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CBO REPORT - OMG!
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is out with its annual report. It’s a blockbuster. This 165 page monster is filled with dozens of charts, graphs and detailed projections. It will be talked about for weeks. The report provides a dismal outlook for the economy. There is one data point I'd like to focus on.
Here is the CBO forecast for real GDP for 2012 and 2013:
The 1.1% Real GDP number for 2013 surprised me. The CBO’s expectations are way under those of both the “Blue Chip” economists and the Federal Reserve:
What does it mean if the economy is going to slow, as CBO now thinks? Some consequences:
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The CBO now forecasts Social Security to run into trouble in just a few years. This is a very substantial change in the outlook for SS. Changed fortunes make it certain that America’s favorite entitlement program will be on the table for a significant re-vamp.
The CBO has answered two critical question:
1) In what year does SS first goes into deficit (including interest)?
2) What is the size of the SS Trust Fund when #1 has been achieved?
Key data is here:
Using this information, we can estimate the Trust Funds (TF) balances over time, and compare them to what SS forecast in its report to Congress ten-months ago:
SSTF's "Intermediate" (Base) case:
The bottom line is that the SSTF is going to top out three years ahead of “schedule” and be $800B shy of what it was “supposed” to be.
I think the CBO report has created a big headache for a good number of folks in D.C. Most of them are running for office this year. They certainly won't be able to wave the CBO report as a measure of how well they are doing.
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"I think the CBO report has created a big headache for a good number of folks in D.C. Most of them are running for office this year."
We know they're dicks... they know they're dicks...
Diebold will vote for them anyway...
Well well...
*Obama To Announce New Housing-Market Initiatives Wed - Senior Officials; Will Allow Refinancing Into Lower-Interest Federally Insured Loans
*Obama Housing Plan To Allow Millions To Refinance Mortgages - Senior Officials; Under-Water Borrowers Will Qualify For Obama Plan -Officials
Again I get fucked over. Here I've been, responsibly paying my 7.5% mortgage since 1998 on my $75K home...I now owe about $48K...and I'm not underwater. At least for a couple more months. By that time Obama's Cash for Flunkers program will be over and announced an abject failure. I've missed out on so much by making my fuckin' house payments!
Actually, I've actively avoided ANY GOVERNMENT program offered because, as far as I can tell, it eventually gets treated as some sort of Welfare check where you find yourself dancing to the tune those fuckwads in DC set.
I want nothing to do with them (I was going to say other than entertaining myself by watching them dingle-dance but that would mark me as a terrorist and the gestapo would come get me and put my ass in Gitmo without a warrant, trial or acknowledgement) other than ignoring their miserable shithole policies and living my life as a sovereign, natural born citizen.
Fuck Pres 0, fuck the congress (small 'c'), fuck the supremes, and to hell with every petty bureaucrat making more than $30k. They all deserve a couple extra holes in their heads....(wait, that makes me a terrorist, doesn't it? Someone better report me, before I report myself...could be a reward!)
Banks are robbing people where I live.
they said it would be just like the 30's only different.
robbing? how about calling it debt slavery?
What is it with you Bolsheviks and this "debt slavery" meme?
As if the "slaves" didnt have every oppurtunity to do something with the cash the banks lent them.
Slaves want money, they get money, they piss it away and the taxpayer backing the bank is supposed to write it off?
Hate the banks, hate the crooked pols, but people who borrow and welch are just as much a drain on the system.
LVD,
The "debt slavery" meme (at least to me) refers to a government that borrows money and sticks me with the bill. I didn't get to spend that money. In recent years the government's been borrowing $400 for every man, woman and child in America PER MONTH!!! Without even passing a budget.
The poor can't pay it.
The rich won't pay it.
So that leaves me and my family saddled with debts we never agreed to. I don't know what to call it but debt slavery.
Not to knitpick, but the rich can't pay it either... it's a really, really big number.
it's a really, really big number.
But, it's mostly zeros.
Yep, those damn welchers. And how about the people who aren't working? It aint that hard to get a job. They just don't even try. Why, if people would just get out there and look for a job, unemployment would not be near as high as it is. And young people, what a lazy bunch. Just sit around and look at computers all day. And of course unemployment in their age group is really high. You see how it works, when people don't look for a job, unemployment is high.
And another thing. You talk about taxpayers backing up the banks. If the taxpayers just did a better job of it, things would be a lot better. And you're right about the loans. People who couldn't afford it took out house loans and then, just because they lose their job, and their equity goes negative, they quit paying and get foreclosed. Well, dammit, they deserve it. Bolsheviks every one of 'em.
And you're right about debt slavery, just another phrase to make people feel better and take away people's responsibility for their situation.
Damn Bolsheviks.
Bolsheviks are just economic terrorist, we should put them on the no-fly list immediately.
Anybody got Janet Napolitano's phone number handy?
More and more deficits and lower and lower intereset rates.Within 2 years we will be at %2 on the 30 year and have almost 20 triiilion in debt.The msitake that the goverenemnt is making is that our deficits are much to small .they should be 10 trillion/year .the interest raets would appraoch zero
The Fed and Obama have been facing a quandry, they really, really want to print but it's so politically inexpedient without a nasty economic downturn, but crashing the market to provide the necessary cover is hard on re-election prospects. Is this the way out? No one saw it coming, at least as a report from a branch of the government but I could see them spinning this as a reason to print without the nasty downturn that's widely expected. Watch what happens to gold while this is bantied about. Watch to see if the S&P and finacials startto ramp again.
How long can we run the train by burning all the railroad cars for fuel?
I suddenly understand why the snake eating its tail was a very popular tribal art symbol.
Did cavemen have a federal reserve bank? Bernanke does strinkingly resemble a neanderthal.
People are fucking robbing banks where I live.
Must be nice; fucking banks are robbing people everywhere else!
Don't the robbers have enough debt already??
Maybe they'll screw up and grab some worthless re-hypothecated notional derivatives by mistake...oh, that's right, cash is getting more and more worthless by the day also...being a bank robber just isn't like it used to be...
The fucking banks are robbing people where I live.
Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank.
Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.
Give a man a printing press and he can own the world.
Help! A 800 lb. gorilla on angel dust is picking my pocket...
If that 1.1% was adjusted for the real inflation number, not the make believe one, it would be negative GDP.
Good point. And to take it further....look back at the graph above for GDP gap. In the upper left hand corner it says that all those trillions in dollars in GDP gap was calculated in 2005 DOLLARS !
Which makes that graph complete bullshit from the get go and the truth that much more ugly.
Whenever you read "calculated in xxxx dollars" it means it's normalized, in constant dollars. Adjusted for inflation.
That is, of course, if you believe the inflation numbers.
That is, of course, if you believe the inflation numbers.
Good point. I don't and nobody should....especially if you buy gas, groceries, and pay for utilities and health care.....you know.....just the basics for survival.
just ask jon corzie to vaporize any part of the report you don't like....i think that the report is optimistic....
The Corz has that kind of clout...
The Corz & The Bernank... moronic, bearded, cue-bald brothers...
Asparagus instead of green shoots?
No, peas. Eat 'em.
try these.
http://www.google.fr/search?q=giant+peas+in+a+pod+plush&hl=fr&client=saf...
..for the CSPAN junky in yuh. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/US2 <<< 2012 CBO Director
Bruce
I remember you did a critique of idiotic unemployment reports.
Check this one for the GDP calculations.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/dial_if_this_story_makes_your_eyes_mUsVVoUaMuMRt4AK2DlXxJ
You must have inspired John Crudele.
Two words: Soylent Green
As a product of the 1960s, all I can say is "eat me!"
Uh...I would like to point out that the S.S. program is NOT an entitlement program in the full sense of the word considering that we pay into it.
This mislabel sticks in my craw as the saying goes 'repeat a lie enough times and it becomes a fact'.
And thus will be the masses whipped up to a frenzy to take it away. Along with all the money I've paid into it.
And then those railing against such 'entitlements' will suddenly look around and realize they've shot themselves in their own damn foot.
The shooting happened long ago, and we didn't personally do the shooting, unless you include the way most of us have returned irresponsible Congress by irresponsible Congress to DC.
Apparently I won't be getting a chance to return my congressman, Allen West, to Congress. The Romney Republicans in Tallahassee redrew the district maps and added a bunch of Democrat voters to the district. Can't have any of those pesky conservative Republicans giving Boehner a hard time! Oh well, he didn't live in the district he represented, and he did vote to raise the debt ceiling, and he did stand up for his older constituents on Medicare, but that wasn't enough to save him from the RINOs running the Florida Republican Party.
Ronald Reagan once said (or, at least I read that he said it) that he didn't leave the Democrat Party, it left him. Now I know how he felt.
The magic supremes decided long ago that Social Security is a tax and not a defined benefit program. Just pay your tax and shut up if you don't get squat.
Too bad we can't get the SCOTUS to declare it unconstitutional and insist that Congress come up with a plan to dismantle it.
You poor deluded thing. You are right, it wasn't and isn't an entitlement. It was a lottery-death tax: the pay out started at 65, but life expectancy was 62. Most people paid until they died and got nothing back.
A conveniently, and frequently, overlooked bit of information. My old man is 3 months away from 80, so his lottery ticket came up a winner. My mother, on the other hand, passed on at 63, after cashing only a handful of "entitlement checks".
Food stamps = entitlement
SS = ROI
I did the math when my father retired. IIRC it took just a few years for him to collect all or most his contribution + interest. From that point forward he collected other's "contributions".
IMO the disability benefits are insane, off the scale, beyond the pale, etc.
SS is a Ponzi scheme. For years it has been paying people more than they paid into it. For example, the first monthly payment was issued on January 31, 1940 to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont. She paid in a total of $22.54 and eventualy collected a total of $22,888.92.
Like all Ponzi schemes, the earliest participants get huge payouts. But the later participants (e.g. the boomers in the case of SS) get shafted.
If you are counting on SS for your retirement: Good Luck!
My advice is to start buying gold now.
Let's see now, I put a dollar in a jar in 1971, when it bought 4 gallons of gas, I dug it up and went to the gas station and guess what, I could buy a quarter of a gallon. I paid the maximum contribution to SS for over 20 years and should get what those pre-inflation dollars value were worth. SS would be solvent if it were even used to buy treasuries instead of being used by the general fund. My .02 worth.
Clearly you put the wrong money into the jar. You should have found some of the silver-based quarters. They'd still buy a gallon of gas, and then some. Works for Ferraris, too, except that using silver dollars - freely circulated in 1962 - would be better than quarters. A new Ferrari 250GT cost $12,500. Imagine what you could buy with approximately $400,000. That's before capital gains, which shows how stupid our tax system is - paying capital gains taxes on real money.
As for SS being solvent "if it were even used to buy treasuries": what do you think happens when the government issues treasuries and gets money in return? Think about it and reevaluate your statement.
ponzi scheme fairy dust not sound economics
you could also use a gun
1 group of people forced to pay another group of people money that they won't see back and get anything for. That sounds like an entitlement program to me. That or extortion.
Double