Monday, May 2, 2016

Buffet to Trump: America Already Great


Looks like Buffet is throwing in with the Hillary camp, makes sense he's a big operator within the FIRE sector.

Buffet's glass half full: The complement of 5% unemployment means 95% employment what's not to like?  What is so bad about just 5% unemployment?





14 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

Buffet is a natural supporter for Dems. Their willingness to create barriers to entry and minimize competition to for preferred ideological reasons requires billionaire rent seeker cooperation with the party ideology and vice-versa. Buffet only buys companies with monopolies or market dominance. There has to be close cooperation in order for rent seekers to know which policies are winners and which market dominant companies are politically favored. You'll notice that Buffet gave a nod to Amazon and Costco and Clean Energy which is favored with Dems and has shunned previous investments in Walmart, Exxon and MidAmerican's dirty generation as he positions himself for a continuing Democrat control of the Presidency. Building party unity and bringing everyone on board in a two-party government is very, very similar to how it is done in a single party government. Xi and Hillary are two peas in a pod.

MRW said...

Matt, you keep citing 5% unemployment. That’s a U3 figure (Bureau of Labor Statistics) and bullshit.

[copy of my previous comment; you probably missed it]:

The U6 rate is far more revealing. It's reality: 9.8%.

For foreigners here, this is the U6 unemployment rate. http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp

The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons.” Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over.

Again, for all foreigners on this board, scroll down the link I give above to see a definition of U1 through U6 unemployment rates.

This website compiles the US Bureau of Labor Statistics info in an easier to read and understand format.

Peter Pan said...

Give it up MRW, he'll just change it to "What's so bad about 9.8% unemployment, that means 90.2% are employed".

Matt Franko said...

Hey I dont agree with Buffet just pointing out how I think he is rationalizing his position here..

Also pointing out how you guys are not being satisfied with 95% success yet that is often looked upon as a very satisfactory outcome.... you guys should think about where you are getting that....

MRW said...

"you guys should think about where you are getting that"

Why? So it’s NAIRU (Non-Accelerating Inflationary Rate of Unemployment), that phony trade-off between inflation and unemployment the Fed Board of Governors adopted as Holy Grail because Congress refuses to do its constitutional duty to provide for the “general welfare” of the people, as Mike pointed out in his hilarious talk on the panel at Columbia Law School.

MRW said...

http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/05/my-talk-at-columbia-law-school.html

MRW said...

"adopted as Holy Grail” under Clinton. The architect of the Great Recession.

MRW said...

Mike’s talk starts around 30 minutes. Lasts around 18 minutes or so.

Ignacio said...

More than 0% involuntary unemployment can be qualified as success.

Playing the numbers game is just falling on faux logic which gives legs to things like the NAIRU.

More than 0% unemployment and underemployment == failure.

Ignacio said...

Failure/success are binary qualifiers applied by a XOR operator (exclusive or). One cannot assert that "you have been 95% successful", you ar either a 100% successful or failure.

Matt Franko said...

"Congress refuses to do its constitutional duty"

Hey MRW its WORSE than that as they have the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act... keywords here being FULL and EMPLOYMENT... which these people just IGNORE...

and you had 'the coin'... LEGAL! according to many scholars.... they just blow that off...

These are a bunch of lawless libertarian morons were up against...

an PS the Federal Reserve Act which mandates "maximum employment with stable prices..." keywords here being MAXIMUM and EMPLOYMENT....

They just flaunt the law anyway....

Ignacio said...

More than 0% involuntary unemployment can* be qualified as success.

*can't

TofuNFiatRGood4U said...

MRW,

Thanks for this link (and others). Many of your posts are very high value.

MRW said...

Thanks for the compliment, TofuNFiatRGood4U. It surprised me.