Super important conspiracy

[Evan Burton]

I'm a little concerned that only 5 of 91 posts in this thread were made by people other than the OP. By all means a poster should update people on the current state of the topic but at what stage does it change from a forum thread to a personal blog?

[Steven Gaal]

I'm a little concerned that only 5 of 91 posts in this thread were made by people other than the OP. By all means a poster should update people on the current state of the topic but at what stage does it change from a forum thread to a personal blog? // BURTON

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Don't you feel the mass illusion of Religion should be subject to debate , Mr. Burton ?? Here in this thread is a perfect example of conspiracy. Retailers,banks,investment firms,insurance companies,the military industrial complex and politicians all have a stake in stating the lie of how good it is = when it is not. People feel/experience the economy is bad but the media tells them that they are wrong. An individual will just chalk up his own experience as his own bad luck and lack of effort thus tricking himself. Major articles (like in this thread ) talk about how millennials are different : they don't want cars ,they don't want houses, they don't want marriage and permanent jobs. This is con job and this is conspiracy. In the movie 1984 the torture man holds up 4 fingers and asks how many fingers am I holding up ,he then states ,"IF THE STATE SAYS ITS FIVE ,ITS FIVE !!" He tortures Winston Smith until he does not care and agrees..its five. (GAAL) Two articles one full out other link at bottom.

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Americans Have No Idea How Bad Inequality Really Is

And if they did, they wouldn’t want European-style solutions.

By Jordan Weissmann

Protesters affiliated with Occupy Wall Street demonstrate at Zuccotti Park on the second anniversary of the movement on Sept. 17, 2013, in New York City.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

If Michael Norton’s research is to be believed, Americans don’t have the faintest clue how severe economic inequality has become—and if they only knew, they’d be appalled.

Jordan Weissmann is Slate's senior business and economics correspondent.

Consider the Harvard Business School professor’s new study examining public opinion about executive compensation, co-authored with the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok’s Sorapop Kiatpongsan. In the 1960s, the typical corporate chieftain in the U.S. earned 20 times as much as the average employee. Today, depending on whose estimate you choose, he makes anywhere from 272 to 354 times as much. According to the AFL-CIO, the average CEO takes home more than $12 million, while the average worker makes about $34,000.

In their study, Norton and Kiatpongsan asked about 55,000 people around the globe, including 1,581 participants in the U.S., how much money they thought corporate CEOs made compared with unskilled factory workers. Then they asked how much more pay they thought CEOs should make. The median American guessed that executives out-earned factory workers roughly 30-to-1—exponentially lower than the highest actual estimate of 354-to-1. They believed the ideal ratio would be about 7-to-1.

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“In sum, respondents underestimate actual pay gaps, and their ideal pay gaps are even further from reality than those underestimates,” the authors write.

Americans didn’t answer the survey much differently from participants in other countries. Australians believed that roughly 8-to-1 would be a good ratio; the French settled on about 7-to-1; and the Germans settled on around 6-to-1. In every country, the CEO pay-gap ratio was far greater than people assumed. And though they didn’t concur on precisely what would be fair, both conservatives and liberals around the world also concurred that the pay gap should be smaller. People agreed across income and education levels, as well as across age groups.

How much should CEOs earn compared with the average low-skill worker?

Researchers Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton asked 55,000 people around the world how much they thought CEOs in made compared with the average low-skill factory worker, and how much they should make. Here are the estimated, ideal, and actual ratios. All ratios are to 1, so 93:1, 40:1, etc.

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Country Actual ratio of CEO to worker pay What subjects thought was the ratio What subjects said would be the ideal ratio Australia 9393 4040 8.38.3 Austria 3636 1212 55 Czech Republic 110110 9.49.4 4.24.2 Denmark 4848 3.73.7 22 France 104104 24.224.2 6.76.7 Germany 147147 16.716.7 6.36.3 Israel 7676 77 3.63.6 Japan 6767 1010 66 Norway 5858 4.34.3 2.32.3 Poland 2828 13.313.3 55 Portugal 5353 1414 55 Spain 127127 6.76.7 33 Sweden 8989 4.44.4 2.22.2 Switzerland 148148 12.312.3 55 United Kingdom 8484 13.513.5 5.35.3 United States 354354 29.629.6 6.76.7

=============

Source: Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton Get the

This is the second high-profile paper in which Norton has argued that Americans have a strikingly European notion of economic fairness. In 2011, he published a study with Duke University professor Dan Ariely that asked Americans how they believed wealth should be split up through society. It included two experiments. In the first, participants were shown three unlabeled pie charts meant to depict possible wealth distributions: one that was totally equal; one based on Sweden’s income distribution, which is highly egalitarian; and one based on the U.S. wealth distribution, which is wildly skewed toward the rich. (They used Swedish income data as a model, rather than wealth, to strike a “clearer contrast” with the United States.)* Then, the subjects were told to pick where they would like to live, assuming they would be randomly assigned to a spot on the economic ladder. With their imaginary fate up to chance, 92 percent of Americans opted for Sweden’s pie chart over the United States.

In the second experiment, Ariely and Norton asked participants to guess how wealth was distributed in the United States, and then to write how it would be divvied up in an ideal world (this, it seems, served as the template for Norton’s most recent study). Americans had little idea how concentrated wealth truly was. Subjects estimated that the top 20 percent of U.S. households owned about 59 percent of the country’s net worth, whereas in the real world, they owned about 84 percent of it. In their own private utopia, subjects said that the top quintile would claim just 32 percent of the wealth.

The Actual Wealth Distribution of the U.S., What Americans Think the Wealth Distribution Is, and What They’d Like It to Be

As in Norton’s more recent study, responses varied a bit by age, income, and political party, but there was overall agreement that America would be better off with a smaller wealth gap.

Estimated and Ideal Wealth Distribution by Income and Political Affiliation

“People drastically underestimate the current disparities in wealth and income in their societies,” Norton told me in an email, “and their ideals are more equal than their estimates, which are already more equal than the actual levels. Maybe most importantly, people from all walks of life—Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, all over the world—have a large degree of consensus in their ideals: Everyone’s ideals are more equal than the way they think things are.” Theoretically, Americans aren’t exceptional in their views about distribution at all—they have a sense of fairness similar to that of Germans, French, and Australians, and most Americans would be offended if they actually knew the degree of economic inequality that exists in this country.

But let’s say all of America woke up one morning and could cite Thomas Piketty chapter and verse. Would today’s moderates suddenly demand Scandinavian tax rates and mass wealth redistribution? Would our politics become more progressive?

It’s one thing to talk about fairness in the abstract; it’s another to agree on policies that would address it. Gallup, for instance, has consistently found that a solid majority of Americans believe wealth should be distributed more evenly. But fewer support the idea of imposing heavy taxes on the rich in order to do it. The Pew Research Center reports that 45 percent of Republicans already believe the government should at least do something to reduce inequality. But good luck finding GOP voters who are begging for a more robust welfare state.

Top Comment

Those at the top overvalue their contributions and undervalue the contributions of those lower down: this is human nature. More...

Americans broadly support ideas that don’t require them to make an obvious personal sacrifice, like raising the minimum wage; they’re less happy to make tradeoffs. Europeans have long had social democracy baked into their politics; we have a libertarian streak. Maybe that would change if more Americans knew just how dire inequality has become. But I wouldn’t bank on it.

*Correction, Oct. 2, 2014: This article originally misstated that one of the pie charts in Norton and Ariely’s 2011 study was based on Swedish wealth data. It was based on Swedish income data.

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}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} ALSO SEE THIS STORY

http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-terrifying-look-life-inside-matrix-government-lies-manipulation-murder/

Edited April 16, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

PRISON LABOR COMPANY FEATURES PROMO VIDEO TOUTING “BEST-KEPT SECRET IN OUTSOURCING” (LINK)

Searching for the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” one that can “provide you with all the advantages” of domestic workers, but with “offshore prices”? Try prison labor! That’s the message of Unicor, also known as Federal Prison Industries, a government-owned corporation that employs federal workers for as little as 23 cents an hour to manufacture military uniforms, furniture, electronics and other products.

[Steven Gaal]

Layoffs begin at U.S. Steel

http://govtslaves.info/layoffs-begin-at-u-s-steel/

[Steven Gaal]

Baker Hughes increases layoffs to 10,500 (LINK)

[Steven Gaal]

More US Moms Dying in Childbirth, Poverty & Racial Discrimination to Blame

http://sputniknews.com/us/20150425/1021358906.html

Maternal mortality - usually considered a problem for women in developing countries - has been on the rise in the United States, where the rate of mothers dying from complications in childbirth or pregnancy has more than doubled since 1990.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Only 44 Percent Of U.S. Adults Are Employed For 30 Or More Hours Per Week

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/44-percent-u-s-adults-employed-30-hours-per-week

Jim Clifton, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, says that the percentage of Americans that are employed full-time has been hovering near record lows since the end of the last recession. But most Americans don’t realize this because the official unemployment numbers are extremely misleading. In fact, Clifton says that the official 5.6 percent unemployment rate is a “big lie”.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Anyone living in the real world knows we are in a recession. The fact that median real household income in 6% lower than it was in 2000 proves we have actually been in a 15 year recession.

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Submitted by IWB, on April 30th, 2015

================================================================

by James Quinn

==

So the highly paid Ivy League educated Wall Street economist mouthpieces missed the GDP by a country mile. Give them a cigar and a million dollar bonus for keeping the muppets in the market. These worthless pieces of excrement can be replaced by a model. The Atlanta Fed model nailed the 1st quarter GDP two months ago. We all know this number will be revised two more times, because the government is essentially guessing on every item in the calculation. By the time it is final, in 5 years, it will be -2% or worse.

Anyone living in the real world knows we are in a recession. The fact that median real household income in 6% lower than it was in 2000 proves we have actually been in a 15 year recession. How much progress has the average American made since 2000? Their standard of living has fallen. They know it. They have attempted to maintain a semblance of their past standard by utilizing debt. The government, corporations, and individuals have all fallen for the false premise that debt can generate wealth. The debt has destroyed economic vitality, innovation, and investment.

We’ve had zero interest rates for six years and this is what we’ve got. Digging into the BEA report reveals the horror:
•According to the BEA the economy has only grown by 7.3% in the last TWO years. And that is before the government reported inflation of 2.5%. So, even using their own cooked numbers, the real GDP is only up 4.8% in two years. In reality, inflation in the average person’s daily living expenses are up by at least 10% in the last two years. Real GDP is negative.
•Personal consumption still makes up 68% of GDP, just as it did in 2008. Therefore, when consumers stop spending money they don’t have, the economy tanks. Consumer spending on goods collapsed in the 1st quarter and is barely above last year’s Polar Vortex first quarter. I thought we had a housing recovery and 10 million new Obama jobs. Why no spending? Think about this for a moment. The government is doling out billions in student loans and the car companies are giving away cars to deadbeats with subprime loans and still spending on goods collapses.
•Of course consumer spending on services soared to a new all-time high. Guess why. Obamacare. All that extra money you are paying to insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, and the government is considered a big plus for the GDP. Is it a big plus for you?
•The amount companies invested in plants crashed in the first quarter. It is 13% BELOW levels of 2008. How can an economy grow over the long-term if companies do not invest in plant and equipment? The S&P 500 companies are using all of their cash to buy back their own stock at record valuation levels. The foolishness and greed of corporate executives is breathtaking to behold. They are gutting our industrial base.
•Exports collapsed, confirming we have a global recession, in case you hadn’t noticed.
•The biggest benefit to GDP was a huge increase in inventories. This is a disaster in the making. If consumers aren’t consuming and foreigners aren’t buying our exports, companies will have to purge these inventories at drastically lower prices. The draw down of these inventories will crush the GDP in the 2nd and 3rd quarters.
•The only bright spot is that the government has stopped increasing their spending. The Washington gridlock has stopped Obama and his minions from doling out more free xxxx. Government spending is lower than it was in 2012. But it is still 13% higher than it was in 2008. The funniest part of the GDP calculation is that the government doles out hundreds of billions in entitlements which is counted as a plus to GDP and then the recipients spend the entitlement money and it is also included as a positive to GDP. What a wonderful system.

So there you have it. The government is telling you we haven’t entered recession yet. Wall Street economists will blame the weather. Do you believe them, or do you believe your wallet? Time to BTFATH.

US Economy Grinds To A Halt, Again: Q1 GDP Tumbles Below Expectations, Rises Paltry 0.2%

image: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-5.jpg
Tyler Durden's picture
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/29/2015 08:42 -0400

And so the Atlanta Fed, whose “shocking” Q1 GDP
image: http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png
prediction Zero Hedge first laid out nearly 2 months ago, with its Q1 GDP 0.1% forecast was spot on. Moments ago the BEA reported that Q1 GDP was far worse than almost everyone had expected, and tumbled from a 2.2% annualized growth rate at the end of 2014 to just 0.2%, in a rerun of last year when it too “snowed” in the winter. This was well below the Wall Street consensus of a print above 1.0%.

image: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/04/20150429_gdp_0.jpg

In other words, in the quarter in which the S&P rose to unseen highs, the economy ground to a near halt.

Only this time it wasn’t the snow, as the main reason for the plunge in economic growth was not only personal consumption which was cut by more than 50% from last quarter, tumbling to just 1.31%, but fixed investment, i.e., CapEx, which subtracting 0.40% from the bottom line GDP number, was the lowest print since 2009!

image: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/04/20150429_gdp2_0.jpg

The fact that trade also subtracted a whopping 1.25% from the final number shows that while one can blame the weather for anything, the reality is that in the start of the year global trade
image: http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png
did indeed grind to a halt, a picture which is only getting worse with every passing day.

The only good news: the massive inventory
image: http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png
build, the largest since 2010, boosted GDP by nearly 3.0%.Without this epic stockpiling of non-farm inventory which will have to be liquidated at some point (and at a very low price) Q1 GDP would have been -2.5%.

Here is the full breakdown of the GDP number:

image: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/04/Q1%20GDP%20breakdown_0.jpg

And a historical breakdown showing that the Q1 “snow in the winter” curse is alive and well.

image: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/04/Q1%20GDP%20historical_0.jpg

.
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/anyone-living-in-the-real-world-knows-we-are-in-a-recession-the-fact-that-median-real-household-income-in-6-lower-than-it-was-in-2000-proves-we-have-actually-been-in-a-15-year-recession/#qx1mKekdmcKJqRz9.99

Edited May 3, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Major U.S. Retailers Are Closing More Than 6,000 Stores

Submitted by Tyler Durden

on 05/02/2015

===============================================

If the U.S. economy really is improving, then why are big U.S. retailers permanently shutting down thousands of stores? The “retail apocalypse” that I have written about so frequently appears to be accelerating. As you will see below, major U.S. retailers have announced that they are closing more than 6,000 locations, but economic conditions in this country are still fairly stable. So if this is happening already, what are things going to look like once the next recession strikes? For a long time, I have been pointing to 2015 as a major “turning point” for the U.S. economy, and I still feel that way. And since I started The Economic Collapse Blog at the end of 2009, I have never seen as many indications that we are headed into another major economic downturn as I do right now. If retailers are closing this many stores already, what are our malls and shopping centers going to look like a few years from now?

The list below comes from information compiled by About.com, but I have only included major retailers that have announced plans to close at least 10 stores. Most of these closures will take place this year, but in some instances the closures are scheduled to be phased in over a number of years. As you can see, the number of stores that are being permanently shut down is absolutely staggering…

180 Abercrombie & Fitch (by 2015)

75 Aeropostale (through January 2015)

150 American Eagle Outfitters (through 2017)

223 Barnes & Noble (through 2023)

265 Body Central / Body Shop

66 Bottom Dollar Food

25 Build-A-Bear (through 2015)

32 C. Wonder

21 Cache

120 Chico’s (through 2017)

200 Children’s Place (through 2017)

17 Christopher & Banks

70 Coach (fiscal 2015)

70 Coco’s /Carrows

300 Deb Shops

92 Delia’s

340 Dollar Tree/Family Dollar

39 Einstein Bros. Bagels

50 Express (through 2015)

31 Frederick’s of Hollywood

50 Fresh & Easy Grocey Stores

14 Friendly’s

65 Future Shop (Best Buy Canada)

54 Golf Galaxy (by 2016)

50 Guess (through 2015)

26 Gymboree

40 JCPenney

127 Jones New York Outlet

10 Just Baked

28 Kate Spade Saturday & Jack Spade

14 Macy’s

400 Office Depot/Office Max (by 2016)

63 Pep Boys (“in the coming years”)

100 Pier One (by 2017)

20 Pick ’n Save (by 2017)

1,784 Radio Shack

13 Ruby Tuesday

77 Sears

10 SpartanNash Grocery Stores

55 Staples (2015)

133 Target, Canada (bankruptcy)

31 Tiger Direct

200 Walgreens (by 2017)

10 West Marine

338 Wet Seal

80 Wolverine World Wide (2015 – Stride Rite & Keds)

So why is this happening?

Without a doubt, Internet retailing is taking a huge toll on brick and mortar stores, and this is a trend that is not going to end any time soon.

But as Thad Beversdorf has pointed out, we have also seen a stunning decline in true discretionary consumer spending over the past six months…

What we find is that over the past 6 months we had a tremendous drop in true discretionary consumer spending. Within the overall downtrend we do see a bit of a rally in February but quite ominously that rally failed and the bottom absolutely fell out. Again the importance is it confirms the fundamental theory that consumer spending is showing the initial signs of a severe pull back. A worrying signal to be certain as we would expect this pull back to begin impacting other areas of consumer spending. The reason is that American consumers typically do not voluntarily pull back like that on spending but do so because they have run out of credit. And if credit is running thin it will surely be felt in all spending.

The truth is that middle class U.S. consumers are tapped out. Most families are just scraping by financially from month to month. For most Americans, there simply is not a whole lot of extra money left over to go shopping with these days.

In fact, at this point approximately one out of every four Americans spend at least half of their incomes just on rent…

More than one in four Americans are spending at least half of their family income on rent – leaving little money left to purchase groceries, buy clothing or put gas in the car, new figures have revealed.

A staggering 11.25 million households consume 50 percent or more of their income on housing and utilities, according to an analysis of Census data by nonprofit firm, Enterprise Community Partners.

And 1.8 million of these households spend at least 70 percent of their paychecks on rent.

The surging cost of rental housing has affected a rising number of families since the Great Recession hit in 2007. Officials define housing costs in excess of 30 percent of income as burdensome.

For decades, the U.S. economy was powered by a free spending middle class that had plenty of discretionary income to throw around. But now that the middle class is being systematically destroyed, that paradigm is changing. Americans families simply do not have the same resources that they once did, and that spells big trouble for retailers.

As you read this article, the United States still has more retail space per person than any other nation on the planet. But as stores close by the thousands, “space available” signs are going to be popping up everywhere. This is especially going to be true in poor and lower middle class neighborhoods. Especially after what we just witnessed in Baltimore, many retailers are not going to hesitate to shut down underperforming locations in impoverished areas.

And remember, the next major economic crisis has not even arrived yet. Once it does, the business environment in this country is going to change dramatically, and a few years from now America is going to look far different than it does right now.

[Steven Gaal]

April Payrolls Miss At 223K, March Revised Much Lower, Wage Growth Disappoints Again

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/08/2015

=
While the April payrolls came almost precisely as expected, at 223K, a tiny 5K below the 228K expected, the reason stock are soaring is that the already abysmal March payroll prints was revised even lower to just 85,000, the weakest print since June 2012, and pushing the 3 month average job gain to under 200K, or a level which the Fed has indicated previously it will hardly do much if anything material.

The household survey did not provide an offsetting boost, with the number of employed Americans rising only 192,000 in April according to the "other" survey.

And, as a result and as we noted in our market wrap today, with a June hike now looking unlikely, the S&P has exploded higher.

In other relevant news, the unemployment rate is down from 5.5% to 5.4% as expected, but even more important, hopes that wages would finally rise are once again dashed with the average hourly earnings rising a paltry 0.1%, below the 0.2% expected and down from the pre-revision 0.3% gain in March, now revised to just 0.2%.

In other words, because ZIRP, QE has failed to trickle down for 7 years, the Fed has a greenlight to do more of it.

From the report:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 223,000 in April, after edging up in March (+85,000). In April, employment increased in professional and business services, health care, and construction, while employment in mining continued to decline. (See table B-1.)

Professional and business services added 62,000 jobs in April. Over the prior 3 months, job gains averaged 35,000 per month. In April, services to buildings and dwellings added 16,000 jobs, following little change in March. Employment continued to trend up in April in computer systems design and related services (+9,000), in business support services (+7,000), and in management and technical consulting services (+6,000).

Health care employment increased by 45,000 in April. Job growth was distributed among the three major components--ambulatory health care services (+25,000), hospitals (+12,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+8,000). Over the past year, health care has added 390,000 jobs.

Employment in construction rose by 45,000 in April, after changing little in March. Over the past 12 months, construction has added 280,000 jobs. In April, job growth was concentrated in specialty trade contractors (+41,000), with employment gains about evenly split between the residential and nonresidential components. Employment declined over the month in nonresidential building construction (-8,000).

In April, employment continued to trend up in transportation and warehousing (+15,000).

Employment in mining fell by 15,000 in April, with most of the job loss in support activities for mining (-10,000) and in oil and gas extraction (-3,000). Since the beginning of the year, employment in mining has declined by 49,000, with losses concentrated in support activities for mining.

Employment in other major industries, including manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, information, financial activities, leisure and hospitality, and government, showed little change over the month.

And yes, according to the BLS, only 3,300 oil and gas extraction jobs were lost in April. According to Challenger, as noted previously, about 6 times that number. Someone is still lying.

[Steven Gaal]

• Why does America Continue to Subsidize Housing for the Wealthy?
• =

  By A Mechele Dickerson / The Guardian

  March 12th, 2015

• ==============================================

  http://www.constantinereport.com/america-continue-subsidize-housing-wealthy/

• ==============================================

  There’s a huge need for affordable housing in the US, but the government keeps pushing flawed home ownership schemes

  Many people in the US have given up on the American dream of owning a house: US homeownership rates have now dropped to the lowest point in almost 20 years. But the government shouldn’t be focusing on trying to raise that rate – for now, their priorities should lie with increasing affordable housing.

  ============================================

  The 90,000 Square Foot, 100 Million Dollar Home That Is A Metaphor For America

• http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/the-90000-square-foot-100-million-dollar-home-that-is-a-metaphor-for-america/

Edited May 10, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

The Government Employment Report: Theater Of The Absurd

http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-government-employment-report-theater-of-the-absurd/

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-government-employment-report-theater-of-the-absurd/#MfHGoDKRMkrWhyTz.99

[Steven Gaal]

100’s Of Mall Stores Closing As April Sales Fall Flat

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http://govtslaves.info/100s-of-mall-stores-closing-as-april-sales-fall-flat/

[Steven Gaal]

Five Major Banks to Plead guilty to rigging currency markets

Published: May 16, 2015

=

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Five_Major_Banks_to_Plead_guilty_to_rigging_currency_markets_/43963/0/38/38/Y/M.html

[Steven Gaal]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/14/us-economy-collapses-again/

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4th Time in 4 years

US Economy Collapses Again

=

by JACK RASMUS

Data released last week by the U.S. government showed the U.S. economy came to a near halt in the first three months of 2015, falling to nearly zero – i.e. a mere 0.2 percent annual growth rate for the January-March quarter. The collapse was the fourth time that the U.S. economy in the past four years either came to a virtual halt or actually declined. Four times in four years it has stalled out. So what’s going on?

In 2011, the U.S. economy collapsed to 0.1 percent in terms of annual growth rate. At the end of 2012, to a mere 0.2 percent initial decline. In early 2014, it actually declined by -2.2 percent.

And now in 2015, it is essentially flat once again at 0.2 percent. The numbers are actually even worse, if one discounts the redefinitions of GDP that were made by the US in 2013, counting new categories as contributing to growth, like R&D spending, that for decades were not considered contributors to growth – in effect creating economic growth by statistical manipulation. Those highly questionable 2013 definitional additions to growth added around US$500 billion a year to U.S. growth estimates, or about 0.3 percent of U.S. GDP. Back those redefinitions out, and the U.S. experienced negative GDP four times in the last four years. We get -0.2 percent in 2011, 0 percent in 2012, -2.5 percent in 2014 and -0.1 percent earlier this year.

It is therefore arguable that the U.S. has also experienced at least one mild ‘double dip’ recession, and perhaps two, since 2010.

All the four U.S. economic relapses occurred following preceding month gains in growth sufficient to generate claims by politicians and pundits alike that the U.S. economy had finally ‘turned the corner’ and was now on a path of sustained economic recovery. Yet every time such claims were made, reality contradicted their predictions within a few months, and the economy collapsed again, creating a scenario not of sustained economic recovery but of a ‘stop-go’ trajectory.

The consequence of this ‘stop-go’ recovery is that the U.S. economy since 2009 – the official end of the last recession – has experienced the weakest recovery from recession in the last fifty years, just about half the normal post-recession recovery. And this ‘half normal’ recovery since 2009 occurs after an annual growth averaging only 1.7 percent during the years 2001-2010 in the U.S. Something new is happening to the U.S. economy since 2000. What is it?

Recessions in the U.S. have occurred on average every 7 years. It’s now year five since the last one officially ended in June 2009. What happens if the current weak recovery reaches its end at around 7 years, i.e. in mid-2016 a year from now? Will the next recession prove even worse, perhaps much worse, occurring as it will on a base recovery half of normal?

Unfortunately, such questions aren’t asked by most mainstream economists, and certainly not by politicians and business media pundits.

Stop-Go On A Steady Slowing Global Economy

The problem of weak, stop-go, recovery in the U.S. today is further exacerbated by a global economy that continues to slow even more rapidly and, in case after case, slip increasingly into recessions or stagnate at best.

Signs of weakness and stress in the global economy are everywhere and growing. Despite massive money injections by its central bank in 2013, and again in 2014, Japan’s economy has fallen in 2015, a fourth time, into recession.

After having experienced two recessions since 2009, Europe’s economy is also trending toward stagnation once more after it too, like Japan, just introduced a US$60 billion a month central bank money injection this past winter. Despite daily hype in the business press, unemployment in the Eurozone is still officially at 11.4 percent, and in countries like Spain and Greece, still at 24 percent. Yet we hear Spain is now the ‘poster-boy’ of the Eurozone, having returned to robust growth. Growth for whom? Certainly not the 24 percent still jobless, a rate that hasn’t changed in years. Euro businesses in Spain are doing better, having imposed severe ‘labor market reforms’ on workers there, in order to drive down wages to help reduce costs and boost Spanish exports. Meanwhile, Italy remains the economic black sheep of the Eurozone, still in recession for years now, while France officially records no growth, but is likely in recession as well. Elites in both Italy and France hope to copy Spain’s ‘labor market reforms’ (read: cut wages, pensions, and make it easier to layoff full time workers). In order to boost its growth, Italy is considering, or may have already decided, to redefine its way to growth by including the services of prostitutes and drug dealers as part of its GDP. Were the USA to do the same redefinition, it would no doubt mean a record boost to GDP.

Across the Eurozone, the greater economy of its 18 countries still hasn’t reached levels it had in 2007, before the onset of the last recession. Unlike the U.S.’s ‘stop-go’, Europe has been ‘stop-go-stop’.

Even beyond the Eurozone, in the broader Euro area the picture is not much better. After a brief, artificial real estate boom fueled by foreign investment, the UK is now growing again at a mere 0.3 percent rate. And then there’s China, where economic growth continues to slow, despite multiple fiscal and monetary stimulus programs introduced the past two years to try to boost the economy further. And the global slowdown applies not just the largest economies. Emerging market economies in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere that are especially dependent on commodities production and exports have been descending one by one into recession, or at best stagnating.

Yet despite this growing global economic weakness, and the U.S. economy’s repeated annual economic relapses and ‘half normal’ recovery rate, we are still being told that the U.S. economy is sound and that it will lead the rest of the world economy toward sustained economic growth this year and next.

It’s the Weather!

We’re told the declines in U.S. growth the last two years – January to March 2015 and before that 2014 – have been due to ‘bad weather’. And that this coming summer 2015 the U.S. economy will ‘snap back’ again, as it did last summer 2014.

But is economic forecast by weather metaphor really the cause of the recent U.S. slowdown? Not really. Even economists themselves admit that, at the very most, only 0.5 percent of last quarter GDP decline can be attributed to weather. If the fourth quarter 2014 U.S. GDP was 2.2 percent, in other words, then only -0.5 percent of the drop was due to weather. So what about the other -1.5 percent drop from the fourth to the first quarter 2015?

A closer look shows that at least -1.25 percent of that -1.5 percent was due to the sharp decline in U.S. exports. That decline was due largely to the US dollar’s sharp rise in value compared to other currencies since last fall. A rising dollar makes U.S. exports more expensive. U.S. exporters lose out to European, Japanese and Chinese competitors. Since U.S. exports are largely manufactured goods, that means U.S. manufacturing slows – which it has. And that in turn means U.S. growth slows.

The reason for the dollar’s rise is threefold. First, the U.S. central bank’s repeated signaling of intent to raise U.S. interest rates this year. Second, the collapse of world oil prices that also drive up the dollar. Third, the massive money injections by Europe and Japan central banks in the form of ‘quantitative easing’ (QE) programs that are designed to drive down the value of the Euro and the Yen in order to achieve a competitive advantage for their region’s exports at the expense of U.S. exporters.

What’s going on globally today is rolling ‘competitive devaluations’ of currencies by means of massive central bank monetary injections. In ways this is somewhat like the 1930s depression. Then countries devalued their currencies by legal declaration, as they tried to boost their economies by stealing exports from competitors. The problem with that strategy is that all could do it, and they did. So no one gained in the end and the global economy and trade sank further. Today’s new form of competitive devaluation is no different. It signals the major capitalist regions of the world – i.e. north America, Europe, Japan, and now even China – are beginning to fight over a slower growing global economic pie. The devaluations are just assuming a different form. Not legal declaration but monetary injection by central banks.

In early 2014 Japan introduced its QE and central bank injection. It gained a temporary trade advantage. But then Europe did the same. Japan lost its advantage, which Europe gained. The U.S. lost the most in terms of exports, since its dollar rose for two reasons – Japan and Europe currencies falling and talk of U.S. interest rate hikes as well.

But most recently, the U.S. central bank has signaled that interest rates may not rise this year. Oops. There goes the Euro and Yen losing its advantage once more and their economies slipping again. This see-saw, back and forth, fighting over a shrinking trade pie only reveals a new instability growing in the global economy. Europe in particular will soon be hammered by a potential Greek debt default, a continually imploding Ukrainian economy it has committed to bail out at US$40 billion so far, and now the U.S. indicating it won’t raise rates. Watch Japan, which will likely again devalue still further to offset U.S. and Europe measures. Meanwhile, as China continues to slow, it could eventually reduce the Yuan to boost its exports as well.

What this global scenario means is that the U.S. economy significantly weakened in the first quarter 2015 due not to weather, but because of loss of global exports due to the reasons noted. But trade competition and currency wars are not the only explanation for the near collapse of the U.S. economy last quarter.

Collapse of Oil Prices and U.S. Economic Slowdown

Another major development in 2014 in the U.S., that disappeared by early 2015, was the Oil/Shale Gas boom. After having surged to record levels in the first half of 2014, contributing largely to the summer 2014 U.S. 5 percent GDP rise, after mid-year the global price of oil collapsed. By end of year 2014 the collapse was in full swing. Investment in this sector fell by nearly half, regional construction activity in the Dakota-Texas area also fell abruptly, as did the mining activity as oil/gas wells were shut down, and as railroad and trucking transport activity declined. A major contributor to 2014 economic growth in the U.S. thus fell through by early 2015. What’s significant, moreover, is that it won’t come back in 2015. So the ‘recovery’ in the summer of 2014 won’t have this contributing factor behind it in 2015.

One-Time Consumer Spending on Health Care

Another temporary factor that contributed to the summer 2014 surge in U.S. growth, that has also since disappeared, is first time consumer household spending on healthcare services. Last summer was the first full year of sign-ups by 10 million households to Obama’s ‘Affordable Care’ Insurance Program. Spending on new insurance premiums, and on healthcare services by millions of new customers for the first time, together served to give U.S. GDP last summer 2014 another major boost. But those sign-ups have leveled off. Most of those who wanted to sign up have done so. Future growth in health insurance and health care services has therefore leveled off.

So like the shale/oil gas surge and the export-trade advantage, the health care spending surge contribution to U.S. economic growth is most likely temporary as well.

Why the US Economy Will Continue A ‘Stop-Go’ Trajectory

There are three fundamental causes why the U.S. economy will continue on its 5 year long, stop-go recovery trajectory until the next recession in 2016 or after.

First, there is insufficient wage and income growth for the approximate 100 million wage earning households that constitute the bulk of consumer spending in the U.S., which accounts for roughly 70 percent of the US economy annually. In turn, the reason for the lack of wage and income growth by these households is the lack of full time, decent paying jobs creation in the US. Jobs that are being created are low pay, no benefit jobs. Part time and temp jobs. Service jobs, and few manufacturing or construction jobs. Working class consumption is also compressed by inability to earn interest on basic savings accounts. Then there’s household debt, for past education borrowing, for auto purchases, and credit cards, which also takes a toll on spending.

Second, there’s the lack of investment spending by business. Large, multinational corporations in particular continue to prefer to invest outside the U.S. rather than in it. When not investing abroad, they prefer to ‘spend’ their record profits on stock buybacks and dividend payouts to shareholders. More than US$5 trillion worth since 2009. Another trillion dollars projected in 2015 alone as well. Then there’s their growing investing in financial asset markets and securities, which now constitute about 25 percent of all multinational corporate investing. And what they don’t invest in financial assets, invest abroad, or spend in buybacks and dividends, they just hoard as cash on their balance sheets, reportedly now in excess of US$1.7 trillion in their offshore subsidiaries. None of these alternatives and diversions result in real investment that create real decent paying jobs, at decent pay and benefits. Hence, consumption by the 100 million households stagnates or lags—except for more debt based spending perhaps.

Third, there’s no sustained recovery on the near horizon because the U.S. government has clearly decided on growing only defense spending. The new Republican Party dominated U.S. Congress insists on cutting social programs further, including long time once sacrosanct programs like Medicare for seniors. In the first quarter U.S. GDP numbers, spending by State and Local governments slowed noticeably, as did US federal spending on non-defense products and projects.

Instead of sustained growth, the scenario is ‘stop-go’, as this or that temporary factor occur to boost U.S. GDP and growth temporarily, followed by other temporary developments that in turn subsequently drag U.S. GDP back to zero or negative growth. Add further to this scenario the Eurozone’s continuing economic instability, the UK’s new stagnant growth, Japan’s descent into yet another recession, China’s deepening struggle to maintain 7 percent growth that is almost certain to fall below that level soon, oil and commodity producing emerging markets that are already in recession, and an historic weak recovery already in its 5th year of an average 7 year cycle—then what remains is a likely further long term, stop-go US economy as the global economy continues to slow as well.

Jack Rasmus is the author of the forthcoming book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, by Clarity Press, 2015, and the prior book’s, ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’, 2012, and ‘Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few’, 2012. He blogs at jackrasmus.com.