August 8, 201113 yr Dow ends day down 633 points, closes at 10,811; S&P and Nasdaq down more than 6.7 percent http://news.yahoo.com/dow-ends-day-down-633-points-closes-10-200515246.html
August 8, 201113 yr Dale Maharidge & Mike Williamson are back with a new book. Mahardige has an Ohio connection and wrote, along with photographer, Williamson, "Journey to Nowhere", back in the early 1980s, when he was working for the Sacramento Bee. I remember him from the back then, back when I moved to Sacramento, as I was in a slightly similar place to the people he wrote about back then. Now and his photographer have published "Someplace Like America, Tales from the New Great Depression", sort of about current hard times but what has happened to people since the early 1980s "structural adjustment": Heres an excerpt from a review in the Sacramento News & Review: Flash-forward three decades: There is mourning in America. The middle class is an endangered species. The new American underclass includes families, working people who rely on food banks. “We did not meet working homeless when we started this [in the 1980s],” Maharidge said. “Working homeless is so common now it’s like, ‘What else is new?’ You go down to the food bank in Sacramento and you’re gonna find people who have full-time jobs, who budget well and who, [on] the last week of the month, they’re hungry.” When I last spoke to Maharidge in early 2010, I’d called seeking advice for a personal story I was writing about being a jobless food critic living on food stamps. This time out, I was armed with more insight into his work; I’d spent most of the past year homeless, living in my car and looking for work. I guess this book starts to answer my question about "Great Recession Culture"...how society and culture is addressing the problems we are in. Maybe we'll see more books and stuff like this (apparently Mahardige and Williamspn are also going to be doing a documentary movie, too).
August 8, 201113 yr To me, the freight railroads are a leading economic indicator because they haul a lot of bulk goods that are inputs at the front-end of the economy, and carry more freight-tonnage than any competing mode (40% of the nation's ton-miles). This doesn't sound like their fundamentals are hurting...... Published Sunday August 7, 2011 All aboard! Railroads are hiring By Erin Golden WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER If there's a good indicator of how things are going for the rail industry, it might be all the new faces showing up at Union Pacific. They belong to dispatchers and engineers, train conductors and signal workers, administrative assistants and diesel mechanics. Just two years ago, the Omaha-based railroad was laying off thousands of workers, taking engines off the tracks and holding off on big projects. Now U.P.'s hiring has picked up to its highest rate since before the recession. The vast majority of the 5,300 workers who were furloughed have been given the chance to return to work. By year's end, the company hopes to have boosted its workforce by an additional 1,500 people. "It's across the board ... everything from track labor to IT professionals to people with an MBA," said Jim Young, chairman and CEO. "It covers the whole spectrum." BNSF Railway Co., owned by Omaha's Berkshire Hathaway, and with a strong presence in Alliance and Lincoln, also is hiring. That railroad hired 1,500 people last year and, seven months into 2011, already has added another 3,500. Read more at: http://www.omaha.com/article/20110807/NEWS01/308079988/-1 "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
August 8, 201113 yr The assumption that "the government is the people" is the false one, and the notion that its authority can be "used to serve whatever purpose we [royal "we"] deem it most fit to serve" is expressly contradicted by the text and structure of the Constitution. You are correct that the real question to ask is how much control over our lives we should cede to it, but that discussion must be based on the knowledge that the government is a being unto itself, with different incentives than the private sector (and than the vast majority of individual citizens). Even the family's budgets and household budgets are not truly the same thing (and if you treat them as such, you are exposing yourself to serious legal risks), but as I already noted, even those budgets are more connected than Americans' personal checking accounts and the U.S. Treasury. The argument that the household (government) and business (GDP) budgets are ultimately the same thing proves far too much: it would validate a complete command economy in which the government took control of 100% of GDP, i.e., Soviet-style communism. Of course there are better and worse government programs and better and worse private enterprises. However, comparisons between the two are perfectly justified as well, and indeed, are absolutely necessary. Command and control economies don't work. You are threatening a concept that nobody even cares about anymore, much less aspires to. This is one of the main problems with American conservatism at this point in history. You guys won your battle. Those liberals lost, and changed. We do not live in a USSR-USA deathmatch in which policy decisions must necessarily point us away from a forgone ideology. Claiming that a nation's government and private sector serve a common higher, even symbiotic purpose is not a prescription for a centralized economy. It's just an ethic.
August 9, 201113 yr Tschermans! On das Ekonomy! Der Spiegel on the impending global economic crisis Is the World Going Bankrupt The longer the Western debt crises smolder on, the darker the outlook for the global economy. Because the US economy is collapsing, American consumers are buying fewer goods from China and India. And because investors are piling out of euro and dollar investments, supposed islands of stability are starting to look shaky as well. In recent weeks, the Swiss franc and the Brazilian real have appreciated so strongly that exporters in those countries have been virtually unable to sell their products abroad. And so the world is at risk of sliding into a downward spiral. The debt crises are weakening economic growth, and the declining momentum in turn is making it even harder to escape the debt crisis. ...note they are already saying that "...the US economy is collapsing..."
August 9, 201113 yr Part two is headlined US At Risk for Double Dip Recession ...with a header entilted "US Heading for Banana-Republic Status". Something I've always said to myself but never saw in print before. Theres a good blurb in there about China and how they did a stimulus (vs how we did), but how things are slowing there, too, which of course is concerning Germany, since Germanys export economy is now linked to the Chinese market.
August 9, 201113 yr Author Second-quarter U.S. productivity falls 0.3% Employees work more hours to push labor costs higher, data show "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The productivity of U.S. businesses fell in the second quarter, the government said Tuesday, while first-quarter figures were revised lower to show a decline as labor costs accelerated." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/second-quarter-us-productivity-falls-03-2011-08-09-856360
August 9, 201113 yr Author Part two is headlined US At Risk for Double Dip Recession ...with a header entilted "US Heading for Banana-Republic Status". Something I've always said to myself but never saw in print before. Theres a good blurb in there about China and how they did a stimulus (vs how we did), but how things are slowing there, too, which of course is concerning Germany, since Germanys export economy is now linked to the Chinese market. If we go into another recession it will probably be a process just like last time. There will be conflicting data, some wild swings in both directions, more programs (QE?) and they will wait at least a year after the recession had started to tell us it had started. One of the reasons I have continued this thread and kept posting, even after the first recession was officially over was my belief that the US economy and a lot of the western world's economy is structurally damaged and may find it very difficult to ever return to 'what it use to be' without going through a full blown reset. How that happens I am not sure, depression, multiple recessions, a new currency, etc. But, I just don't believe most of the modern western nations can avoid a prolonged and/or acute economic readjustment that will not be pleasant. This doesn't mean the sky is falling, but it does mean we are living as a nation(s) above our means and that lifestyle must be adjusted.
August 9, 201113 yr If we are in fact headed for a second recession (and maybe if we aren't) I think it would be good policy for Obama to replace Geitner. He doesn't seem to be very well respected in the business community and most of his programs he's implemented like QE2 have been jeered. If I were Obama I'd be calling up Greenspan telling him he has the opportunity of a lifetime to come back and serve again till 2012. I'd bet the markets would respond favorably right away with the news and it would be really interesting to see what his first order of business would be.
August 9, 201113 yr Author A look over the pond. While a police shooting may have been the ingition for these riots, I think the unemployment and the divide between the have and have nots (which is growing) is keeping fuel on the fire. Rioters need jobs, says Carpetright's Lord Harris "Lord Harris of Peckham, the chief executive of Carpetright, the store that was destroyed in the Tottenham riots on Saturday night, has called on the Government to do more to provide jobs for young people." "He said part of the cause for the violent scenes in London had been caused by youth unemployment." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8689622/Rioters-need-jobs-says-Carpetrights-Lord-Harris.html To see how these riots (attacks) are not just in one or two spots click on the Telegraph Map link below. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8689355/London-riots-all-incidents-mapped-in-London-and-around-the-UK.html China July inflation hits 6.5%, tops estimates "HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Chinese consumer prices accelerated further to 6.5% in July from 6.4% in the previous month, official data showed Tuesday, beating expectations and keeping alive the prospect that Beijing may maintain a restrictive monetary policy." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-july-inflation-hits-65-tops-estimates-2011-08-08
August 9, 201113 yr A little Kunstler to brighten your day: "...The United States has already half killed itself at the Golden Corral steam-table of deep-fried debt. I guess we could go all the way and shoot what remains of the dollar in its pitiful, lolling head." http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/08/change-you-dont-have-to-believe-in.html
August 9, 201113 yr One thing that is really different between the Great Recession and the Great Depression. People joined unions back then (amazing to me, still, considering the hard time) but they despise them now. State of the Unions ...of course this is good news to some. But unions are fairly irrelevant in the private sector at 7% of the workforce or some such number. They arent below 5% yet, but, lets work on that, huh? In a landmark 1984 study, the economists Richard Freeman and James Medoff showed that there was a strong connection between the public image of unions and how workers voted in union elections: the less popular unions were generally, the harder it was for them to organize. Labor, in other words, may be caught in a vicious cycle, becoming progressively less influential and more unpopular. The Great Depression invigorated the modern American labor movement. The Great Recession has crippled it.
August 9, 201113 yr In search of Recession Culture. I think we sort of see it with the new libertarian right (AKA "Tea Party", as a sociocultural movement). From the left is this article from AlterNet on a modern day salons. I dont really buy this since I dont see it happening around me, so maybe more of a "coastal" phenomenon: For all the cautionary tales of cyber-stupidity and Internet solipsism spouted by media pundits, people in New York, San Francisco and other cities are attending intellectual get-togethers at unprecedented numbers. Yes, everyone feels overwhelmed, whether by mounting bills, political uncertainty or natural disasters. Yet, more and more people are drawn to public venues of discourse and conviviality to think, engage with others, flirt, organized political actions and add something meaningful to their lives. They are 21st century version of the classic salon, venues where ideas matter. And, from 2009, this cartoon from NY Magazine on Recession Culture in New York. Yet...this stuff is sort of the yuppie/histper/lefty interpretation. By people who still have jobs. Im thinking that maybe Barbara Eherenreich is more on the money about how things are becoming more 'social' in in a different way, for the great unwashed. Americas' Tragic Decline " But the truth is, here’s what’s happening. More and more people are having to crowd into smaller spaces to live. This is since—this has been going on for a lot of people, you know, for many years. But since the recession, since the financial crisis in '07, you find more and more families—you can have one family per bedroom and somebody, a couch surfer, on the couch in the living room. There's nothing comfortable about that. You know, one of the things that really woke me up to how bad things were was in '09 when a family member of mine suddenly needed money to pay her mortgage or her home would be taken away. I was able to help, but when I found out the real facts, I was horrified. Her home was a trailer home. Not only that, it's a dilapidated trailer home. She lives in it—a single-wide trailer home—along with her daughter and two grandchildren. Now that’s getting down to, you know, third-world levels of poverty, when you crowd that many people into such an inadequate dwelling." ...this probably explains why we arent seeing more hobos or people living on the street. They are couch surfing or doubling-up.
August 9, 201113 yr From the Kunstler link... "However, I'm not the only one in America asking where do these S and P punks get off downgrading US bonds when three years ago they wore out their Triple-A rubber stamps on the cartloads of stinking offal that Angelo Mozillo and other mortgage rustlers were pawning off as bond-fodder on every Frankenstein "investment opportunity" pumped out of the Wall Street CDO mills. " ...yeah, I agree.
August 9, 201113 yr Author If this doesn't give a glimps into how poorly our economy is starting to do again, I don't know what will. Fed: Low rates to stay through at least mid-2013 Three Fed officials dissent "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve on Tuesday put more clarity on what it means to hold interest rates low for an “extended period” of time, saying for the first time that it means “at least” through mid-2013. The action brought strong dissent, as Richard Fisher, Narayana Kocherlakota and Charles Plosser objected to the new terminology. In the statement, the Fed said growth was much slower than expected and the labor market had deteriorated." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-low-rates-to-stay-through-at-least-mid-2013-2011-08-09
August 9, 201113 yr And a third gem from the Kunstler blog: "Did you admire Standard and Poor's sly, Friday night downgrade of the United States Treasury bond rating? I was probably the only one in the whole country besides Anderson Cooper not out eating something bigger than my own head at Applebees, or watching the "Footwear Clearance" show over on the Shopping Network."
August 10, 201113 yr That Kunstler wall of text was painful to look at, let alone read. As for modern-day salons: I frequent several. They're called Internet message boards. :-) Oh, and I guess, since the article mentioned it by name, I'm also on Meetup ... and I'm a member of not one single political Meetup. Gaming, wine tasting, beer tasting, poker, absolutely. Politics? Meh. How droll.
August 10, 201113 yr Author I think the current market issues will keep the rating agencies 'caution flag' out for now. But, if France is downgraded it will be another major blow to the system. Of course there is the old saying that goes something like "a watched pot never boils over'. For next rating downgrade, S&P may look at France Commentary: France has lots of debt, and dysfunctional politics "LONDON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. is broke? Been there. Italy is bankrupt. Done that. Spain is teetering on the edge? Got the T-shirt. There is, however, one major industrial country that has so far managed to sail through the market turmoil without anyone seriously questioning its credit-worthiness: France. " "First, French debt is escalating rapidly. It might not be as big as that of some other countries yet, but it’s getting there fast. Last year it ran a deficit of 7% of GDP. French debt will total 90% of GDP this year and 95% in 2012, according to estimates by Capital Economics." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/for-next-rating-downgrade-sp-may-look-at-france-2011-08-10
August 10, 201113 yr Author U.S. moves to sell, rent 92,000 foreclosures Administration looks for buyers for U.S.-owned foreclosed homes "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Struggling to clear its inventory of foreclosed properties, the Obama administration said Wednesday it’s looking for investor ideas for converting more than 92,000 foreclosed properties owned by the U.S. government into rental units, a sign of the depths to which the U.S. housing market has sunk." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-moves-to-sell-rent-92000-foreclosed-homes-2011-08-10
August 10, 201113 yr Cisco profits top analyst estimates... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-10/cisco-profit-tops-analysts-estimates.html All this panic selling is going on in the wake of corporate earnings that in general are beating estimates. I guess the market over the past week or so has been repricing based on an expectation of 2 years of economic stagnation. Stocks had gotten way ahead of the economic future, but this panic repricing will almost certainly overshoot on the downside. Should be interesting over the next year or so. The underlying economy is stronger today than it was going into the 2008 crises. However, the bag of tricks to fight any downturn is nearly empty. One bad jolt could tip the economy into a recession that we may never come out of in my working career. Unfortunately, the jolts have been comming a lot faster and more frequently these days.
August 11, 201113 yr I'm OK with the "bag of tricks" being "empty," because I never had all that much faith in the back of tricks to begin with. Certainly more tricks than treats. The problem with all of the Fed's tricks is that they involve macro-scale financial gamesmanship. The Fed has one thing in common with more normal banks: It doesn't really produce anything. It can introduce more dollars into the economy, "producing" them if necessary, but without more goods and services of real value to pursue, those dollars do nothing but inflate the cost of existing goods and services. Direct fiscal spending can at least produce some visible results, but seldom with any efficiency because of the government's lack of incentives to be efficient, so the dollars are so often wasted. Highways are at least value-added projects rather than just monetary chicanery, for example, but (a) they cost ridiculous amounts to build--look at the cost of a single complex interchange sometime--and (b) even if their construction budgets were spent with near-perfect efficiency, it wouldn't necessarily contribute a positive economic return to a given area because sometimes a highway project simply isn't what an area needed anyway; it was just what a well-connected contractor or developer wanted. And that's even with infrastructure which is one of the *more* productive uses of government treasuries.
August 11, 201113 yr They didn't join unions yet in the Great Depression. The big union growth doesn't happen until at least '33 or most of it is focused on '34 to '38. The company unions of 1920's welfare capitalism had to collapse first.
August 11, 201113 yr The big union growth doesn't happen until at least '33 or most of it is focused on '34 to '38. ...in some cases there was even a lag into the 1940s, pre-war and WWII era. But even that 1930s growth was going on during that second dip, the 'Roosevelt Recession', where you'd expect unemployment to act as a damper on organizing. That this CIO organizing was going on facing a headwind of high unemployment would be sort of unexpected as you'd expect employers had a lot of potential replacement workers. Times were different back then, I guess. @@@@ Anyway, back to the here and now Our freinds at the Cleveland Federal Reserve have some new postings on the economy. Heres a good one: Why is Investment So Soft? "Three and a half years after the beginning of the recession, real GDP is still below its pre-recession peak. One reason is that firms’ investment (private nonresidential fixed investment) has not recovered. Currently, it is down 12 percent relative to its level at the start of the recession. While investment in equipment and software has bounced back and is now at pre-crisis levels, investment in nonresidential structures remains depressed." ...this chart is similar to others, showing how this recession is 'different' than some of the other postwar ones: "Whatever is hindering the capital spending of firms, it is not likely to be the financial conditions in which they are operating. After weakening during the financial crisis, corporate balance sheets have since strengthened...." (which we've noted on this board) The analyses goes on, but points out that a vicious cycle may be starting to operate.... "Another important reason why firms are shying away from investing is that they forecast slow growth and weak aggregate demand, which could make additional investment projects less profitable. Here, there is also a self-reinforcing mechanism at work, as firms’ lowered investment further depresses aggregate demand (since investment is also a component of aggregate demand), which in turn further slows the recovery and lowers growth forecasts."
August 11, 201113 yr ^ " "The analyses goes on, but points out that a vicious cycle may be starting to operate...." I was always of the opinion that this statement applies to 2001. essentually, following the dot-com bust, Greenspan flooded the economy with money. However, corporations saw muted future demand and did not expand capacity in the way the FED expected. Those extra dollars had to go somewhere, so they went to mortgages. To push mortages, banks had to lower lending standards to drum up enough demand to meet their supply of money. We've often talked about misallocation of capital on this thread and here is a big-time example of it. The biggest problem I see in this is that under normal circumstances, businesses decide how to allocate the money in the system. These are professional planners who generally make sound, responsible decisions on how tie resources to demand. However, when the money was placed into the hands of Joe Sixpack, and he was allowed 100% leverage, all hope of any rational planning and benefitial resource allocation went out the windows. In my opinion, the biggest folly of the Housing boom was that the decision for allocating financial resources was shifted from professional business planners to amature gambling house-flippers. Way to go, Greenspan.
August 12, 201113 yr I don't know if anyone is fans of big cyclical history - Strauss and Howe are my faves, but there are folks in the business cycle world that would argue that we are simply living through end of a long cycle (the Great Depression into WWII was the last transition and 1870s and 1810s before that, w/ a couple smaller transitions along the way). However, those models do well in explaining why everything feels like it is falling apart all at once.
August 12, 201113 yr ^ Would this be the same as that Kondretieff Long Wave Theory? @@@@@@ Here is something from Bloomberg: Growth Forecasts for U.S. Reduced Through 2013 on Limited Employment Gains Global financial strains, government fiscal austerity and a lack of jobs will hurt U.S. growth over the next couple of years, according to economists surveyed this month by Bloomberg News. The world’s largest economy will expand at an average 2.3 percent annual rate in the second half of the year, about a percentage point less than projected last month, according to the median forecast of 53 economists polled from Aug. 2 to Aug. 10. Gross domestic product will grow 2.4 percent next year and 2.8 percent in 2013, also less than previously estimated.... ....“We’re on a path that looks like persistent growth, but growth that is inadequate to solving our short-run problems,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse in New York. “Markets are signaling to businesses and households the future is less certain. When your future appears to be out of control, it’s easier to pull back than it is to get aggressive.”
August 12, 201113 yr Meanwhile, somewhere near you... One in Four Ohio Families Couldnt Afford Food Last Year More than 1 in 4 Ohio families with children did not have enough money to buy food in the past 12 months, says a new report that shows growing despair in the sinking economy. Ohio ranked 20th in the nation for food hardship and is home to seven of the 100 most troubled metropolitan areas; only one state had more. The Youngstown-Warren-Boardman area ranked 3rd in the nation with a third of its households with children responding “yes” when asked: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?” Following Youngstown was Dayton at 20th and Columbus at 31st. It doesn't mention singles or couples, probabky because it doesnt seem so Dickensian as it would if you just address families. I guess the social welfare term for this is "food insecurity"? In Rome they had bread and circuses. I guess here people have opted for 'circuses' over 'bread', since the poor all have cable TV and X boses now...so we're told....and decided to skip a few meals to pay the cable fee?
August 12, 201113 yr I don't mean to get off on a tangent, but a lot of "can't afford food" comes from people's unwilingness or lack of education on cooking their own food. Not being able to take everyone through the drive through or buy processed food that maybe goes for 1 meal is not the same as not having enough money to feed your family. Until people let go of the convenience based lifestyle and go back to cooking real food from scratch ingredients, they're not getting it. How many people do you know that buy dried beans and cook them. Or lentils. Or who will eat something besides the bland, sawdusty chicken breast, and eat the whole chicken. Or the whole pig. When people go back to making tripe soup, eating trotters, roasting whole chickens and eating off them for 2 days, then using the bones for stock to make soup, using real potatoes instead of ones from a box, etc, THEN we're talking about stretching your dollars. Buying a $4 loaf of bread instead of making your own for pennies, that's what people need to stop doing to "afford" to feed their families.
August 12, 201113 yr Meanwhile, somewhere near you... One in Four Ohio Families Couldnt Afford Food Last Year More than 1 in 4 Ohio families with children did not have enough money to buy food in the past 12 months, says a new report that shows growing despair in the sinking economy. Ohio ranked 20th in the nation for food hardship and is home to seven of the 100 most troubled metropolitan areas; only one state had more. The Youngstown-Warren-Boardman area ranked 3rd in the nation with a third of its households with children responding “yes” when asked: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?” Following Youngstown was Dayton at 20th and Columbus at 31st. Columbus beat Toledo and Cleveland? That right there raises some questions. If I'm not mistaken, Toledo and Cleveland have higher poverty rates.
August 12, 201113 yr I think the bigger problem is affording healthy food and, perhaps even more importantly, the lack of effort to eat healthy. The obesity rate keeps getting worse and worse through the whole country, but particularly the poor. It is a widely underestimated drain on our entire economy for a multitude of reasons.
August 12, 201113 yr I could talk about this issue all day, but it's only tangentially related to the original topic. My previous post applies to what you're saying as well Hts121. "Eating healthy" does not mean spending $250 on organic groceries at Whole Paycheck, that's just what the media would have you believe. I promise you, the homemade refried beans I made in the crockpot 2 weeks ago were really f*cking cheap, very healthy and nutritious, very tasty, and made part of a meal for SEVERAL meals for my family. And they lasted just fine in the fridge. Total cost of the dish was about a dollar. Take that f*cking dollar menu. I'm not saying the beans were the WHOLE meal, but we incorporated them into several meals and the cost per meal is really very cheap doing this. Beans and rice and salsa with a small amount of shredded cheese, eat with tortilla chips - cheap. I will probably start making my own corn tortillas before long and that will be even cheaper. This is just an example. People need to get off the chicken breast high horse and back to cooking and eating real food. It is affordable.
August 12, 201113 yr I don't mean to get off on a tangent, but a lot of "can't afford food" comes from people's unwilingness or lack of education on cooking their own food. Not being able to take everyone through the drive through or buy processed food that maybe goes for 1 meal is not the same as not having enough money to feed your family. Until people let go of the convenience based lifestyle and go back to cooking real food from scratch ingredients, they're not getting it. How many people do you know that buy dried beans and cook them. Or lentils. Or who will eat something besides the bland, sawdusty chicken breast, and eat the whole chicken. Or the whole pig. When people go back to making tripe soup, eating trotters, roasting whole chickens and eating off them for 2 days, then using the bones for stock to make soup, using real potatoes instead of ones from a box, etc, THEN we're talking about stretching your dollars. Buying a $4 loaf of bread instead of making your own for pennies, that's what people need to stop doing to "afford" to feed their families. Right all of that is possible, but it takes a ton of time to make all your own food/meals. If both parents, or if there is only a single parent, are working then there isn't really time to do all the work that goes into making meals from scratch. Should more natural ingredients be used to stretch each meal further? Absolutely. But there is a trade-off that has to be weighed.
August 12, 201113 yr We both work full time and have a 2 year old. I work out regularly and am out at least once a week doing something personal besides working out. There is PLENTY of time to cook from scratch. If you get into families of like 6 people with a single Mom, obviously that's a different story, but that is NOT most of who we are talking about here. EDITED TO ADD: "It takes a ton of time" is not just a misconception, but also a marker of where our priorities lie. If you would rather spend your time playing World of Warcraft, then there may not be time to cook. If your child is in 80000 activities and all you do is drive them around and you are never home except to sleep, there may not be time. You have to make eating properly a priority and carve out time for it, just like you do for exercise. Lots of people complain there is "no time" to exercise, but for most people,t his is simply not true, they just don't want to make it a priority.
August 12, 201113 yr You'll be glad to know RnR that tonight is pizza night at my house. And, no, it ain't gonna be Papa John's or Pizza Hut. We (translation - the wife) make our own doe and chop up all the toppings. We usually make two pizzas, one with cheese and the other without. I honestly think the whole process takes less time than waiting for delivery. And the result is way, way better. On the other hand, the wife experimented last week trying to make ravioli from scratch and that was a fail.... but I suppose it was her first try. Bringing this more back on topic, I see your point and it is well taken. Of course, you could further the analysis by saying that gardening is becoming a lost art among our generation. Growing your own herbs and veggies is easier than people think.
August 12, 201113 yr I don't mean to get off on a tangent, but a lot of "can't afford food" comes from people's unwilingness or lack of education on cooking their own food. Not being able to take everyone through the drive through or buy processed food that maybe goes for 1 meal is not the same as not having enough money to feed your family. Until people let go of the convenience based lifestyle and go back to cooking real food from scratch ingredients, they're not getting it. How many people do you know that buy dried beans and cook them. Or lentils. Or who will eat something besides the bland, sawdusty chicken breast, and eat the whole chicken. Or the whole pig. When people go back to making tripe soup, eating trotters, roasting whole chickens and eating off them for 2 days, then using the bones for stock to make soup, using real potatoes instead of ones from a box, etc, THEN we're talking about stretching your dollars. Buying a $4 loaf of bread instead of making your own for pennies, that's what people need to stop doing to "afford" to feed their families. I agree in principle but not everyone knows how to cook or has the time. I barely know how to cook. My mom cooked everything. When I lived with my Ex, he cooked. I eat out ~5 days a week on average. RnR you'd be so proud of me, lately I've gone all Iron Chef and learned how to make Frittats, fried corn and a few other brunchy items. :P
August 12, 201113 yr People need to re-learn to cook, exactly my point. Saying you don't know how is really not an excuse. There are many, many nights our stove never even goes on and we still have a great dinner of tapas of items from the fridge thrown together creatively. Hard boiled egg - chop with roasted red pepper and top with capers. Take the last of those starting to wilt grapes, pair with some walnuts for another side. Can of tonno tuna in olive oil, crack some pepper on top. Chop that last tomato, throw in some banana peppers, maybe some feta and oregano, dress with olive oil and vin. Everything is not a 10 ingredient recipe that you have to cook for a half hour.
August 12, 201113 yr MTS I am proud of you! Hts, proud of your wife, too. Our homemade pizza is just terrible, it's the one thing we still order out when we get it, which is about once every other month. We tried pizza stones and everything but the result was never very satisfying. Ravioli is HARD. She is ambitious!
August 12, 201113 yr People need to re-learn to cook, exactly my point. Saying you don't know how is really not an excuse. There are many, many nights our stove never even goes on and we still have a great dinner of tapas of items from the fridge thrown together creatively. Hard boiled egg - chop with roasted red pepper and top with capers. Take the last of those starting to wilt grapes, pair with some walnuts for another side. Can of tonno tuna in olive oil, crack some pepper on top. Chop that last tomato, throw in some banana peppers, maybe some feta and oregano, dress with olive oil and vin. Everything is not a 10 ingredient recipe that you have to cook for a half hour. I agree, but as someone who has NEVER had to really cook or learned to cook, it can be overwhelming. Even to put together simple items. Mrs. Izela or my mother did the majority of the cooking in our house. My father loves to bake so he did that stuff on occasion and he cooked and he was the only person to touch the BBQ pit. That was his and his alone, period! My mother and Grand mother have been enablers. I always know I can just pop up at my parents house around dinner time and eat. Or, I can call my grand mother when I'm leaving NYC and say I want to stop by before going home, knowing she'll cook for me and give me prepared things to take home for me and my cousin (my cousin doesnt know how to cook either). I didn't learn to "cook" until I lived alone at almost 30. Even now, with all the stuff in the kitchen, I only know how to use the steamer, warming drawer and the microwave.
August 12, 201113 yr Oh, it's so hard to cook the abundance of food I can afford. #firstworldproblems Sorry, this is just not a real problem. I love you for trying to branch out and learn, but any teenager can pick up a cookbook and follow the most basic of recipes. There are 3 ingredient cookbooks out there now, cooking for dummies, etc.
August 12, 201113 yr Final comment on the food article: Note that it's from a survey commissioned by a food bank, so just as suspect as Heritage Foundation research (or whoever) on the poor owning X-boxes and having cable TV access. @@@ Back to the recession. Nate Silvers 538 blog, while usually more about the numbers behind politics, has a pretty good post on the recession, on how its >not like< the other postwar recessions. He puts a political spin in the headline but the data behind it is long term and not about politics... Double-Dip or Not, Economy is Falling Further Behind Siliver discuess long-term patterns in the economy, dervies a trend, then graphs how the GDP operates above and below that trend, with a nifty chart: The Great Recession, however, is highly visible. G.D.P. had already been a couple of percentage points below the long-term trend before it began, as the recovery from the 2001-2 recession was not particularly robust. But things got much worse in a hurry. Looked at this way, in fact, not only is the worst not yet over — the situation is still deteriorating. Every quarter that the economy grows at a rate below 3.5 percent, it loses ground relative to the long-term trend. Although the economy grew at a 3.8 annual percent rate from fall 2009 through summer 2010, over the past year growth has averaged just 1.6 percent, putting us farther behind. Right now, gross domestic product is about $13.3 trillion dollars, adjusted for inflation — when it “should” be $15.7 trillion based on the long-term trend. That puts us more than 15 percent below what we might think of as full output, by far the worst number since the Great Depression. Someone who is well to the left is Doug Henwood. He also took a long-view look at the economy on his "Left Business Observer" site. He takes stock in this article: What A Damn Mess Using a different way of comparing GDP than Silver Henwood has these GDP numbers showing how the 2000s GDP was fairly low for the postwar era...so we had a weak economy going into the recession: Then he looks at change in employment: "The graph above shows the ten-year change in employment—a running score of job growth over the previous decade. From 1949 through 2000, it averaged 24%. It got to as high as almost 50% in the years just after World War II, and to a low of around 12% in the early 1960s. But that same combination of weak expansion followed by sharp recession took this measure below the zero line for the first time in late 2009. " Oy Vey!
August 12, 201113 yr Your average public library will also have disproportionately large number of cookbooks because they're a popular thing to donate. My girlfriend and I will occasionally pick a few that look interesting from the main branch of the Summit County library and just go out and grab whatever we need to make whatever catches our eye. That often means we end up doing longer, more involved recipes (since those are often--though not always--the ones that make the coolest pictures), but there are plenty of cookbooks there geared towards simpler fare that could be prepared quickly and in large quantities by a financially pressured household. I actually lump cooking in with the skilled trades. Cooking can save a household real money just like learning to work on your own car or your own bathroom can save your household real money. (Random fact to know and tell: It seems like a ridiculous number of the police officers and firefighters in my area know a skilled trade and supplement their day job income with both real income from doing skilled trade work on the side and imputed income for doing the same work for their own households.) Public libraries are treasure troves. Unfortunately, a lot of the people that I'd most like to see take more advantage of them are the ones least likely to do so. Obviously, there's only so much you can learn about cooking (or gardening, or working on cars, etc.) from a library book--at some point, you've actually got to turn on the stove--but the books *are* free and can be a great help and a great start. Real-world skills can seriously help in stretching dollars and mitigating the impact of a recession--no matter how tight money gets, it never hurts to be able to get more out of it.
August 12, 201113 yr Mixed signals on the consumer economy from Bloomberg. The headline says Consumer Sentiment Drops to Three-Decade Low, but the article also says: A report from the Commerce Department today showed sales at U.S. retailers climbed 0.5 percent in July, the most in four months, indicating consumers are holding up even as employment slows. Purchases excluding automobiles rose more than forecast. ...meaning? Meaning the great unwashed are expecting things to get worse? Since consumer confidence is maybe more foreward looking?
August 12, 201113 yr ^^ Jeffery, Ae you saying (or is the chart saying) that per-capita real GDP growth was higher during the 1930s than it was during the 1920? Are you saying real per-capita growth was higher during the Depression than it was during the Roaring Twenties?
August 12, 201113 yr I'm not saying anything its what the authors at the links are saying...I just like colorful charts. I don't really care if they're accurate or not.
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