to be one of the major variables on which we servo the system! The other being inflation.
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I explained the issues with it to you. Did you have thoughts on what I said about it?
 
teamosil said:
That is simply absurd. He has been pushing hard for tax hikes on the rich. That is exactly the opposite of trickle down. He has fought hard for tax cuts for the middle class- again, the opposite of trickle down. He has pushed hard for regulation of the financial sector, consumer protection, increased spending on education and other programs that boost up the middle class... I can't think of a single economic policy he has pushed hard on that didn't boil down to reversing course on supply side economics.
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Our wars are expanding, GITMO is still open, warrantless searches still going on, government is continually expanding against our liberty. He panders to corporate America as much as any good Republocrat. I mean...what has really changed? Seriously. We got some "debate" on healthcare and came away with a give away to Insurance companies, much as Bush had Medicade Part D.l

teamosil said:
I explained the issues with it to you. Did you have thoughts on what I said about it?
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And I explained the difference. You only cited that which is politically convenient, and not any true measure of economic growth, economic mobility, and freedom. And then you tried to dismiss one of the major economic markers and variable upon which we balance our economy. Ridiculous.
 
Ikari said:
Our wars are expanding, GITMO is still open, warrantless searches still going on, government is continually expanding against our liberty.
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We're talking about his economic policy, so this stuff isn't relevant, but I wanted to note that the notion that government expansion inherently means less liberty is false. Government can either protect or limit our liberty. With no government there is no liberty just as surely as there is no liberty with an absolutist government.

Ikari said:
He panders to corporate America as much as any good Republocrat. I mean...what has really changed? Seriously. We got some "debate" on healthcare and came away with a give away to Insurance companies, much as Bush had Medicade Part D.l
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He certainly panders to corporations much less than Republicans do. For example, look at antitrust just to take an example. Under Bush the antitrust division of the DOJ and the FTC had essentially surrendered the field. No major mergers were stopped. Some simply egregious collusion was permitted in broad daylight. Under Obama it has been a totally different story. Even the ultra-politically connected AT&T could not get it's horrible merger with T-Mobile approved.

But, where one falls on the supply side to demand side spectrum isn't about how much you pander to corporations anyways. It is about taxation, creating opportunity, etc. The two can intersect, but they aren't the same thing.

Ikari said:
And I explained the difference. You only cited that which is politically convenient, and not any true measure of economic growth, economic mobility, and freedom. And then you tried to dismiss one of the major economic markers and variable upon which we balance our economy. Ridiculous.
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Again, I explained to you why unemployment is currently the best indicator of participation, but isn't necessarily always going to be. I gave arguments and explanations. If you think they are wrong, explain why.
 
teamosil said:
Again, I explained to you why unemployment is currently the best indicator of participation, but isn't necessarily always going to be. I gave arguments and explanations. If you think they are wrong, explain why.
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Because your argument is exactly the reason as to why we servo on unemployment and not growth. Growth is not a pure indicator of economic health, you can have growth and high unemployment, little to no economic mobility, huge wealth disparities, etc. You have to, you must, servo on unemployment. It is the very reason why the Federal Reserve's mandate is to balance inflation and unemployment, not inflation and growth.
 
Ikari said:
Because your argument is exactly the reason as to why we servo on unemployment and not growth. Growth is not a pure indicator of economic health, you can have growth and high unemployment, little to no economic mobility, huge wealth disparities, etc. You have to, you must, servo on unemployment. It is the very reason why the Federal Reserve's mandate is to balance inflation and unemployment, not inflation and growth.
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Right... Nothing you're saying is contradicting my position, so maybe we're just miscommunicating.

I am saying that right now unemployment is a good indicator of participation. Right now, whether or not a person has a job is a good measure of whether or not they're able to take part in the economy in a meaningful way, it is currently a good indication of how much of our potential productivity we're using, wages are still the primary way people draw money from the economy, etc.

But, that isn't necessarily always going to be the case. For example, you could have a country where you had 100% employment, but everybody was only getting paid food scraps. For example, under feudalism we had nearly 0% unemployment, but that didn't indicate a high level of participation in the economy. Or, on the other end, you could imagine a society in which employment no longer was central to people's economic activities. For example, maybe some day robots and nanomachines will do pretty much everything we think of as work today and the role of people will be fundamentally different, and then unemployment would be a very poor indicator of the economic health of the country.

See what I'm saying?
 
Well be that as it may, in the here and now unemployment is valid indicator and it's not very good. Middle class population is another big indicator, and that too is not doing well. In all measurable aspects, it's not a very good scenario.
 
Ikari said:
Well be that as it may, in the here and now unemployment is valid indicator and it's not very good. Middle class population is another big indicator, and that too is not doing well. In all measurable aspects, it's not a very good scenario.
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Definitely not. We're clawing our way out of the biggest recession since the great depression. We're doing better than most of the first world and we're moving the right direction, but certainly nobody is psyched to have a recession this devastating.
 
It just proves that corporations know how to make money for their investors even during bad economies. It also proves that most corporate interests don't necessarily involve the hiring of new people. New industry, that is driven from inside this country, is what's needed to bring the economy back.
 
Fletch said:
The NASDAQ is higher mainly due to Apple and Google and the FED.
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The NASDAQ is up 70% from when Obama took office. It has now repaired ALL the damage done during the Bush administration. I don't think Apple, Google and the fed explains that...
 
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