Geithner's Transparent & Immediately Provable Lie About the Econom

Geithner said (Meet The Press 4-15-12) that Obama administrationt policies have proven “remarkably successful,” even though nominal unemployment has been above the 8% mark for 38 straight months, and real unemployment rests somewhere between 11-12%.
Geithner based his statement on a comparing the effectiveness of Obama’s policies versus those of other recoveries since World War II. That this is a lie is attested to by the two chart above, which shows that the current recovery is actually the worst of all recoveries since World War II.

Chart 1 shows the total percentage change in US Employment at 51 months after the peak unemployment for that recession. 51 months was chosen because we are currently exactly 51 months from the peak unemployment (10.1%) of the 2007-8 recession.

Chart 2 shows percent change in US employment as a function of time since the start of the recovery for each recession since World War II. Note that the recovery from the current recession has taken longer than all but the 2001 recession, and has gone more negative than any but the 2nd dip of the recession of 1980.

Geithner's statement can only be viewed as either ignorant or a deliberate lie, since the data (from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) was certainly known to him.

The United States Treasury Department appears to have been dragooned into joining the Obama Re-election campaign.

America is turning into Europe economically. Can Anti-Semitism Be Far Behind?

Not even the most delusional of Obama's economic whores (Gene Sperling, Auston Goolsby, Larry Summers, Elizanbeth Warren, and minions ) can any more continue to deny  that the US economic recovery is weak, and much weaker than all previous recoveries since the end of WWII.

The weakness is best illustrated by  the stagnant employment to population ratio. This ratio summarizes two labor market quantities: the unemployment rate and the labor participation rate. A declining ratio indicates that:

                         ->  out of the available population, we are using fewer resources.

Why is this?  

1) because workers cannot find jobs (high unemployment rate) or,

2) because unemployed persons are giving up searching for jobs and leaving the labor force. This is precisely the activity which causes  a low labor participation rate, namely people who can work choosing not to seek work.

The current level of the employment to population ratio in the US remains at a very low level (by recent historical standards) and has not increased since the recovery started. This behavior is very different from what we have witnessed in previous recoveries dating back to 1945.

Moreover, the number of people claiming disability has soared. It rose to a record 8.7 million during March, 2012, doubling since February 1997. Over this period, their numbers have increased by 4.3 million. This helps to explain some of the drop in the labor force participation rate, which fell from 66.9% to 63.8% over this period. 

How can we understand this monster increase in Disability Claims? One explanation is that people are relying more on governmental transfer payments in general, taking advantage of any and all government handouts available to them: Food Stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and yes, Disability. And why are people increasingly seeking out these programs now? BECAUSE THEY CAN'T FIND WORK. So they look for help in every quarter, and that includes Disability claims. Who can blame them. 

It is worth noting that Medicare fraud alone is estimated to cost $60 Billion per year. No doubt fraudulent claims for other government programs, Unemployment, Food Stamps, and the rest, undoubtedly are rife with fraud. This ends up in the FBI and other government police authorities with burgeoning budgets and jobs for life, and with hapless people caught in their crimes and suffering the consequences. Congratulations, big government.

The above is a little example of the perniciousness of big government. A vicious force that draws desperate and unfortunate people into its dependency snare, ruining not just the lives of the beneficiaries and fraudsters alike.

The McKinsey Global Institute points out, the U.S. may face a shortfall of almost two million technical and analytical workers and a shortage of several hundred thousand nurses and as many as 100,000 physicians over the next ten years. In aerospace, 60% of the workforce is aged over 45 years old compared with 40% in the overall economy. How will these jobs be filled? Either by importing skilled labor via H1B visas, or by sending these jobs overseas. 

The US is trending towards becoming a failed socialistic big government state, like all the European failed states, not only the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain), but France and Germany, too. Hand in glove with economic problems, historically, from Nazi Germany starting in the 1920's, to Toulouse, France, a few weeks ago, comes...wait for it...yes, you guessed it. Antisemitism.  This is already epidemic in Germany, witness the scurrilous Antisemitic "poem" by the Nazi Nobel Laureate, Gunther Grass. And witness the increase in murders of Jews in Europe, in Mumbay, in Argentina. It follows as the night the day, that America will not be exempt from history. Yes, right here in River City.

Reagan Had Worse Unemployment But Recovered More Quickly Than Obama: Why?

The chart shows the unemployment rate during the Reagan and Obama Presidencies. Reagan had a much worse unemployment crisis than Obama, with unemployment reaching nearly 11% in November of 1982. However Reagan's policies succeeded in jump starting a vigorous economic recovery, and did so  in record short time, as the graph shows. 

What were the policies that achieved this? 1) drastic tax cuts (from 70% to 28%), 2) tax reform, 3) reining in stultifying federal deregulation and massive de-regulation, 4) holding the line on spending, and 4) firing of thousands of air traffic controllers without giving in to union demands. Reagan also agreed to a budget package with Democrats (which he later regretted) calling for $2 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increase. However the Democrats reneged on the deal, and the spending cuts never occurred.

By contrast with Reagan, unemployment under Obama never got worse than 10.1%, and never as bad as under Reagan. Obama complains constantly that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. But it was not the worst on unemployment. And under Obama's policies of mis-directed spending (Stimulus Package), cutting back drilling, wasting money on failing green projects, job killing over-regulation, a hostile attitude towards business, Dodd Frank, Volker Rule, Buffett Rule, Cash for Clunkers, HARP, TARP, and other failures, unemployment has lasted longer than at anytime since the great depression. 

Obama policies have hurt the economic recovery and have hurt unemployment. The chart clearly shows the fact: Reagan's unemployment problem was worse than Obama's, but Reagan brought unemployment back much more quickly. Unemployment under Obama is recovering much more slowly than any other recession since 1945. Obama's policies have made the recovery slower and longer.

George Mason U.Study: Obama healthcare could worsen U.S. debt by $530 billion

A new report from Citigroup on the U.S. healthcare system makes the case that Obamacare isn’t going to work. The report reads like it was written by Paul Ryan. Instead of curbing government spending, President Barack Obama's healthcare law could add up to $530 billion to the federal debt over ten years, a Republican expert on U.S. government benefit programs said on Tuesday. A study by Charles Blahous, a George Mason University research fellow and the Republican trustee for the Medicare and Social Security entitlement programs for the elderly, challenged the administration's contention that the 2010 law would reduce healthcare costs. Among the points made are the following:

1) The 3d-party payments system are at the root of the subversion in market forces. There is no healthcare market ruled by supply and demand.
    - U.S. healthcare outlays have grown 2 ½ percentage points faster than U.S. income over the past three 
      decades
    - Healthcare price inflation exceeded overall consumer price inflation by 2 percentage points in the same
      period
    - Per-capita U.S. healthcare expenditures are nearly twice the average of other OECD members.
    - There is a significant lack of economic incentives in either private or public insurance schemes
    - With no incentives, patients are unlikely to consider impacts of their spending on the public purse or
       program costs for private insurance        
    - Spending decisions are largely left to Health providers who themselve derive income with each
       procedure or pharmaceutical sold

       Upshot: In arguments for or against a market-determined healthcare system, U.S. policymakers
       shouldn’t pretend that one now exists in the US.

2) When markets forces are allowed to function in healthcare, they work their usual magic:
    - In areas where expenditures are uninsured, and patients consider the economic ramifications for their
       treatments, market competition has reduced price pressures notably.
    - When market forces are allowed to function, it is unknown to have shortages of supplies or rapid price
       increases products like off-prescription drugs, elective surgeries, and tests.

3) U.S. healthcare system is NOT an example of a market failure.
    - “With government transfers covering nearly half of healthcare outlays and private transfer schemes
        covering all but 12% of the consumer healthcare budget, it seems ironic that high healthcare costs in the 
        U.S. are deemed a ‘market failure’ when functioning market price competition barely exists.”

4) Having a part private, part public healthcare systemis a bad mix.
    - ”The healthcare system in the U.S. reminds us somewhat ominously of the bubble in housing finance, a
       “public/private partnership.” Housing consumption still receives strong tax preferences, as does health     
        to quasi-nationalization, housing GSEs earned private profits from public subsidies for housing, as do
        U.S. healthcare providers.”

5) A market-based, consumer-driven healthcare system might be best, although hard to implement now.
    - Counting private health insurance and other transfer schemes, only 12.0% of health care outlays are now
       directly paid for by consumers (according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services).
    - It projects this amount will fall to just 9.4% by the end of the decade.
    - Reversing these shares is simply politically unlikely.”

6) Of course, Obamacare increases government subsidies for healthcare
    - Directly or by expanding Medicaid.
    - Obamacare doesn’t fix the Medicare fee-for-service issue.
    - Overall, Obamacare makes the third-party payment system worse. 
    - Obamacare makes it harder for markets to operate. 
    - At the same time, it doesn’t strictly ration care like some foreign healthcare systems. At least not yet

7) The Citigroup study suggests we are headed:
    - “Government programs should be governed, and program participants must live with limits, controls and
        intervention that come with government budgets.”

Intertwined Lives - Check out video of convention of identical twins

One theory is that all of us, yes I mean ALL OF US, really are identical twins.

What happens is that at conception there are always at least 2 foetuses who start out in Mom's womb. For most cases, however, similar to the case of chicks in a bird's nest, one of the foetuses starts to garner more and more of Mom's bounty, and in most cases the 2nd and additional twins wither and die.

Documented cases of this are seen in bird's nest, even to the extreme wher the dominant chick will peck its competing sibling chicks to death or push them out of the nest altogether to die.

In humans, this theory goes, except in the relatively rare case of twins and mulitple births, those of us who are born as single births emerge from the womb alive, having, yes, caused the death of our twin.

It is a well known phenomenon among twins that when one twin dies, the surviving one mourns terribly, and usually dies also fairly quickly thereafter.

 Something of that persists in all of us who are single births. We know in our heart of hearts that we really had a twin once, and we cannot forget him or her, and we mourn for our lost twin. When we are feeling sad and depressed, something of that is going on.

 We long for our twin. And that is why we seek a mate to marry. We are looking for our twin in our spouse. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. But we are searching for our lost twin, who we sometimes also call our "Doppleganger", a German word signifying "double companion", or maybe soul mate.

What does all this lead to. Well, people, it is all about the twins, and the shared genes. So if or when anyone has the opportunity to meet or get to know, a person with whom they closely share a gene pool, a father, a mother, a sister, a brother, then is it any wonder that we will go to the ends of the earth to meet them. And so we should. We are naturally attracted to our gene moms, dads, sister, brother, and we love them innately.

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/intertwined_lives1

We've all heard highly romanticized stories about identical twins, like twins who've been separated at birth only to grow up leading remarkably similar lives, or twins who can sense when the other one is in danger. But what's the opposite side of these stories? What are the experiences of twins who become weary of constantly being confused with their identical twin? How would it feel to share 100% of your DNA with someone else and be pressured by everyone to perform the same in school, in sports, and in various other aspects of your lives? Intertwined Lives explores the lives of five sets of identical twins, all at different stages in their lives and relationships, to answer these questions./Ben and Nathaniel Ludewig (both 10 years old) remember believing they were one person, named "Bendanno," when they were younger--although that hasn't stopped the two boys from fighting like cats and dogs. But, as people get older, more things start to factor into their lives and things get a bit more complicated and sometimes bittersweet./ Inseparable, Ruth and Rachel Sandweiss have lived together for most of their lives. Rachels' recent engagement, though, has created a difficult moment in their relationship. Now, the two women wonder what life will be like no longer being able to spend all of their time together. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are AHNA and IRENE FERTIK, who chose to spend 20 years of their adult lives completely separated from each other (living on opposite coasts of the US). They thought that this would be good for their lives, since they wouldn't be there to constantly influence each other's decisions. But, even with all that time apart, the two still haven't found a happy medium in their relationship./ In a similar vein, PAUL GOLDSMITH, for several years now, has been estranged from his twin brother, Aaron. When asked, Paul says he feels as though having an identical twin robs one of their identity. So, let's face it: some twins love being twins, and others absolutely hate it. But, in the end, it's the close bonds and the constant competition twins have in their intertwined lives that defines not only their relationships, but also their identities.

Twins and Fingerprints

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/06qna.html?_r=2

Twins and Fingerprints-Q. Why do identical twins have different fingerprints? Why do we have fingerprints to begin with?

A. The probable answers to both questions are related to the minute differences in the mechanical forces each developing fetus experiences in the uterus as its cells proliferate.

Researchers have found that identical twins have a very high correlation of loops, whorls and ridges, but a review study last year in Circulation Research examining how complex structures like the circulatory system develop says that “the detailed ‘minutiae’ — where skin ridges meet, end or bifurcate — are different even between identical twins.” Even twins that develop from one zygote occupy different positions in the womb, and the variations are enough to make a difference.

At the crucial stage of development, the study explains, ridges are thought to form as compressive stresses develop in the dermal cell layer of the skin, sandwiched between the epidermis and the subcutaneous tissue. “Like the buckling of land masses under compression,” the study continues, regular ridges form to relieve the stress.

Where the skin is flat, the ridges are parallel; but primates have raised pads on their fingertips at this stage, so the ridges form along lines of equal stress. “Surrounding the highest point of the raised pad,” the study says, “ridges form in concentric circles.” Meanwhile, the pads are regressing, but where they remain high longer, ridges form whorls. Pads that have largely regressed give rise to a simple arch pattern. Where the processes of ridge formation and pad regression overlap, an intermediate loop pattern results. C. CLAIBORNE RAY

The Mysteries of Twins

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/twins/twins2.htm

twins are the perfect people on whom to test hypotheses about what is molded by life's pressures and what is inborn...on average, identical twins tend to be around 80 percent the same in everything from stature to health to IQ to political views...evidence from the comparison of twins raised apart points rather convincingly to genes as the source of a lot of that likeness...

James Arthur Springer and James Edward Lewis, had just been reunited at age 39 after being given up by their mother and separately adopted as 1-month-olds.they had each married and divorced a woman named Linda and remarried a Betty. They shared interests in mechanical drawing and carpentry; their favorite school subject had been math, their least favorite, spelling. They smoked and drank the same amount and got headaches at the same time of day.

another set of twins, Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe.
when the twins were reunited in their fifth decade they had similar speech and thought patterns, similar gaits, a taste for spicy foods and common peculiarities such as flushing the toilet before they used it.

studies have been done to show that identical twins are roughly 85 percent similar for IQ, fraternal twins about 60 percent...On average, identical twins raised separately are about 50 percent similar -

twins tell uncanny stories of wordless understandings, of moments of grief or joy communicated at a distance without benefit of a phone,

a woman named Gilia Angell recalls wandering into the St. Patrick's Cathedral gift shop in New York and buying a postcard of an airbrushed Jesus, which she mailed to her twin sister in Olympia, Wash. A few days later, she says, a letter postmarked the same day arrived from Olympia. Enclosed was a refrigerator magnet "with the same filmy airbrushed picture of Jesus!"

Victor McKusick was treated at Massachusetts General Hospital for an infected arm,...Victor developed a dental abscess. His brother, sailing up from Maine to join him, had to make an emergency shore call after developing the same problem

Scientists in Richmond have shown that correlations for marijuana and cocaine use are nearly the same between fraternal and identical twins, suggesting that social environment is the main cause of drug experimentation. But the identical twin of a drug addict is far more likely to be an addict than is the fraternal twin of an addict.