Topic: Is the US economy going up or down? (Read 3640 times)

A country's war machine can actually help stimulate it's economy as massive amounts of money is spent on the war. Plus when the war is over (assuming the country wins the war) it's companies will often participate in the rebuilding in the country that lost the war, resulting in more economic activity

Watch out for China, will eat America and get sick with it's rotten bones.

Exactly. Maybe if US will starts to sell a part of their oil, there will be possible to stop the decreasing of economy. Hope that US will stop wars.

I agree that QE had somewhat distorted stock prices, (you should note that even now that QE is completed the stock market is continuing to hit record highs) it is not a 100% useless barometer of the health of the US economy. One thing you can look at is corporate earnings (which also influences stock prices) and by this measure the economy is doing very well.

So contrary to the community opinion, the U.S. economy is doing fairly well. The U.S. has been meeting inflation goals, GDP growth is better than most economies, the dollar is strong, and improved hydrocarbon production in addition to lower prices means less outflow to nations the U.S. doesn't really like. QE is slowing down, which signals faith in conventional growth, and the major indices like the Dow, NASDAQ, S&P, are performing fairly strongly.

All the signs and metrics suggest the U.S. economy is "going up" as you put it.

Stock market is a useless barometer because of QE, but I guess at some point it is going to have to reflect ground reality. There will be a bloodbath when the correction occurs.

Is very interesting to notice that majority of bearish opinions come from US, while majority of bullish opinions are overseas.

The main drive for this is the shale oil revolution, which is being minimized in the public channels so US can take a huge leap forward. Meanwhile, EuroFlowers go riot because they think shale is going to poison the Milky Way.

The second drive is that while in Euroland, Russia and LatAm are driving towards a neo-socialism (which means rigid labour, low productivity, subsidies and general misery) US and some Asian countries are still waving the business friendly flag.

As some pointed here, Stock Market is useless. Its pretty disconnected from reality since 2010. But you will live much better the next 10 years in USA than in any euro country, thats a fact. And im under the blue starred flag... 

US economy goes down slowly. We do not know the real things, but US economy is based on wars and oil. If that would be stopped somehow then drop of economy will be more than obvious.

It wasn't a 'fuck up', it was a plan. If you let someone / some entity control your money supply, than they will divert it to themselves and their friends.  Doesn't matter if it's 150 AD or 2500 AD, this will always be the case.

The riches of the middle case, earned in part by the success of WW2 for America, over the last 50 years or so, has been diverted to the pockets of the extremely wealthy. This isn't my theory, any charts showing the concentration of wealth will show this.

We now live in a world where the biggest corporations pay less than 2% tax on their earnings, such as Starbucks, and profit billions; while the guy working at Starbucks pays closer to a tax rate of 40% and can barely cover his bills. We live in a world where the US dollar is the world reserve currency, and is created by private corporation lending money to itself. The debt can not be paid. This is not going to end well.

What's going to happen next? It's  a big cycle. Shit will get worse and worse, everyone will get poorer and poorer while the elites get richer and richer, until their is collapse or revolution and the cycle starts again.

It is still not that stable compared to NZ and AUS

The U.S. based economy is definitely going down. To get a good indication of this--just look at the current gas prices. Oil prices generally present a clear indicator of how well people think an economy is doing. Gas prices up = people using their cars to go to places to spend money, hence the demand for gas increases. Reverse that and you have the current trend that is happening right now.

This is an over-simplified explanation but if you want a better explanation just ask.

It's not just the US economy but the World. Yeah down short term or near term but in the long term, it's always going up.

US economy going slowly down and will fall a lot,maybe in the next year we will se an increasing of the economy, but not now.

This man speaks the truth ,

High debt ,

High unemployment ,

High Inflation of the dollar ,

BRICS & friends dropping the Dollar all together ,

The U.S will fall under this house of cards soon enough. The dollar has become a currency too weak, it cannot sustain the U.S economy anymore, and everyday that passes the inflation gets worse. Every passing day, people in the streets are realizing that prices are going up, yet their disposable income is the same or less . They are feeling the 'trick' , which allows them to wake up and realize that something is WRONG and getting worse.

Generally speaking the rate of economic growth has a positive coloration with the overall standard of living in a country. This is due to the fact that as GDP rises, more goods and services will have been produced (this is the definition of GDP) so more labor hours will have to have been used to produce the additional goods/services. More labor hours means more income for the working class.

Down in inflated adjusted term, up in not adjusted term.

course of a country's economic growth is very influential in the welfare and growth of the business sector in the country, with a growing economy will give rise to new entrepreneurs that will improve the welfare of the people in that country, with the emergence of new entrepreneurs will open new jobs, hopefully with economic growth will be in line with the increase in social welfare ...

I agree that the drop in the labor force participation rate is a serious problem for the US. It will prevent the US from realizing it's full potential and is creating an unknown level of slack in the labor market, which will make it very difficult for policy markers to know when to adjust monitory policy as it is not known when/if these people will return to the workforce

US economy is going slowly down, consider that Putin one months ago has sold all of USA title for a big quantity of money. This title was converted in gold  . Anyway i consider that China in the next future (1-2 years) will be the biggest and powerful country of the world.

The average American is indeed sensing danger. A recent survey found that 61% of Americans believe a catastrophe is looming - yet only 15% feel prepared for such a deeply troubling even.

But for US people , now they must prepare for the crash , If they brace their selves properly and control the impact, they will survive it.

The purpose of QE was to get people to take on more risks, which they have, as can been seen by the fact that asset prices have risen sharply since QE has started. I would also argue that both companies and people have borrowed money they otherwise would not have borrowed (or at least refinanced existing debt) as many companies have been borrowing money at record low interest rates and many consumers have been refinancing debt (the lower payments that results in refinancing can be used to purchase additional goods/services in the economy)

The excess money hasn't resulted in people and companies borrowing more, to take advantage of low interest rates. So the purpose of QE has been defeated, in a sense.

Most assets have not made their way to emerging markets, although a lot of extra money has found it's way here. The vast majority of the money is on bank balance sheets via excess reserves. Above that much of it has found it's way into stock and bond markets which is creating a potential bubble in the bond markets especially

It is a global asset bubble, not just the US. Most of the dollars that the US Fed has printed has found its way into emerging markets.

The effects of changes to monetary policy can take up to two years to be reflected in the economy and in inflation rates. The federal reserve is seeing signs that the economy is picking up at a rate enough to support higher interest rates, however they do not know for sure this is the case. If they raise interest rates now then they are guessing that the economy will be strong in ~2 years

Seems to me that the bubble is still being inflated.  It's just a matter of time that it bursts and this time will be even worse then before.  The day that happens bitcoin will soar!!!  Who knows when that will happen though.  My guess is within 2 years. 

Life is pretty good right now in the US economy at least by the numbers.  If your looking for a job like me you might think differently.

QE ending implies that the US economy is going up.

It is going up because of energetic. That "shale gas" that is forbidden to do in most of Europe, is pumping USA economy. Without it recovery after 2008 crysis would be much much harder if succeed at all.

Down in flames soon enough:

De-dollarizatiin globally by China, Russia, and other nations establishing their own trade agreements in anything but Dollars. Moves to kill the Petrodollar are all around, which is about the only thing that gives US currency any value at all. I don't put it past China to re-back their currency on the massive amount of gold they have sucked up over the last few years, and introduce the Petroyuan. If that happens the US is lost.

Massively, ridiculously large bubbles in assets, stocks, government debt, student debt, sub-prime auto debt, housing, basically everything, thanks to Federal Reserve QE pumping of the currency supply. Doing this has never worked in recorded history to correct a faltering economy, it just props it up until it collapses under its own weight.

Global economies are now so interconnected what affects them affects us too.

There no chance in hell the US economy will just magically be saved. The ultimate correction is coming, and it will be absolutely painful for anyone not prepared. I just hope my investments today in cryptocurrencies and metals help me hedge the fallout. Fiat currency is a liability.

The Chinese are having to do what the Western nations have been doing for the past seven years to keep its economy moving forward.

Lots of money is being thrown at so called 'Public works'.

Hmm maybe you read about that 3-4 months ago.
Still thinking China Economic Growing Up  this time ?

World Economic is not good at this time , its like a time bomb.
And that mean US economy will going down too , but not in massive scale.

Still look good. But the economy of China is coming up really fast.

The way things are looking QE will likely end up having to continue. Just before the 2012 election, QE was extended to make the stock market shoot up higher to help get president Obama reelected (most economists and onlookers were almost universally predicting that QE would not get extended because the fed is suppose to be an independent agency and extending QE at the time would strongly benefit Obama). I would suspect that something similar would happen this election cycle to help the liberals keep the senate (which will hopefully not work)

Let's be clear. I'm a trader and the first thing is you're looking for trouble asking on an internet forum for trading tips.

Here's my hypothesis:

- stock market in a topping out pattern for last 6 months.. markets usually top out when they stagnate at the end of a large advance. usually the break is sharp and swift

- entire advance since 2012 has been a false break out of the S&P, the channel runs from 2010-2012 until the break out. now we've got a retracement back into the channel and below it. that's gonna be a sharp and swift decline

- we've got some days coming up of 10-20% down moves in the S&P

- many many social signals of the S&P topping out are circulating. one is, the belief that "if everyone believes a bubble, its not a bubble". Try this: "if everyone believes that if everyone believes a bubble, its not a bubble, then it IS a bubble"

in short, its clear the economic recovery is a paper recovery with no fundamental change in people's wealth. get your short positions in place and look out below

TLDR;

Next few weeks gonna be interesting

It's easy to realise why things have been so screwed up when you see how much bad information people are force fed.

There is too much focus on compliance and not enough on innovation which leads to the mess we have.

If there was a time to 'dethrone the rich' it should have come six years ago. Sadly 'Occupy Wall St.' was a joke, from the beginning. The people involved had been fed such a hearty diet of obedience that they did not know how to rebel in the face of oppression and mistreatment.

End of QE in October=stronger dollar=deflation=economy turns down=new QE in 2015???

That sucks. I came from Greece. When the euro was implemented the price of everything seemed to skyrocket continuously.

It's hard for me to understand how we can fuck it up this badly for ourselves here in the united states. We have 300 million people in a gigantic country with good capabilities/minerals/strategic position.

People here could potentially become net producers for society and sustain themselves endlessly.

Even with climate change there will still be places suitable for agriculture. We have deserts and other places for all the wind power and solar. There is plenty of water (if we manage it correctly instead of spilling the majority of it onto grass and also evaporating it in the air in the process, (also spilling millions of gallons of it because someone pissed in it)).

We have huge forests, more good land than we know what to do with.


Perhaps we've left the corporations screw us over with no limit. The rich could be dethroned very easily, all we have to do is replace their stuff with our stuff. A new renaissance with 3-d printing coupled with ingenuity and knowledge to create working machines to replace anything. Where we choose wisely the corporations we deal with. Boycotting products that are created unethically and places that pay people bellow a minimum wage out of existence.

I see a lot of action taking place even now, but I don't know what to make of it. BTC is a step forward.

The banks inflated the economy with funny money last time around.

This time it's the Federal money that has inflated the economy.

Sit back and wait for the crash because it's coming.

Another indicator would be real wages (private sector especially) - which haven't risen.

That would be a real sign of a growing economy.

down in the mid/long run. and after that, up 

The economy is currently growing. The rate of growth is much less then what most economists would expect at this point in a recovery after a recession. The economy had shrank in the first quarter of the year however many economists had downplayed that to be caused by extremely cold weather and economy data has somewhat baked that up.

the economy is in a worse shape than it was in 2007, don't let stock prices fool you, the reason they are high is because of all the money the fed printed in QE1-3.
once those stocks are sold and people actually try to realize the gains by buying products there will be hyperinflation.

It will go up until the federal reserve and the dollar run out of power to keep everything going and as it stands now the dollar is beginning to lose it's reserve currency status, partially in thanks to Bitcoin which is why countries like Russia and China fear it so much, what's keeping the U.S economy rising right now is inflation, so eventually there will be another crash like 2008 - 2009, the question is just when.

I think their economy is going up.

I said that based on my local currency.
US $ crush my currency until Rp 12.000 now ( before was Rp 9.000 then Rp 11.900)

I'm so sad about this, My primary need's cost (food,hotel,etc) is getting higher and higher 

Doesn't matter, all these macroeconomic data improvements only satisfy the wealthy, most people will go on wit their shitty lives.
Economic growth has nothing to do with living conditions in a country. Economic growth is irrelevant. Employment rates and personal debt rates matter

not good.
Every four to six years, the U.S. experiences an economic slowdown. Although the current bull market is now in its fourth year, there are many existing issues.
http://www.useconomicoutlook2014.com/

Simple question. From where I'm standing it seems to be doing neither so I'd like to hear some facts and perhaps some opinions.