President Trump by the Numbers (Updated 11-4-19)
How Do We Stand Today?
Below is what is called a stoplight chart. It is intended depict in one place an easy to read picture of the status of a complex set of data; in this case Trump's America. Beside each measure, e.g. GDP, are a pair of colored circles ... the stoplights.
Below is a stoplight chart for the end of President Obama's term of office. This is what the charts tell me about the state of America at that point in time. The colored circles represent the "goodness" of that measure. For example:
- Food Stamp Use is Yellow (poor). While food stamp use declined considerably after the Great Recession of 2008 during President Obama's term in office, it was (and still is) way above historic norms.
- On the other hand, the Unemployment Rate is Blue (great) because at 4.8%, the economy is near or at full employment and is below what is normal.
- Finally, the National Debt is Red (terrible) because, even though the huge increase in debt was the direct result of 1) the cumulative effect of President Bush's tax cuts and the cost of his wars, 2) automatic economic stabilization measures that kicked in with the recession, and 3) the measures President Obama was forced to take to avert a depression, it is nevertheless historically high.
You will see I take a slightly different approach when we get to President Trump's stoplight chart.
Where Things Stood at the Beginning Of Trump's Presidency
President Trump's Stoplight Chart
We use this management tool a little differently in assessing how President Trump is doing. Instead of looking at how he is doing overall at single points in time, we consider how he is doing relative to how President Obama did. Why this way? Because President Trump and his supporters have made it very clear in words and deeds that they are measuring themselves to Obama's legacy.
Consequently, I organized this chart thusly. There are two sets of stoplights. Both measure whether he is doing better or worse than President Obama for each metric. The one on the left depicts how things stand about ten months into President Trump's term. The right stoplight is how it is in December 2017. The difference between the two colors tells you where that particular attribute is heading. The totality of color changes (or lack thereof) gives you a good idea of how President Trump is doing overall when compared to President Obama's ending position.
For example, take the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I have it rated Blue because Trump is doing much better at the moment than where Obama left it. Likewise, GDP is rated Green because the trajectory of GDP growth has not changed very much between the two administrations. Auto sales are Yellow because they are a little worse than what Obama gave him. Finally, Uninsured Rates is Red because all the turmoil surrounding Obamacare has noticeably increased the number of uninsured Americans.
Stoplight Chart on Trump's America
10/6/2019 - More deterioration is noticeable.
2/8/2019 - Deterioration seems to be setting in regarding Donald Trumps numbers. Several of the stoplights which now show Red-Red, use to be Red-Yellow or even Red-Green for a bit.
A Little History
To put things in perspective, a little historical context is always helpful. This next series of charts provide a look at Public Debt, Debt to GDP ratio, GDP and Per Capita GDP over various periods of time starting with a look at the entire history of the United States.
The first set of charts provide a look at Public Debt as well as the more meaningful Public Debt to GDP Ratio. The reason for the second metric is that it is not very often that a raw number (Public Debt) has any meaning by itself. It is just a number such as the Right throwing around 20 Trillion Dollars as if that was a terrible thing. Well it may be or it may not be. And you won't know until you measure it against some other related metric(s); in this case GDP and Time.
Until you know the size of the economy can you gauge whether $20 trillion is large or small. Because GDP is also around $20 trillion then you can start getting the feeling that the current public debt is pretty big indeed, since it is around 100% of GDP (in other words, it would take the entire American economy to pay off what America owes to itself and others).
Even here, you still don't know if this is situation is "normal" or not until you see what it was in previous years. Again, you can see it is at an all time high (save for WW II). The final piece of context that is helpful is looking back in history at other periods where the Debt-GDP ration was this high and judge if the times were good or bad then. We can't do that here because this is a unique situation in a peace-time economy. So, my conclusion in this case is having a debt this high is not good for economic health.
2/8/2019 - While it is hard to tell, Public Debt is beginning to balloon from the GOP Tax Cut.
This next set of charts looks at the Debt and Debt-GDP ratio in more detail by taking shorter snapshots in time. Here, to add context, I show some major events that drove changes to public debt. Then, by looking at an even shorter time frame, we can analyze public debt in yet another way—by seeing how it changed from administration to administration and comparing it to the rhetoric of the day.
In that last regard, much has been made of how much President Obama has driven up public debt. Well, you can see from Chart PD-3, that is not really the case because after you get past the terrible effects of the Great 2008 Recession (Obama took office in 2009 and was able to have direct influence on the 2010 budgets and beyond), you see that Obama, at 2.7%, has the second lowest rate of debt growth of the four presidents before him. So when you hear the hyperbolic rhetoric on this subject, you now know what the truth is.
The Scariest Chart You Will Ever See
Chart POP-1 is a bombshell for anybody who cares about a growing American economy. It says that if something doesn't change regarding population growth then the future for sustained economic growth is bleak. And, that is not the hyperbole mentioned above.
It is a simple chart for sure, just one line heading south, but what a line it is!! You see, as I explain in other hubs, economic growth is intimately intertwined with population growth (plus productivity growth). In the mid- to long-term, economic (GDP) growth is basically equal to the population growth rate plus the productivity growth rate1 plus an error factor that reflects current pressures on the economy. It is no more complicated than that.
Yes, in the short-term other factors (the error term) hold sway which cause monthly, quarterly, and yearly variations in GDP; things like the business cycle and inflation. But after they run their course, what happens with population (creates demand) and productivity (ability to satisfy the demand) take over control.
Without getting into the nitty-gritty of why, what must happen to keep the population stable, not increasing or decreasing (like Russia is) is that, on average, each female must produce two offspring during her lifetime in order to replace her and the father. If that doesn't happen, then population (and therefore demand) must decrease over time. Consequently, in order to grow the population one of two things must happen (or a combination of the two); 1) more than two offspring must be produced and/or 2) immigrants (it doesn't make any difference which type) must come into the country. There is no other way.
Look at the note in the middle of the chart pointing to the line at about the 2009 point. It is in this period when native born births fell below the replacement level or 2.08 births per woman. Therefore, it was here when immigration became critical to a growing population because immigration is necessary to replace the babies that aren't being born in sufficient numbers. To put it bluntly, around 2009, the US population started falling. The only reason it is growing now is all the immigrants that arrive and stay in America. Yet that is exactly what President Trump and many other conservatives are trying to stop from happening.
The reason I introduced you to this concept is to keep everything else that follows in context.
1 Today that would be .72% plus 1.2% = 1.97% predicted annual long-term growth. Since the Great 2008 Recession the economy has grown at roughly 2%. For comparison, population growth for the 1990s was around 1.2% and productivity growth was 2.2%. So GDP growth should be around 3.4%. In fact, it was about 3.8%.
Population Growth Rate - The Key to Economic Growth.
Click thumbnail to view full-sizeThe History of GDP
Let's look at Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it is explained a little later. But just let me say it is a 20,000 foot view of how well the economy is doing. If it is growing, the economy is good, if it is flat, then the economy is under-performing, and if it is decreasing, the economy is in recession. The first chart looks at the whole history of GDP, from 1794 to 2017. In this, and the charts that follow showing finer and finer detail of GDP, I suspect most of you are in for a shock.
The most popular myth held by our conservative friends is that the economy was much better, relatively speaking, than it is today. If you believe that, get ready to have your bubble burst. You see, included on each chart are the major recessions, depressions, and panics that have marred our growth and caused unimaginable suffering and hardship on all but the wealthiest Americans.
The bottom line is that after the Great Depression of 1929 and until the Great Recession of 2008, the quantity and severity of recessions were small by comparison to what came before them. Before 1929, it seems that every time you turned around, America was in another major economic downturn. It is rather "depressing" when you think how one side of the political spectrum paints what has been a pretty good run of prosperity from 1950 to 2007 and 2010 to 2018.
Trump by the Numbers
The following set of charts and graphs will describe the ups and downs of Trump's America over the length of his term. He has made many promises regarding how well various sectors of the economy will do, e.g., huge increases in coal jobs.
What this hub is about then is presenting and discussing data that tells us how well he is reaching his goals. Almost all of the data comes from official government sources although a few things such as consumer sentiment come from non-government but nevertheless industry-trusted reports. The sources will be provided.
The charts and graphs will be organized in what I hope are logical groups, starting with Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a general measure of the health of the economy, Included with the GDP are other related measures that provide more insight.
Economic Indicators
Gross Domestic Product
The most common indicator of economic health is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and how it is changing over time. The GDP measures the value of all of the services and end products manufactured in the US. It may seem so, but not coincidentally, this is the same value of all of the wages and taxes paid plus profit earned in the US.
GDP is related to recessions (and depressions) in that the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) uses it to determine when the economy is in recession. As a rule-of-thumb if GDP goes negative for two quarters in a row, the economy is in a recession. So Chart GDP-1 is our first gross indicator of Trump's America because we have three quarters under Trump's leadership.
What do we see? Basically no change (therefore a Green stoplight) from the path President Obama charted although if the last two quarters continues (over 3% in both the 2nd and 3rd quarters), he may soon be outperforming Obama.
GDP Components
The next level of detail is look beneath the gross GDP numbers. The GDP is calculated by adding the value of:
- Consumer Spending
- Business Investment
- Government Spending
- Exports minus Imports (trade balance)
These components are do not necessarily work together. For the longest time, the trade balance has been negative, meaning it has a depressing effect on GDP. Much is made in today's rhetoric about how bad it is to have a negative trade balance. If fact, as you will see graphically, net trade plays almost no role in determining GDP because it accounts for roughly -3% of total GDP.
It should be a surprise to no one that Consumer Spending accounts for the lion's share of GDP, about 69%. What probably is surprising is that Government Spending is as important as Business Investment, about 17% each.1
It should be easy to tell from Chart GDP-2 below why President Obama's stimulus was needed. If you look at 2007 you should noticed that Consumer Spending and Business started declining while Government Spending and Net Exports improved. You might also notice that the increase in Government Spending (the Stimulus) is about equal to the decrease in Consumer Spending. That was the point of the stimulus, to replace depressed consumer spending with government spending until the consumer spending took off again.
What made this recession drag on so long wasn't President Obama's fiscal policy, but businesses deciding not to invest; in past recessions, business picked up pretty quickly. In this recession, it took consumer spending only 2 years to get back to pre-recession levels, it took business investment an astounding five years just to get back to 2008 levels. If I showed you a graph of corporate cash reserves, which were and still are huge, you would see the explanation of why business took so long to get back on track.
1 Of course, this busts another myth that government spending plays no part in economic growth.
Federal Deficit
The federal deficit is another common measure of how things are going. The deficit is simply the difference between how much money the government gets in and spends. If income exceeds spending, then the "deficit" is a surplus, a very rare occurrence (the last time was in 2000 under President Clinton). More often, spending exceeds income then it really is a deficit. To make up the difference, the government borrows money which is called the National Debt; which today exceeds $20 trillion, a historically high number.
Chart GDP-3 looks at the federal deficit through the Bush 43 and Obama administrations, plus the first three quarters of Trump's. This period of time is unique in the it shows a budget surplus and the effects from an economy that almost fell into a world-wide depression, the worst in history.
If you extend the timeline back to 1980 you will see that average deficit was about $300 million in 2009$. Prior to that it was running around $100 million.
The explanation for the huge spike in 2009-2010 is the 2008 Recession. Much of that spike is the result of automatic stabilization payments (e.g., unemployment benefits) that kick in when the economy tanks. The remainder comes from the Obama stimulus program that replaced depressed consumer spending with more government spending; it worked.
It is also of interest (Chart GDP-4), given today's political rhetoric, that using a little more meaningful metric, Deficit as a percentage of GDP, President Obama is doing quite well when compared to the conservative gold standard, President Reagan.
It was known that the deficit will increase starting in 2016, partly due to higher interest payments brought on by that spike. As you can see, they continue into Trump's administration. Most economists think that the 2018 GOP tax plan will sharply drive up the deficit beginning in 2019. Only time will tell.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The next chart, GDP - 3, is related to the previous GDP charts in that the outcome of a growing GDP is a growing stock Market as well as the reverse. The DOW is often considered a "leading" indicator because the stock market in general reflects investors "expectations" of how the economy will be doing sometime in the future.
That means if the stock market (as represented by the DJIA or DOW) is heading south for a significant period of times (or collapses in a short period) then the economy is probably going to get worse as well. Likewise, as in March 2009 after Obama announced his stimulus, the plummeting stock market reversed itself rather spectacularly simply based on the optimism generated by the stimulus.
What you see in this February 2018 GDP - 3 chart is a continuously growing stock market in concert with a GDP heading the same direction. With the election of Donald Trump, stock market growth accelerated based on his promise for huge corporate tax cuts1 (which became a reality at the end of 2017).
You will notice in this update is that there is a sharp decline. That may or may not be there the next time I renew this chart, but at the moment it represents the largest sell off in the market (numerically) in its history; 1175 points on Feb 5, 2018 and over 7% in the five days preceding that. Because this is a monthly chart (although I make changes throughout the month) we won't know until March whether this is the beginning of a trend or just a blip (a very big blip indeed).
It is now Dec 2018, and the market is definitely headed in the wrong direction. The two parallel lines represent the channel of prices established during the Obama administration. While spending most of the first two year of the Trump administration above that channel, it has now moved into the middle of it1 . Those light tiny lines about the high point is a technical indicator. The pattern that has been established (head and shoulders) is almost the same pattern we say before the 2008 stock market crash.
If stock prices continue to fall below the bottom of the channel, then chances are high there will be a major retreat to follow.
1 Which means this is where the market would be if it followed the pattern set up previously.
DJIA
Income Metrics
We will consider two of these. One is Real Median Household Income and the other is Real Disposable Income: Per Capita. The former tracks gross income for the average household and the latter considers average per person disposable (after-tax) income.
They both give the reader an idea of the overall standard of living in America. The theory being, the greater the income, especially after-tax income, the more there is to spend on finer things in life.
This first chart looks at Median Household Income.
What is Real Disposable Income-Per Capita really mean (Chart INC - 2)? Let me offer a definition I found on-line that is much more understandable than any I could come up with. In part:
"Personal income in the U.S. consists of all income that is received by U.S. residents in a given year, originating from all sources. Thus personal income is the sum of wage and salary disbursements, other labor income, proprietor's income (rental income), dividend and interest income, and transfer payments to individuals (welfare, unemployment insurance, etc).
Disposable personal income is the portion of personal income that is left after personal taxes are subtracted, and thus is the amount of personal income available to people for consumption spending and saving.
Per capita disposable personal income is found by dividing a country's total disposable personal income by its population.
Finally, real per-capita disposable personal income is found by adjusting per-capita disposable personal income for inflation.
Changes in real per-capita disposable personal income over time indicates trend in a country's material standard of living. Real per-capita disposable income will usually rise when economic growth rates exceed population growth rates[, like it is in the US].
Real per-capita income tends to follow the business cycle, rising in the peaks and falling in the troughs. The greater percentage of real per-capita income in most countries is used for consumption spending rather than saving ...
All else equal, a rise in consumer confidence will tend to increase the percentage of real per-capita income that is allocated to consumption, and decrease the percentage allocated to saving."1
Another term you may see is "Discretionary Income". This is Disposable Income less all of the necessities of life are subtracted, e.g. rent, insurance, alimony, food, etc.2
So what is Chart INC - 2 currently telling us? First, look at each of the yellow triangles which represent a recession. In each case it appears growth in disposable income slowed or declined. Also notice that growth was somewhat better during Democratic administrations - until you get to President Obama's presidency. In 2012, disposable income growth goes into reverse for a quarter; this coincides with a marked slowdown in the economy in the same quarter. The other factor leading to what is an atypical growth record is that unlike all previous recession recoveries, increased GDP and job growth did NOT translate in to income growth for the working class. Instead, the upper class was the only income group to benefit from the growth in America's economy.
President Trump's first year record is on the low end of Republican administrations, but, since at first glance, it looks like growth might be flattening out, it remains to be seen if that can be maintained.
1 Courtesy of https://www.swlearning.com/economics/econ_data/percap_income/percap_income_definition.html ©2004 South-Western. All Rights Reserved
2 Since the government does not track what I think is a very important metric, one must rely on 3rd party sources. If you are interested try this one from Motley Fool
Employment Metrics
Another set of measures that tests a different segment of the economy is employment, or more specifically, unemployment numbers. These numbers represent where the rubber meets the road, people. People supply the demand and people supply the workforce to satisfy that demand. It would seem then, how well people are able to create demand becomes very important to the economy as a whole. And what do they have to have to satisfy their demand, a job of course. Therefore, employment and unemployment statistics come to front of the class.
Let's start with an overarching metric of how many work eligible adults are willing to work. This measure is called the Participation Rate (Chart EMP - 1), a number one side of the political debate tried to bash President Obama over the head with to show how poorly he was doing. Actually, as we will see, they were wrong.
The historical Participation Rate (PR) has quite a story to tell including how this nation thought about women. First, consider all of the yellow triangles, they mark the various recessions that have occurred since WW II.1 You should notice that the PR either flattens out or declines during most, but not all, recessions. Another thing that should be obvious is from 1948 until the late 1960s, the PR remained relatively constant and at, by today's standard, low. What happened in the early 1970s? Women joined the workforce (before 1948, they weren't even counted). More and more women joined which explains most of the increase.
But starting in 2000, other demographic changes (we are getting older folks) have taken over. Recent analysis has demonstrated that changes in demographics (gender, age, etc) are the main driving factors for the downward changes in PR and not the forces behind changes in unemployment.
2/9/19 - After two years into the Trump administration we can see that the upswing begun in the Obama administration has continued at about the same rate. Hence the Green Stoplight
Employment Rates
The next chart, Chart EMP - 2, consists of three metrics, the Participation Rate, which we have already discussed, the Unemployment Rate, and the U-6 Rate. Next. let's consider what is thought of as an "alternative measure". Many people the "official" unemployment rate (U-3) doesn't tell the whole story, that it is missing many people who have stopped looking for work. That is what the U-6 does.
The U-6 adds to the official unemployment definition all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons. If you look at the two metrics, U-3 and U-6, in Chart EMP - 2 you should see that the two lines mimic each other, the only difference is one of magnitude. Eye-balling the chart would appear to show that the U-6 runs roughly 4 percentage points higher than the U-3, consistently over time. That is why it is sort of pointless to use both metrics since you can draw the same conclusions from each. That is why most people use only the U-3. Nevertheless, if you like the more inclusive U-6, it is there for your use.
What does the official (U-3) unemployment (UE) rate figure tell us? The first thing it tells us is that average unemployment, at least since Reagan, has run at about 5%, which most economists consider "full employment"1. We also see that as President Obama left office, the UE rate fell to lows seen in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Since Trump took office, UE has fallen to 4.1% from.7%. Job growth, on the other hand, is still good but nevertheless somewhat lower than the previous administration.
2/9/2019 - After two years into the Trump administration, like the Participation Rate, the declines in both the official Unemployment Rate and the more inclusive U-6 continued the downward trend established under President Obama. But do notice, the broader U-6 index has ticked upwards recently. That is something to keep an eye on to see if the official UE rates grows as well.
I also added the multi-job holders. If that percentage goes up, that is a sign of weakness as people must hold more jobs to stay out of poverty.
Employment Numbers
(this may be more detail than you can bear)
For those who enjoy analytical pain, Chart EMP - 3 is right up your alley. It provides you a look at the trends of all of the measures that make up the employment picture.2 The percentages are the growth (or decline) in that measure. The ones in the center are for President Obama and the others are for President Trump.
Now, one needs definitions if one can understand what they are seeing, so here they are:
- Civilian Non-institutional Population - Individuals, 16 years or older who are not in the Armed Services or are not in institutions such as prisons, mental hospitals, or nursing homes, (not on Chart EMP - 3)
- Civilian Labor Force - Individuals, 16 years or older who are not in the Armed Services or are not in institutions such as prisons, mental hospitals, or nursing homes, who are employed or unemployed and actively seeking work.
- Employment Level - Persons in the Civilian Labor Force during the reference time period that did any work at all as paid employees; worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family.
- Full-Time (FT) - Persons who work 35 hours or more per week.
- Not in Labor Force - Persons in the Civilian Labor Force who are neither employed nor unemployed due to lack of desire or lack of availability (e.g. in school)
- Part-Time (PT) - Persons who work less than 35 hours per week.
- Willing (Marginally Attached) - Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Discouraged workers are a subset of the marginally attached.
- Discouraged - Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but who are not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify.
I know there are a lot of numbers on this very busy chart but the story is in each set of three horizontal numbers which represent each president's result for that measure. For example, the top line traces changes in the Civilian non-Institutional Population (CniP), i.e. the set of people, 16 and over, who could work if they wanted to. Also, it makes a good surrogate for population growth overall. We see that CnIP growth is slowly decreasing over time from 1.16%/yr during the Bush administration to 0.4%/yr in Trump's first year (that will probably grow some over the next three years).
That is not good news on two counts. First, it implies the overall population growth is slowing which, in turn, puts downward pressure on GDP growth. Second, using the same logic a slowing CnIP growth rate also suggests a couple of things; 1) inflation as employers vie for fewer employees and 2) less output if the labor pool for workers shrink too much.
The first numbers that reflect current and short-term economic health is what is happening to the labor pool (those people willing to work). You can see that the difference between the Bush and Obama administration reflects the fact that most of the decrease in Civilian Labor Force occurred right after Obama assumed office even though the causes for it happened months earlier. Trump's .55% increase results from inheriting a growing economy.
The same dynamic can be seen with the Employment Level, Full-Time Employment, and Not In Labor Force numbers. The Part-Time numbers, while looking a little different still reflect a declining and then improving economy. This includes the decrease in Part-Time Employment growth which reflects the switch from part-time to full-time.
Of interest is the bottom two measures, Marginally Employed (ME). Marginally employed persons are those who are Willing to work full-time but are working part-time for economic reasons (not shown) or are Discouraged but still looking (the latter two are subsets of ME). Now ME is acting as you would think it would, after the initial plunge into a deep recession, those figures are decreasing as the economy recovers.
But consider the fact that Discouraged workers are increasing during the first year of the Trump administration. That is something to watch as, in isolation, it is not a good sign for future economic growth. Why? Because it says the number of people who are unemployed but haven't found work in a while. While one year doesn't make a trend, it is in agreement with a metric we will consider next.
2/9/2019 - After two years into the Trump administration, as with the other metrics, things kept improving and continuing the trend set under President Obama.
1 Theoretically "full employment" is that point where employers start competing for labor and driving wages up.
2 These totals are not adjusted for population growth. So please keep in mind when considering Civilian Labor Force and Employment Level, some of the growth is simply due to an increasing population rather than changes in employment dynamics
Weeks Out of Work
There are two measures for how long people have been out of work. One is the "average" number of weeks people have unemployed and the "median" number of weeks out of work. A third metric, a more important one as it turns out, is the difference between those two numbers.
The Average is the sum of the total weeks out of work divided by the number of people out of work; 24.9 weeks at the end of 2017. The Median is the number of weeks where 50% of the people out of work have been so for less than that number and 50% have been out of work longer. At the end of 2017, the median is 10.6 weeks.
Our third metric is the difference between the average and median, which at the end of 2017 was 14.5 weeks. Why is this important? Because whether the difference is getting larger or smaller gives insight on whether employment is betting better or worse. If the median is larger than the average they are getting closer together then the employment picture is getting better because fewer and fewer people are spending long times out of work.
Obviously the opposite is true as well. And if you look carefully at the dashed line in Chart EMP-4 you will see a slight up-tick, or at least a flattening out in the difference. This would correspond to the increasing Discouraged worker number.
One up-tick does not make a trend, so we need to wait for two or three more months of data to come.
Since the January 2018 update, things have changed a little bit. While not indicating things are getting worse, it may be that things have stopped getting better. Notice that in Chart EMP - 4, the February numbers for less than 5 weeks and between 15 and 27 weeks out of work have flattened out or have a slight up-tick.
That implies people are starting to find it harder (or simply taking longer on purpose) to find jobs. This is confirmed with the next Chart, EMP - 5 where the difference (dashed line) has also flattened out a bit. At this point in time, these indicators aren't indicating much. But, if it continues into the March update, there will be more significance attached to them.
CHANGE IS HAPPENING - The first sign of weakness just appeared on Chart EMP - 5. For three months running, the average and the median weeks out of work have increased; one more month and you probably have a trend. This is backed up by the data behind Chart EMP - 4, but you can't see it yet.
NEW - Job Openings, Hires, and Separations
This new chart shows a history of job openings, hires, and separations since the last few years of the Bush 43 administration to now.
You always want to see hiring (the red line) greater than separations (the green line). That indicates growth, even if total job openings flattens out. It is easy to see what happened in 2008 and 2009 where this was not true. If separations exceed hires, even in one month, that is a major red flag.
There has been a lot of talk about how the current administration has done a much better job at job growth than the previous administration. This chart tells a different story - one where the current job growth is just a continuation of a pattern set in 2010.
Job openings (blue line) is a good proxy of 1) how business sees the future and 2) how well they are doing as a whole. We see that once President Obama stopped the downward spiral, by late 2009 job openings began to grow. The growth was steady until 2014 when it accelerated. Beginning in 2016, coinciding with the very volatile 2016 presidential election, the growth in job openings slowed down to a crawl. This lasted until after the GOP tax cut was passed when it accelerated once again.
Food Stamp Use
Hand-in-hand with unemployment is SNAP (Food Stamps) usage. It makes since that as unemployment grows, food stamp use will sooner or later also increase. The same is true when employment grows, food stamp use will ultimately decline.
The take-away is, of course, that if we see in CHART EMP - 6 food stamp use increasing then the economy is probably in trouble. If it is decreasing, then the economy is almost certainly recovering.
Because food stamps is a "lagging" indicator then the forces driving the observed changes are more than likely not going to change in the near future. If they do, such as the last data point in the chart below, then one needs to start paying closer attention to what's happening in the overall economy.
Miscellaneous Metrics
The next set of indicators measure different aspects of forces that drive economic activity or reflect what is going on.
Manufacturing Jobs
Among other things President Trump has made his presidency about bringing back manufacturing which has been declining since 1998. In fact, it began increasing again under Obama in 2010. The upward trend appears to be continuing with Trump.
An increase in manufacturing jobs reflects an increase in higher paying jobs, which America sorely needs.
2/9/2019 - Note that the growth in manufacturing jobs slowed from 1.8% through last month down to 1.6% this month. Not a good sign - if it persists. I didn't change the Stoplight Color yet.
Consumer and Manufacture Sentiment Index
Consumer Sentiment is thought to be a great indicator of consumer intention to buy things. And that is important because consumer spending is 69% of GDP. Any given measure generally means nothing in particular, but the trend does. Look at the transition between Clinton and Bush (the 2001 recession) and Bush and Obama (2008 recession) to see what I mean.
6/28/2019 - After climbing through most of the Obama administration, it flattened out shortly after Trump took office and has stayed at around the same level as in the best years of the Bush administration. Notice it is still well below that during the last years of Clinton.
Auto Sales
Auto sales is a good indicator of how the economy is doing. If they start declining, especially in domestic production, that portends bad times since so much of the economy is dependent on their sales.
2/9/2019 - After the auto bail-out, the market stabilized and grew nicely through the Obama administration. It did flatten out when the 2016 campaigns began and have stayed flat ever since.
6/28/19 - Enough time has passed to be able to say car sales flattened out soon after the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign and did not improve after Trump was elected. Peel the onion back a bit and you'll see that domestic light truck sales have been increasing but was more than off-set by decreasing domestic auto sales and other types of vehicles.
Uninsured Rate
While not a true economic indicator, it probably does speak to long-term downward orpressure on the economy. The idea is that as more and more people become uninsured, the sicker America becomes. A sicker America will lead to lower productivity which depresses GDP growth.
The reverse is also true, the healthier America is, the more productive we will be thereby raising GDP.
As we see as soon as Donald Trump took office and began his campaign to do away with Obamacare, the uninsured rate shot up.
Carbon Footprint in America
This final metric is the carbon footprint in America which means how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere. Conservatives and President Trump think global warming is a hoax, especially that it is man-made. In the near future, like the next 20 or 25 years, atmospheric scientists don't see immediate impact on the worlds economy. But after that time the die will be cast and economic disaster will be unavoidable.
Right now, the carbon footprint is still following the downward path President Obama set. President Trump, however, has ordered the EPA to roll back all of Obama's efforts to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being released.
Two years into the Trump anti-environment administration, America's carbon footprint, as one would expect, is rising rapidly. It should increase even further as he rolled-back President Obama's green house gas reduction program.
Do you think, whether you agree or disagree with his policies, President Trump is accomplishing most of the most of the the things he promised to do?
Do you think most of what President Trump has been able to accomplish to-date has been good for America, even though it might not be exactly what he wanted?
Questions & Answers
© 2017 Scott Belford
Comments
It is not what I prefer. It is the way of economics. What is unnatural is the federal reserve keeping interest rate at zero percent for all those 8 years.
Scott
"Food Stamp Use
Hand-in-hand with unemployment is SNAP (Food Stamps) usage. It makes since that as unemployment grows, food stamp use will sooner or later also increase. The same is true when employment grows, food stamp use will ultimately decline.
The take-away is, of course, that if we see in CHART EMP - 6 food stamp use increasing then the economy is probably in trouble. If it is decreasing, then the economy is almost certainly recovering.
Because food stamps is a "lagging" indicator then the forces driving the observed changes are more than likely not going to change in the near future. If they do, such as the last data point in the chart below, then one needs to start paying closer attention to what's happening in the overall economy.
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B: https://thelawdictionary.org/article/why-is-it-tha...
The connection is illegal aliens! And Trump against illegal aliens.
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Scott, has Trump done anything you approve of since taking office?
It is a simple question.
The proof is in the pudding. We will see what happen in 2020. So far, with the candidates, over 20 on the Democrat side, none of them can beat Trump.
Scott
Use your words, you don't make any points with these kind of sweeping summary dismissals. Tell us where we are wrong and why? You don't even acknowledge much of what we write, and when you do this is your comments.
You cherry pick, dismiss, divert, smear red herrings and just don't make any arguments. In the legal sense, where a lawyer argues their case to the jury.
Give my some reasons why I am wrong to call democrats UnAmerican?
What are they doing for America and Americans?
Neither party has a solution for healthcare, the insurance companies are immune. The pharma companies are not interest in finding cures.
Name some serious diseases like cancer, and heart disease where there has been a cure? None exist because long term expensive and even questionable treatments are more profitable. Medical patents should be extremely limited in score, as other people could build on any useful patents to find a cure.
The last cure for a major disease was Polio, and it is not a real cure but a prevention. Although around the world it still exists.
Scott
"In raw numbers (keep in mind Trump only has 2 years in office) the stock market grew as follows:
- Clinton: 210%
- Obama: 182%
- Reagan: 118%
- Bush 1: 53%
- Trump: 23%
- Bush 2: -40%
Looking at JUST the two year point, the order is:
- Clinton
- Reagan
- Bush 1, Trump - can't quite tell
- Obama
- Bush 2"
B: These are not raw numbers!
"Raw data, also known as primary data, is data (e.g., numbers, instrument readings, figures, etc.) collected from a source. If a scientist sets up a computerized thermometer which records the temperature of a chemical mixture in a test tube every minute, the list of temperature readings for every minute, as printed out on a spreadsheet or viewed on a computer screen is "raw data"."
B: Clinton's stock market was the result of the dot com bubble. That is hardly impressive when it shapes the stock market on a Ponzi scheme. And when it fails, it crashes, and it will ultimately fail as it did.
The GW Bush stock market was built on the real estate bubble, that also crashed.
The Obama stock market, was based on the US government injecting $1.5 Trillion into the broken economy.
Is your opinion overtaking your formal education?
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The real collusion is on the Democrat side. Hillary Clintoon should have never been on the ballot. She belongs in jail along with some other top Obama officials who broke the law but with the help of the corrupt FBI leaders and the DOJ under Loretta Lynch exonerated her.
The media also played a role in attack Trump every chance they get and still the America people did not buy it. Their credibility, along with Congress is at lower than Trump.
If I was a democrat, I would ask for my money back. They have destroyed your party without any help from the Russians or the GOP.
The they I am referring to is the Obama administration.
Scott, the idea you are pushing is the LIE. You are basically saying the improved economic conditions of the last two years is not due to anything Trump did but a continuation of the Obama administration policies. Nice try but wrong on all counts.
Anyone who is living in America for the last 10 years would agree with me. There is no other interpretation of the data.
The ultimate prove is with the American voter. They vote their pocket book. If things were just humming along like you claim, why did the American voter rejected the Democrats in 2016? Why not continue with a party that was doing so well? And so good for the people? And so compassionate? And so anti racist? And so pro women?
If you can answer that? You might have an audience.
Scott
"HOW does not paying for insurance and foisting your medical expenses off on to taxpayers helping the economy - these well-off freeloaders are dragging down the economy. And all the deregulation has done is screw people and the environment."
B: How did taxing people for not getting ACA insurance offset these medical expenses that you mention? They didn't did they?
B: How about 100 years of war screwing the environment. Vietnam 50 years later is a walking bomb field, thanks to LBJ. And we lost that war big time.
B: What deregulation are you talking about?
It is an average and fluctuates with economic and seasonal cycles.
The overall yearly GDP is up and over the Obama years which never went above 3 percent all 8 years....
Are you still harping on how bad things are under Trump...keep it up. Perhaps you will get your wish, with the release of the Mueller report.
The Trump economy is real...not a progression or continuation of the Obama years.
In fact, it was just the opposite. The dismantling of the Obama regulations and some ACA mandates along with the tax reform is what started the new boom.
Scott, you have failed to convince half the country about the evil Trump.
You would have more credibility if you did a similar piece against President Obama. He has done more damage to our coutry than any of our known adversaries. He did it with the help of the left media and the progressives who thinks he is the Messiah. In truth, he is an ideologue who hates America and who wanted to take America down a knotch or two and he succeeded.
His transformation of America is what made it possible for the rise of Trump. The pendulum swings so far left, it had to come back the other way.
There is zero evidence that Trump colluded with Russia.
Here is Thomas Sowell explaining why Obama’s policies failed -
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi8eLSyb7RM
He is an economics professor.
Another Obama video - priceless...
Here is President Obama in his own words...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4yXNiYJApAk
remember the cash for klunkers?
What a disaster just like the solyndra loans to solar company...
Here is the reality on GDP -
Scott
"Carbon Footprint in America
This final metric is the carbon footprint in America which means how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere. "
B: From Scientific American
"Jet engine exhaust contains carbon dioxide, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, unburned fuel, soot and metal particles, as well as water vapor. The soot provides condensation sites for the water vapor. Any particles present in the air provide additional sites."
From the FAA
"Every day, the FAA's Air Traffic Organization (ATO) provides service to more than 43,000 flights and 2.6 million airline passengers across more than 29 million square miles of airspace"
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"On any given day, more than 87,000 flights are in the skies in the United States. Only one-third are commercial carriers, like American, United or Southwest. On an average day, air traffic controllers handle 28,537 commercial flights (major and regional airlines), 27,178 general aviation flights (private planes), 24,548 air taxi flights (planes for hire), 5,260 military flights and 2,148 air cargo flights (Federal Express, UPS, etc.). At any given moment, roughly 5,000 planes are in the skies above the United States. In one year, controllers handle an average of 64 million takeoffs and landings." - From the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
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I provided these statistics to show how much these flights contribute to the carbon footprint. What is the plan to reduce this type of carbon footprint? Was there a solution in the Paris accord?
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"Conservatives and President Trump think global warming is a hoax, especially that it is man-made. "
B: How do you know it isn't? Global Warming has been replaced by Climate Change, and there is also something called Global Dimming which is the opposite of Global Warming. Also, many scientists aren't sure about Carbon and suggest that it is Methane that is causing the problem.
What then is the solution, and how do we know there is a problem. Over the history of the planet, the climate has changed many times. How do we know that humans are causing it, if we don't know what is changing the climate, man or nature?
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In the near future, like the next 20 or 25 years, atmospheric scientists don't see immediate impact on the worlds economy. But after that time the die will be cast and economic disaster will be unavoidable.
B: Remember Al Gores prediction that never happened.
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Right now, the carbon footprint is still following the downward path President Obama set. President Trump, however, has ordered the EPA to roll back all of Obama's efforts to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being released."
B: We still can't predict nature and weather accurately. If we can't do that then how can we fix the weather.
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Jack
I agree, the democrats and the republican are two sides of the same coin. They created the problems and they don't want to fix them. They just don't want to be blamed for them, even though they are to blame.
Trump has put wheels on the democrat republican see saw. The continual gridlocks in congress over the years, and the reversal of the other party when they get back in control is the up and down of a see saw. and see saws can't move forward. So, Trump has put wheels on the congressional seesaw to get it to move.
POINT 9: False in its entirety. If it weren't for the Fed, America would have experienced the same frequency of terrible (think 2008) recessions as happened before 1950."
B: And you think you are an expert in economics. There is no correlation to the recessions before the Dot Com and the Real Estate Bubbles. These two bubbles changed the paradigm of conservative investing.
Just because you say it is false in its entirety doesn't mean squat. B: That is technically true, but the FRB was one of the major contributors to the real estate bubble and its collapse. The FRB has been working against the US this century. The real estate bubble couldn't have happened without the FRB keeping the interest rates low, and sustained for more than a year. These loans were so bad, and they didn't have equity to protect the banks when they failed, and the buyers were strapped just to get into the loans because credit and all the previous safeguards were ignored. Had the FRB raised the interest as they had in the year previous to this bubble, these loans would have fallen like dominoes.
The other major contributor associated with the government were Fannie and Freddie for allowing these ridiculous loans. From no down, to negative amortization, and variable loans so low. That low interest variable loan coupled with no or really low down payment and with many buyers maxed out to buy the house. Any rise in the interest rate would have had many buyers defaulting or not keeping up with their loan payments. Had the FRB raised interest rates during that last year, many of the buyers would fail and that would have been a signal to the FRB and the government economists that the real estate bubble was starting to collapse.
Where were all these so called economists that not only didn't figure out the Dot com days of Bill Clinton, but were also clueless during GW Bush and Obama? If you didn't see this 2008 economic collapse then you were clueless. This was the same paradigm of irresponsibility as was found in the dot com bubble. Don't just shake your head and try to wisp it away. It was the fault of both parties allowing Fannie and Freddie to take these kind of loans. Market comparison of the real estate was none existent, and like the dot com when the worthless stock started to rise, and continue to rise that let in the dummies trying to get a piece. This was an artificially created buying and selling frenzy just like the dot com.
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Scott if you don't see this then shame on you.
When are you going to wake up and realize the Democrats and Republican leadership are all corrupt and working to undermine Trump - an outsider...? That is the whole draining the swamp mean. The people in power, bought and paid for by the lobbyists.
Scott
You didn't respond to the points we made, and your hubs don't address them.
Scott, the problem is you can’t have an economy chug along at 2% foreever...
You should take a course in economics 101...
Obama was the one that created a zero interest false economy. Free money does not exist in real life. He had it for 8 years.
Now it is time for Scott to have some good points against yours and mine.
Brad, excellent points. Scott, you need to revisit the last two years and replace “Trump” with the “President of the US,” and see how much was accomplished and compare that with past presidents...
When it comes to economics, it was night and day between the Obama years and now. Granted Obama faced a deep recession when he first took office in 2009. That was one reason he got elected...to fix it. He kept the economy in first gear for the next 7 years until Trump. If he was doing so well, we would have President Clinton today?
Scott
You are being obtuse, and wrong. The republicans while having technical control of the house and senate were not able to stop the democrats from blocking the actions.
They stopped Trump's wall from being funded, while they got Trump to OK $70 billion for a subway tunnel between NY and NJ.
They got their budget passed without giving funding for the wall, and made DACA a budget issue when it wasn't. The list goes on but the point is that the democrats didn't support a single Trump bill. The democrat leaning judges in the federal courts got attacked every plan on Trump's national security on the temporary 90 day ban on immigrants from 7 then even 6 war torn Middle Eastern states, even though it was to protect the US. There are 49 Muslim countries but the temporary ban only affected 6 of them. That is hardly a ban on Muslims.
They made a mockery out of the Judge Kavanaugh SC justice hearings. Feinstein broke hearing protocol and sandbagged the hearing for political advantage. The democrats were allowed to continue the Mueller investigation that didn't even have a predicate crime to investigate. He stacked it with democrats, and corrupt ones at that. He found zero evidence in the politically motivate investigations, while controlling the republicans from investigating them. That was a problem of the republicans who don't know how to play the dirty politics so proficient a democrat tactic.
The bottom line is that the democrats put their vendetta against president Trump above their duty to the country and the people. Their resistance for over 2 years was effective to prevent the positive changes of president Trump from being passed. In spite of that president Trump accomplished a lot in those two years.
While the democrats in congress worked solely to undermine the president, and they didn't contribute anything in congress to help the country. They put Illegal Aliens, and even Convicted Illegal Alien Felons above their duty to America, Americans and Legal Immigrants. The republicans let the president down, but the democrats let the country and its people down. The democrats once again have divided the country to get their way. This time it is the illegal aliens and treating as pseudo Americans and because they have been effective in keep vote id from happening, there is no way to know how many of these illegal aliens, and convicted felons as well as dead people have been voting in our elections.
The democrats have worked against the country, failed their oath to office, and have boasted of taking down the country if it would get president Trump out of office.
Fair enough, let's see what happened at the end of the year when all 12 months of data are in...
I hope you update this hub with news as they happen...
For example, did you read this?
How has Trump destabilize the world more than Obama did?
He went after ISIS and now they are much reduced in influence.
America is stronger under Trump and that is a good thing.
He is a strong supporter of Israel and recognized Jerusalem as Capitol. No other president did that - even though they all talked about doing it...
The trade deals is another one of Trump’s initaitive. We have been taken advantage of for a long time under both Republican and Democratic admin.
So as you see, Trump is a better leader and has the executive experience and the art of the deal to make a difference.
Jack, you only addressed one of the two possibilities with "You can be against a bad deal and not for war. ". Since you say "no war", then you must be supporting a nuclear armed Iran given it is well known by all that they were within a year of having "the bomb". Given the WHOLE purpose of the deal that six countries, including Russia, signed on to was to stop Iran from getting the bomb, how can it be a "bad" deal since that is exactly the outcome from the deal? Does Iran have a nuclear bomb? NO. Was Iran going to have a nuclear bomb without the deal (short of the war you say you don't want)? YES.
Since Iran does not have the bomb, to repeat myself, it by definition must have been a Good Deal.
There is no doubt that Trump does deserve at least a little credit for the Korean thing, even if it is left-handed credit. I think it is entirely possible that Trump's irresponsible rhetoric sped up Un's time table for developing his nuclear and missile capability. As Un said, he has what he needs now and does not need to further develop his ability to deliver nukes to the US.
You do know, don't you, that under Trump's watch, Un fired off more missiles than he had under ALL other presidents COMBINED. Un also fired off an H-Bomb under Trump, something else he never did while any other president was in office, only Trump.
Consequently, it is very possible that Trump helped him get to the position where he now feels invincible and can safely make peace with South Korea and rejoin the world.
We won't know the answer to that for awhile. Only time will tell if Trump/Pompeo did something else to get Un going down this path. Personally, I doubt it, but I am willing to eat crow if it turns out I am wrong.
Should have Obama gotten the Nobel? No, and he said as much.
Should Trump get a Nobel? No, because, assuming actually did something positive to get Un to change his mind, he has done so much other stuff to Destabilize the world, that he clearly doesn't deserve it.
Jack, honestly, the onus of Obama's award was that he brazenly accepted it. Any honest man with humility would have declined to acknowledge that award since he had done NOTHING to deserve it. Time revealed he did many things to justify it should have been revoked, if they would ever do that.
You can be against a bad deal and not for war. You liberals constantly make this false chioces. It is not a simple either or scenerio.
While we are on this topic, what do you think of the North/South Korean development of recent days? Will Trump be given credit for this?
Or will the Nobel comiitee snub him like they snubed Reagan 30 years prior...?
While giving a Nobel peace prize to Obama in his first year, not having done anything.
I am not wrong. Just ask any Israeli. They knew Obama was not a friend of Israel, in fact a hostile adversary who try to defeat Natanyahoo in their own elections... Isn’t that meddling in a foreign election? Isn’t that against our laws? Obama did it and no one question its legality...
The Iran deal was the worst deal we can have. He gave away billions of dollars and got nothing in return. Israel is doing fine without the US. They could use our help but don’t need it.
They have nuclear capability for defense if they are pushed by their neighbors.
Why do you think Iran wants desparately to possess nuclear weapons?
Thank you My esoteric for your precious time and for the rich response. Your analysis of the elements mentioned is pretty logical, especially when it comes to the population growth which is being reversed by immigration block. The current domestic numbers especially in the sector of healthcare are not doing great, but when it comes to foreign policy, some argue that Trump’s America is stronger than Obama's America. Obama allowed Russia to expand its influence through threatening Ukraine, joining Crimea, supporting Separatists in Ukraine and expanding further influence in Syria. Thus, a picture of Monster super power Russia began to take shape in the world. However, Trump came and hit Syrian gov (Russia’s most important ally) twice. How could Russia declare that it protects the unity of the Syrian lands from any external aggression and then comes Trump and hit the Russian interest in Syria ignoring Russian vetoes, and Russia did not fire a single bullet in response to the “aggression,” as Russia described the strike. Russia then declared that it protects only its military bases and it will supply defense arsenal to Al-Assad to defend himself.
My question is Was Trump more effective than Obama in facing the Russian monster? or was Russia only a huge empty Balloon? And why would Kim Un announce that he will stop his nuclear program has been worked on since the 1950s along with so many hostilities and aggressive propaganda. Something extremly unexpected and bizarre. does it have any relation with the strike on Syria ? did Jong Un feared that he may face the fate of Sadam Housain after the last military strike on Syria ?
On the other hand, other observers say that Trump is right when he urged the NATO to pay their fair share and that they owe the U.S. Doesn’t that seem logical? Isn’t Trump right in getting more respect to U.S. abroad and preventing other nations from taking advantage from it? The same with Iran, isn’t he right in his intention to negotiate a better deal that would ultimately serve the United States? Didn’t Trump bring more money (actually huge sums of money) from Al Saud?
The last thing (on the other hand), America became undermined and laughed at because of the big contradictions between Trump and his administrations. In many occasions Trump would say something, and his team would do another or the total opposite. Why there is a weak connection between the white house and state departments? Why this ambiguity?
How would you respond, Mr MyEsoteric
thank you in advance..
Recognizing Jerusalem is definitely a positive step.
The Israel Palestinian issue is never going to be solved. It has been going on for thousands of years.
It does put Israel on our side as it should. Under Obama, Israel was put as second class and it got us nothing.
The Itan crisis was created by Obama with the nuclear deal. It was a bad deal Trump should have canceled it.
North Korean is something we need to fix. We created this monster after the Korean war ended. We need to reunite the two Koreas just like the two Germanies.
My Esoteric, thank you for taking time to respond to my last question.
I would like to give you the first part of my questions concerning U.S. policy in the light of the current issues.
-How do you generally view Trump’s America first policy?
-In general, how do you think Trump is doing on the domestic ground ?
-You know that recently, Donald Trump has signed a tremendous spending bill. $1.3 trillion which is the largest military budget in U.S. history, despite his prior opposition to it. How would you reflect on that?
-Trump has made two main significant actions towards the Middle East and which had their echo worldwide. First, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. A move that may not promote peace and stability in the region. Second, the last airstrike made on Syria which had different interpretations. How would you reflect on that? And how could his act towards Jerusalem serve his “America First”
-What do you think the possible global repercussions of ‘America First’ policy in the long term? And how would it effect U.S. position as a world power?
-Do you think that Trump takes credit on what Kim Jong Un has announced recently?
you have mentioned favorability and direction of country. also, approval/ economy and foreign . what do you mean by them ? and also in Trump's spotlight you mentioned through colored cirlcles that particpation rate is slightly worse than that of Obama's term but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics which you have included, the particpation rate is not that worse during Trump's term . no ?
ME
Brad, I thought you would no that the FAA was doing the job it was supposed to do. Mind reading is not in its job description. Who is at fault is the intel agencies "territory" mindset. Had they had proper communications between agencies, there was a tiny chance they would have put the pieces together in time.
B:
The FAA didn't have to mind read they saw it on their radar, 4 planes deviate from the flight plan, and they couldn't or didn't have timely connection with NORAD.
NORAD's motto is "Deter, Detect, Defend." Deterrence was accomplished simply through the fact of NORAD's existence. "Potential enemies know that they would suffer disastrous consequences at once if they should be so foolish as to launch an attack against the United States or Canada. Full knowledge of these facts is considered the greatest safeguard and deterrent against sneak attack," reads the introduction of a NORAD guidebook published in 1970 [source: Hough]. In many ways, the creation of NORAD was an act of Cold War propaganda. This is not to suggest that NORAD wasn't capable of doing the things the United States claimed it could do, just that the claims were at least as important as the technology itself.
The FACT is not a single government agency did anything to protect the country. Not a single defensive measure was done during 911. What is your definition of Well?
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What has Agriculture done? Their job and are doing it well.
B:
So you think that they have done a good job protecting the people from bad agricultural food.
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FDA? I am guessing, from your comment, that you don't know what the FDA's mission is either. Let me help -
FDA Mission. The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices; and by ensuring the safety of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.Dec 29, 2017.
Even though FDA is not charted to "create cures", it is charted to make sure they are safe and effective. But just to disprove your hypothesis, the FDA was started in 1906 (Pure Food and Drugs Act) and penicillin use began in 1942. Unless you don't think penicillin is a cure to a major disease, then I would say you are wrong.
Given your objection to the cost and time to make sure drugs are safe, I would have to guess you would rather testing drugs should be like testing software - let the users do it and fix the bugs that show up.
B:
It costs a drug company about 800 million dollars to get their drug through the FDA, and the FDA has no laboratories of their own, and they only use the data provided by the drug company. These FDA approved drugs have been the bread and butter of legal firms because they caused death, and serious side effects. Is that their goal, approve a drug and then let the people be the test rats. They have failed to make them safe or effective. And yes, their job is not finding cures, but they don't really accomplish their primary task either.
Maybe we would be better off if their job was to find a cure for major diseases, or maybe some new agency.
By the way since congress gave the FDA the job of monitoring the drug industry, not a single cure for a major disease has been found, only long term and expensive treatments.
The last major cure was POLIO and it was before the FDA took over the monitoring.
And people are different than software because software has rules, and people don't. The reason that defect management can use the same tools that you do for political polls is that the processes are defined and sampling works because product is uniform. When one fails, it means that the process has failed. What does sampling in political polls do? People are not uniform, and the type of questions can be changed and the results changed, Meaning that you can lead to whatever results you want by asking people questions and having them not be people representing the total.
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The bottom line is that the entire government failed to prevent, and then failed to stop an attack in progress. That is a FACT. And the 911 scenario was known as a possible way for terrorists to attack. The US government has never been proactive, they are only reactive. And while they try to prevent another 911 that uses the same scenario, the terrorists are thinking of new ways to attack us on our soil.
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I am willing to bet that most voters on the democratic side does not follow the issues and just vote democratic as a matter of doing what they are expected...
The reason Trump won is because on the side of the GOP, they are engaged and are active and wants genuine change.
I will pit these voters against any group you can come up with. The reason Trump got a large majority of the electoral votes should give you pause. It is easy to have a few large population states like NY and Calif. to swing the popular vote. Most average people live across middle america and they are smarter than you give then credit for.
33% of the votes elected him
Your last paragraph is telling.
You claim there are plenty of Americans that want Trump taken down. I disagree. There is a coalition of elites, career politicians, media, Hollywood celebrities, intellectuals who are what you claim but they are by no means the majority.
They have influence and they created the image of hatred for Trump.
The rest of Americs voted for Trump and want him to succeeed and support his policies and are liking what he is trying to do.
Here lies the problem. The more Trump succeeds in MAGA, the less power people will have on the other side. There credibility is in the tank. The media being a prime example.
As an observer of human condition, it is a tough position to be at. Your success is based on America’s failure under Trump...
My esoteric, it is very simple. With all the leaking going on since his inauguration, if something of substance was found by Mueller, it would have come out already. There are plenty of Trump haters out there as we’ve seen in the FBI and the state department... They can’t wait to take down Trump. There is nothing... He was a businessman and Holywood star... before he was a politician. What credible person in our government or Russian government would get involved?
The dossier is a fake created by Steele. Just like the book Fire and Fury is a rumor book with little verification. I am just stating the obvious. Afte a year of investigation by the Mueller team, nothing was found relating to Trump and Russian collusion...
My prediction for the mid term election, Democrats will continue to loose seats both in House and Senate.
My esoteric, I hope sometimes at the end of Mueller’s investigation, we learn what is in this dossier that is so devestating... what was in it, true or false, that created this sordid affair, that took our country down this path? I only hope there is something more than a distraction.
Someone needs to go to jail so that things like this don’t happen again. Else, we need major reform in the FISA oversight. We can’t have people using our intelligence agency for advancing personal agenda.
You are missing the bigger story of the memo and it is bigger than Trump, or the Russian connection, or DNC and Hillary...
It is exposing a corruption at our Justice department. The DOJ and the FBI has been politicized by one party. This is 10 times worse than Watergate. My only question is this, with all these help by the FBI, how did Hillary still lost the election?
The Nunes memo will vindicate Trump and put the FBI in very bad light. The rats are running around abandoning ship...
My esoteric, here is some reality check for you. It is a crucial moment for you personally. If you can’t see the destructive nature of what happened in the run up to the 2016 election, then you are hopeless. Regardless of which party, corruption is corruption. We need to root them out whereever we find them. It undermines the integrity of our government. Don’t you agree?
What investigation? The Mueller scam? It was fake news and dossier that created this mess. It was an “insurance policy” by top FBI secret society to stop Trump...
You think Obama is innocent? Why do you think Hilary was not indicted for miss handling our top secret documents? Because Obama was aware of her private email unsecured server and he would have a lot to answer for if she was charged. He is up to his neck with all this. Don’t tell me he knew nothing. As smart as he is, he is too arrogant and people who are arrogant make mistakes. He could go down in history as one of the most corrupt President of modern times.
For the last time, there is no Russian collusion, and it was manufactured by Fusion GPS paid for by the DNC.
A green stoplight? ;/ skewed depends on how you count. http://www.shadowstats.com/
The corruption at the highest level started with Obama. He used the FISA court to spy on a political opponent of Trump. This is a violation of our first Amendment and an abuse of power. These agents are not rogues as claimed. They were deeply involved with the investigation of the Hillary email scandal.
This is very similar but much worse than the abuse at the IRS a few years ago. We were told a rogue office worker did the stuff on their own, scrutinizing conservative organizations applying for 501c status... Meanwhile Lois Lerner were allowed to destroy her computers which is government owned and alloow to retire with full pension. You claim to be impartial but clearly are blinded to the miss deeds of your party.
If the memo that is being released is true, Obama has a bigger problem. He has corrupted our federal agencies including the FBI and the DOJ. This is scary stuff. Our democracy is in jeopardy if one party can use the forces of our justice system to undermine another party in power. This is corruption on the highest order, much worse than watergate. We will see what comes out of this very soon.
"Agencies doing a good job:Defense Dept CDC FAA FRA Dept of Ag"
You can't be serious, Where was the FAA during 911? Where was the defense of the country on 911? Not a single defensive move against 19 terrorists that successfully attacked the US at home.
The demt of AG, what have they done?
You might as well throw in FDA, and since they were commissioned by congress to oversee the drug industry, not a single cure for a major disease has happened. And it takes about $800 million to get a drug approved by the FDA, and they don't even have independent laboratories, they just look over data given them by the drug companies. Then after approval, the lawyers come and sue some of these approved drugs in class action suits.
What about the NSA, FBI, DOJ have they been doing a good job?
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