Recovery?

[classicman]

Obama budget sees recovery gaining speed

President Barack Obama is feeling upbeat about the economic recovery, maybe too upbeat.

As part of his $3.8 trillion spending plan for 2013, the president included an economic forecast that shows the nation’s gross domestic product moving ahead by 3.6 percent this year and 4.4 percent in 2013. Obama and his advisors also see the unemployment rate falling to 7.5 percent next year, with an inflation rate holding steady at about 2 percent through the rest of the decade.

The administration also predicts the recovery will produce strong growth in 2014 before the pace of growth begins slowing in 2015.

While typical of the rosy scenarios outlined by White House budgets in an election year, the president added a note of caution to his economic outlook.

"We are seeing signs that our economy is on the mend," Obama said in his budget message to Congress. “But we are not out of the woods yet.”

The president’s numbers are higher than forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office and the Blue Chip survey of about 50 private business economists. One reason for the discrepancy, according to the White House, is that its forecast assumes the president’s budget proposal will be enacted as written.

The odds of that happening in an election year are slim to none.

Link

[Aliantha]

Well they have to make it look as good as they can get away with or no one will vote for them will they?

Seriously, what do you expect? Worst case scenario in an election year? I don't think so.

[classicman]

Congressional Budget Office Predicts Gloomy US Economy

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases its 10-year Budget and Economic Outlook during the first month of every year. There was no exception in 2012, as the CBO released its outlook on Jan. 31, followed by the testimony of economist Douglas W. Elmendorf, director at the CBO, to the Committee on the Budget in the U.S. Senate on Feb. 2.

Elmendorf gave a rather gloomy forecast on the U.S. economy, suggesting that the United States’s unprecedented high budget deficit is closely connected to the U.S. economic health and will not improve significantly until the economy rebounds.

“How much and how quickly the deficit declines will depend in part on how well the economy does over the next few years. Probably more critical, though, will be the fiscal policy choices made by lawmakers,” Elmendorf testified.

Statisticians suggest that depending on the statistics that were used, the projected outcome could differ significantly. Concerning the deficit, the numbers provided to the public are net figures and do not include the gross federal debt.

“The sad fact is that statistics are ridiculously easy to manipulate. … There are literally hundreds of ways to manipulate statistics,” according to an article about statistical manipulation on the Effective Meetings website.

“The pace of the economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years,” according to the CBO report.

The U.S. economic recovery will continue to be sluggish and is predicted not to improve significantly until 2018.

The CBO predicts that the unemployment rate will not subside significantly during this and next year, hovering around 8 percent and then 7 percent for the years 2014 and 2015.

Link

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The official unemployment rate excludes those individuals who would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks as well as those who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work; if those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would have been about 15 percent. Compounding the problem of high unemployment, the share of unemployed people looking for work for more than six months—referred to as the long-term unemployed—topped 40 percent in December 2009 for the first time since 1948, when such data began to be collected; it has remained above that level ever since.”

Are you seeing "recovery" where you are? Maybe its just me and my situation, but I'm more inclined to agree with the CBO rather than the administration.

[Aliantha]

It depends what you call recovery classic, and it depends on your perspective.

I see the cost of things going up and up, which implies economic growth, but I don't see wages going up equally. In fact, that hasn't been happening here for over a decade, maybe more. The housing market is a complete blowout and interest rates are still going up.

No, I don't see recovery really. I see a country treading water and doing a pretty good job of it, but people are still doing it pretty tough mostly.

[Happy Monkey]

The odds of that happening in an election year are slim to none.

Yeah? And? The projections for the budget still have to be made assuming it passes.

You want projections assuming current laws?

“The pace of the economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years,” according to the CBO report.

[classicman]

HM, I appreciate your input. I'm more interested in what people are actually seeing.
Hopefully those in the real world. You and Glatt, you're in DC, that's a different world.
No offense intended.

[Happy Monkey]

I was just taking exception to the article's bizarre implication that the projections for Obama's budget should assume that it doesn't take effect.

[TheMercenary]

The real story of how they are cooking the books....

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/...aningless.html

[classicman]

Merc, there is NO real story from that site.
Its illegal to quote bullshit that partisan.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by classicman

Merc, there is NO real story from that site.
Its illegal to quote bullshit that partisan.

Illegal? Really? It points out the fact that the recovery is not what Obama wants you to believe it is. It is foot noted and linked. Where is the problem?

[Ibby]

MSNBC regularly - VERY regularly - talks about how the unemployment numbers hide the true rate because it only counts - and has historically only counted - those SEEKING employment. That's what labor force means. You can't measure a "desire" to be employed the way you can measure those TRYING to work. When Steve Liesman says "The workforce declined by 315 thousand and that makes it easier to get to the lower unemployment rate," Obama didn't "decide" to not count the 435,000 people who have given up looking for work - they GAVE UP LOOKING. Maybe you can argue that Obama CAUSED them to give up, but the DEFINITION of U3 unemployment hasn't changed. Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr... I don't know when we started measuring unemployment using this system, but U3 has meant the same thing. If you can show me that the U3 numbers used by Bush DIDN'T discount people who took themselves out of the labor force (as the article you linked to ADMITS: "And when it becomes "good news" to an administration that 315 thousand fewer adults even consider themselves in the workforce anymore..."), you might have a case, Merc.

I agree that the statistic is misleading, but it's just as misleading as ever as it was.

And caps don't mean I'm yelling, they mean I'm too lazy to use italics or anything.

[TheMercenary]

Oh I have a case. A huge one. It is an election season. Obama owns the failure of the last three years and every bit of the failed economy.... The time of blaming Bush is long past.

[Aliantha]

Merc, I just don't get how you can blame one man for the state the US is in. Particularly since he inherited the problem.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Merc, I just don't get how you can blame one man for the state the US is in. Particularly since he inherited the problem.

He inherited a small portion of the issue, at the beginning. I don't blame him, I blame him and the Congress. More so the Congress, but he was rubber stamping the overly reckless spending of Pelosi and Reid. The Republickins play a part as well. But Obama has done just what everyone thought he would, spend without a plan to pay for it, just as I stated over and over when he was bringing his BS to the table and shoving it down the throats of the American taxpayer. He owns it and where ever we go from here.

[Aliantha]

If the reps were in, how do you think they would have done things differently?

eta: I ask this simply because most western nations did more or less the same thing as obama and his administration to lesser or greater success. It seems to have helped somewhat here in Australia although if there hadn't been a stimulus plan, perhaps the results would have been similar. It's very hard to know because it's one of those things where there's really no control group.