Much like federal judges, the President nominates and Congress approves members of the Fed for a specific time period. However, the POTUS has HUGE influence over policy shaping.
So let me see if I am hearing you correctly…
Are you saying this 4+ Trillion dollar pumping of money into our economy since Obama took office was Bush’s fault. Are you saying Obama is so weak that he, unlike every President since 1913, has no clout or leverage in the matter.
Oh Really. Is that because she has -all of a sudden- realized that all of her previous votes in favor of pumping were wrong? Or is it because she knows that QE has reached the danger level and now that the Obama Administration has made it through it’s last election cycle and the ill affects (stagflation) of backing off QE aren’t as big of a threat to his political party now?
In some perverted way, I can see why a biased defender of this Administration’s economic policies would make such a fringe statement…
But let’s try and look at it without an agenda. Obviously, QE has a major effect on our economy. That’s the reason behind doing it in the first place. Right? Can we agree on that much?
While QE doesn’t show on the balance sheet as debt (that’s why my original post referred to as “off the books’) it most certainly impacts the economy in complex ways. Both good and bad. But where’s do you draw the line. When is enough enough.
Assets flowing from QE onto the Fed's balance sheet are now the equivalent of one-fifth of US GDP. Meaning, the FED is pumping money into the economy by buying bonds and treasuries to falsely prop it up, artificially stimulate it, and buy down inflation. This makes Obama look good. Provides a false sense of positive outlook. The average uninformed voter (aka “Stupid Voters”) have no idea what is going on in the background.
At some point the negative downside to QE will start to creep in as the Fed tries to ween the fake ‘propped up’ economy off of the endless supply of money that the Fed has been, in effect, electronically printing.
The longer a QE cycle runs… the steeper the withdrawal symptoms when it stops.
Example: One clearly visible side effect of QE is Market Growth, not built on fundamentals. When the original QE ended, the market withdrew and it stymied growth in the entire economy. So QE2 was implemented. When it expired the same thing happened. So they came up with QE3 only this time they did not set limits on it. It continued unabatedly pumping 85 billion dollars into the economy every month, until just recently. Now the roll back starts. Let the fun begin!
The only number that change affected was median duration of unemployment.
Once again... Wrong On Both Counts...
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Understanding Workforce Participation & Unemployment
Source: Poof! The Government’s 9 Million Jobless Vanishing Act
When we look at broad measures of jobs and population, then the beginning of 2012 was one of the worst months in US history, with a total of 2.3 million people losing jobs or leaving the workforce in a single month. Yet, the official unemployment rate showed a decline from 8.5% to 8.3% in January - and was such cheering news that it set off a stock rally.
How can there be such a stark contrast between the cheerful surface and an underlying reality that is getting worse?
The true unemployment picture is hidden by essentially splitting jobless Americans up and putting them inside one of three different "boxes": the official unemployment box, the full unemployment box, and the most obscure box, the workforce participation rate box.
As we will explore herein, a detailed look at the government's own data base shows that about 9 million people without jobs have been removed from the labor force simply by the government defining them as not being in the labor force anymore. Indeed - effectively all of the decreases in unemployment rate percentages since 2009 have come not from new jobs, but through reducing the workforce participation rate so that millions of jobless people are removed from the labor force by definition.
See the full report--> HERE
There was, of course, the allegation by that NY Post writer last year that at least 2 Census workers in the Philadelphia region were pressured to fake interviews. But that's not politicians, and there were no claims that any specified result was desired. And the IG report found no evidence of anyone being asked to fake reports. And they noted that the reports that were faked had no effect on the Labor Force data. The guy caught faking reports was fired.
Oh? How do you interpret his claim that the only "hard numbers" are jobs and the population and that manipulating the participation rate changes the number of unemployed?
It was summarized, but nothing was inaccurate. Which you know, or you would have pointed it out.
And yet you don't point out any misinformation.
How? His claim was that BLS could change the participation rate and "vanish" numbers of the unemployed. There's nothing in the BLS brief that validates this.
Because they're not part of the calcualtions for the unemployment rate, and therefore not relevant for the specific comments I was making.
How do you think that contradicts what I said? The people respond to the questions and are categorized by set definitions as Employed, Unemployed, (together the Labor Force) and Not in the Labor force. The UE rate is Unemployed/labor force and the labor force participation rate is Labor force / population. The BLS analyst can't arbitrarily assign categories..its' all based on what the people say.
How? If someone says they were looking for work, BLS can't just decide to classify him as discouraged. You'll have to walk me through the steps you think happen, because right now, you're not making any sense.
How is this a long history of remaining almost static?
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How is this a long history of remaining almost static?
Unfortunatley, I don't think I can do that on FRED. But the main point was that the change in Sept 2012 was not some huge abnormal variation.
Correct.
It's not a question of productivity...the Labor Force stats are meant to measure the Labor Market. Doing housework is not competing in the labor market.
