Testing The Financial Apologists

This is true, but comprehending and interpreting the content is equally important. I think coffee was snorted up noses across multiple nations when you wrote this. If by this you mean selecting which experts to trust then no. That would be the fallacy of argument from authority. But established experts with a history of reliability can be the quickest route to trustworthy information. That doesn't mean it *should* be trusted. At best you've been granted a head start in establishing the trustworhtiness. Your whole MO is picking who to trust based on questionable criteria, usually a slick video that to everyone but you fairly screams "used car/snake-oil salesman." The best path to understanding is fact gathering and analysis, not picking who to trust. Information becomes trustworthy after it has been confirmed and verified. The least trustworty information begins with "someone said." But sources that have a history of providing trustworthy information can be very helpful in reducing the amount of effort required to establish that information is trustworthy. For example, the Post reports today that Zelensky plans to attend the G-7 summit in Japan (Zelensky to attend G-7 summit in Japan in person). Can I trust that information, or should I begin investigating? Usually I would just trust it, but today I checked it out to see if my trust was well placed and I found that the New York Times, the BBC, Newsweek, Axios, the Financial Times, The Daily Beast and even the South China Morning News are reporting the same thing. I think it's a safe bet that Zelensky will be attending the G-7 in Japan.But Brietbart reported uncritically on a statement by the New York City Mayor that nearly half of NYC hotel rooms are now filled with migrants (Mayor Eric Adams: Nearly Half of NYC Hotel Rooms Now Filled with Migrants). Breitbart even tried to cite evidence supporting the mayor's comments. But a quick check reveals that the mayor's comments were widely interpreted by other news outlets as a gross exaggeration, including the conservative New York Daily News. A common comment was that the math just doesn't add up. Hotels rooms are being used to house migrants, but so are other facilities like gymnasiums. I just checked Travelocity and had no trouble finding pages and pages of hotel rooms that I could check into later today. Virtually no one except Breitbart granted the mayor's comments any credibility.Over time I've come to trust the Post's reporting, but were I to pay attention to Breitbart I expect that over time I would become increasingly skeptical.A very useful skill is the ability to start with initial information and drill down to establish whether it's actually trustworthy. Over time you develop a sense of who deserves trust, a useful shortcut. What people are telling you, over and over, is that you simply do not possess these skills. You are doomed to forever march from charlatan to charlatan because unable to assess substance you are left making your judgments based solely on the veneer.--Percy

From Border crossings down, but many migrants released to U.S. to ease crowding in today's Washington Post:

Washington Post:

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More quietly, however, border authorities have been trying to alleviate crowding inside jampacked detention cells and processing tents along the border by releasing thousands of migrants while their immigration claims are pending in U.S. courts — a practice that for years has been a major driver of illegal entries.

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Is that very last part true, that releasing migrants with pending hearings into the country is a "major driver of illegal entries"? I'd accept it uncritically because it's a long article and it's not practical to check every little fact, but it's the opposite of what I've heard from time to time, namely that he vast majority of migrants show up for their hearings, so I'm checking out this claim.From Vera, which says it ain't so:

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Irrefutable evidence shows that over the past two decades the majority of immigrants have shown up for immigration court hearings. Rates of appearance increase when people have legal representation, calling into question the logic of detaining people in prison-like conditions when representation is a viable alternative to ensure court appearances.

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Who says the opposite? People like Mike Pence, for example:

Mike Pence:

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Ninety percent of the people never show up for their hearing in the months ahead. ... The overwhelming majority, plus-90 percent, don’t show up.

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The full article (How many migrants show up for immigration court hearings?) gave Pence 4 Pinocchios, but the correct answer is complicated because there are so many paths through the immigration system that involve multiple court appearances. I concluded that a fair general answer is that 85% of migrants show up for all their scheduled court appearances, and those with legal representation show up for 99%.I could dig more, but this is consistent with what I've read in the post. If someone casts doubt on this I will dig more, but for now it would appear that today's Post article was wrong to claim that release is a major contributor to illegal entry.And *that* is how you figure out whether information can be trusted.--Percy

It has been claimed in this thread several times that inflation in the US is the result of liberal economic policies when the reality is that inflation is a post-covid world-wide phenomenon that the US is weathering better than many other countries of the world. Here's an image making this point from the New York Times: We do have to reduce the annual deficit so that economic growth can shrink the national debt in relation to annual GDP.--Percy

Joe Scarborough is a former Republican congressman from Florida who has moved more toward the center and now co-hosts MSNBC's Morning Joe, which I've never seen. He just wrote a piece in the Atlantic titled America Is Doing Just Fine. He says a lot of positive things about the current state of America, and I thought I'd fact check it.

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Even after the chaos unfolded in Kabul, most Americans told pollsters they supported Biden’s decision to get U.S. troops out after 20 years.

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This appears to be true. While the country was fairly unified in its horror at the chaos and mayhem and loss of life and the abandonment of Afghanistanis who assisted us while we were there, most Americans felt is was past time to get out of Afghanistan. This is from a Gallup report on American public opinion shortly after the withdrawal ( American Public Opinion and the Afghanistan Situation ):

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More recent polling (but conducted before the massive Aug. 26 explosion that killed U.S. service members and many civilians) generally shows a majority negative assessment of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. These include an NBC News poll conducted Aug. 14-17 showing that 61% of Americans say the Afghanistan War was not worth it -- "When it comes to Afghanistan, do you think the war was worth it or not worth it?" -- and an AP-NORC poll from Aug. 12-16 finding that 62% of Americans say the war in Afghanistan was not worth fighting.
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An Ipsos survey conducted April 16-18 found 50% supported the idea of the U.S. bringing home "all of its troops from Afghanistan immediately," while 27% opposed. The 2021 Chicago Council Survey, conducted July 7-26, found 70% support for the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11. A Quinnipiac poll in May found 62% support. A Fox News poll conducted after the April announcement gave respondents two options -- removing all troops or leaving some U.S. troops in Afghanistan for counterterrorism operations -- and found 50% opted for the latter choice, while 37% said that all troops should be removed.

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More recently, even as reports of the Taliban takeover began to dominate the news, Americans appeared to be sticking to their support for the U.S. getting out of Afghanistan. A CBS News poll from Aug. 18-20 found 63% approval of the U.S. removing troops from Afghanistan. A Morning Consult/Politico poll found somewhat more muted support in its Aug. 16-19 poll among registered voters, with 53% supporting and 36% opposing the decision.
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Several commentators have noted a particularly loaded wording in another question included in Morning Consult/Politico polling:

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"Do you believe the U.S. should still withdraw its military presence in Afghanistan if it means it creates an opening for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to establish operations in Afghanistan?"

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Even with this "directed verdict question," 45% of Americans agreed that troops should be withdrawn, compared with 40% who said they should not.

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The above is from August, 2021. I can't find more recent polling. While Americans favored withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was widely perceived as mishandled and began a slide in Biden's approval ratings that continued until recently.More from Joe Scarborough:

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Childhood poverty has dropped to the lowest level on record;...

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This graph from We can cut child poverty in the United States in half in 10 years - Equitable Growth would seem to confirm that: More from Joe Scarborough:

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teenage pregnancy has done the same;...

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This, too, would seem to be confirmed by this graph from Trends in Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing: More from Joe Scarborough:

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the U.S. dollar has experienced generational highs over the past year;...

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I'm not sure what "generational highs" means, but here's a graph of the value of the dollar over the past 10 years showing that it has risen in fits and starts by quite a bit over that period: More from Joe Scarborough:

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unemployment recently hit a 54-year low;...

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This is confirmed by this graph of the last 50 years of so of the unemployment rate. The graph doesn't go up to the present, but the current unemployment rate is 3.6%, and that's lower than the 1969 54-year-ago closing rate of about 3.7%: More from Joe Scarborough:

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the number of job openings this past year also hit record highs...

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Here's a graph from U.S. job openings surge to new record high, hiring increases | Reuters confirming increases in job openings, but the job openings statistic is misleading because the number grows naturally with growing population. Still, the graph indicates a stunning recent increase: Parenthetically I might add it indicates the need for increased immigration. More from Joe Scarborough:

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Overall, the U.S. economy continues to surge forward despite economists’ dire predictions. America’s GDP grew to $25 trillion last year;...

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Actually, America's GDP in 2022 was $25.4 trillion, and here's a graph from Statistica showing GDP growth for the past ten years: Incidentally, this indicates how a nation reduces its national debt. It doesn't reduce it in raw numbers but as a percentage of GDP by growing GDP. With growing GDP the national debt becomes smaller and smaller percentage-wise. All we need is for the national debt to grow more slowly than GDP.More from Joe Scarborough:

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Texas has a bigger economy than Russia,...

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This is meaningless and would be amazing were it true, but it's not. The 2022 GDP of Texas was 1.88 trillion, that of Russia $4 trillion. Joe's either wrong or was using some other measure than GDP, in which case he should have said.More from Joe Scarborough:

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...and although California is routinely rebuked by right-wing critics, it has the fourth-strongest economy in the world—stronger than Britain’s, France’s, Canada’s, or India’s.

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How do you measure the strength of an economy? I have no idea, but I'll assume he means GDP. The 2022 GDP of California was $3.59 trillion (a lot closer to Russia than Texas), while the GDP's for Britain, France Canada and India in trillions were $2.23, $3.13, $2.14 and $3.39. So California's economy is bigger than all those nations. Pretty amazing given that California has the smallest population at 39 million, while Britain, France, Canada and India have populations in millions of 67.5, 68, 39.6 and 1,420.So there you go. According to Joe Scarborough we're doing pretty well, and most everything he said checks out.--Percy

Your ignorance and gullibility know no bounds. Loss of purchasing power is popularly known as inflation. Except for rare and brief periods of deflation, which typically indicates a very unhealthy economy (e.g., there was deflation during the Great Depression from 1930 to 1933 and during the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009), the dollar has been inflating, i.e., losing purchasing power, since the beginning of the republic (the industrial revolution made it possible to produce many goods more cheaply, but that drop in prices was due to productivity increases and was a good thing). Yes, high inflation is bad because it is economically disruptive, for instance by discouraging saving and encouraging ownership of hard assets, but the inflation we typically see of 2-3% is healthy and helps drive economic growth. I think the Fed's inflation target is 2%.Perhaps you've heard of penny loaves of bread, which were very common when Benjamin Franklin was a boy. There's been around 7000% inflation since then and we seem to be doing okay.You are letting YouTube idiots scare you with what are basically simple facts of life. Inflation, in other words, the loss of purchasing power, has almost always been with us. With no exceptions every country in the world uses fiat currencies. Stop listening to the YouTube idiots. They are just trying to scare you into believing financial disaster is just around the corner so you'll buy their precious metals. If you adjust the price of gold according to the CPI then it's sort of held its own, but the CPI as currently defined is often criticized for overemphasizing certain commodities. Here's a graph of the price of gold adjusted for the CPI as it existed back in 1980: Gold doesn't look so good now, does it? More jobs seeking workers means increased demand for workers which puts upward pressure on wages. But over the past 40 years, i.e., since Reagan, the purchasing power of the American paycheck has barely budged. That being said, wages have outpaced inflation for over a decade now (the pandemic caused a spike from which we're still adjusting): I know you really believe what the YouTube nuts are telling you, but if it were really true then you'd be able to find real world data backing you up.--Percy

Corrected - thanks!--Percy

More news on the US inflation front today. This is from the Washington Post: Inflation drops to lowest levels since March 2021 as economy cools.Prices for June rose just 3% in the last 12 months, compared to 4% for May. This is a rapid improvement.And wages have risen faster than inflation for the last four months. According to the BLS (Bureau of Labor and Statistics), hourly wages rose .4% from May to June while inflation rose half that at .2%.The currently accepted method for fighting inflation is to raise interest rates, which slows economic activity and reduces demand. That is how the Fed has been approaching this. The trick is to raise interest rates enough to reduce inflation but not so much as to send the economy into recession.Pulling this off successfully is more luck than skill, and while the Fed and the Biden administration in general can take credit for approaching the inflation problem responsibly, that's all they can really take credit for. Economies are too complex and have too many outside influences (the entire rest of the world) for governments to take much credit for economies that do well. The best a government can do is to foster an environment friendly to economic growth, but not too friendly, and hope for the best.There are other factors to consider when handing out credit and blame. This is a graph of inflation over the past five years: Inflation began rising just about the time Biden took office. Those trying to take political advantage blame inflation on Biden, but not even presidents have that kind of power. An economy the size of the US takes months and years to change course. The inflation that began increasing at the beginning of 2021 was already built in to the economy by the years of steady economic growth and large budget deficits. We spent big to recover from the 2008-2009 financial collapse caused by the mortgage security crisis, and we spent big again to get through the covid pandemic. The inflation we've recently experienced was years in the making.And of course there are other factors affecting economies, such as climate change. Does it make sense to spend money now so that Miami doesn't sink beneath the waves some decades into the future? Would spending such money make sense if the rest of the world doesn't make the same investments, and is it already too late anyway, the die cast for a future of encroaching seas and increasingly adverse weather and climate? Should we just live life to the fullest and let our children's children's children deal with the problem, knowing that we'll be dust by the time they are cursing our neglectful exploitation of the planet?--Percy

This article in today's Washington Post, How to protect yourself when buying gold, has some good advice. It makes these points:

1. Advertising for gold investment companies most commonly appears on right-wing media.
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2. Some in the industry are facing "lawsuits by consumers and allegations of fraud by federal and state regulators."
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3. Financial advisers are divided on investing in gold. Some advise against it as a bad idea, others say gold can be part of a balanced portfolio.
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4. Before buying, figure out what it take to immediately cash out. For example, if you pay $1000 for gold, what would you get if you immediately sold it back. If the answer is more than $900 then that's pretty good, because it isn't uncommon for markups to be 10% and above, some way above.
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5. Be skeptical of advertisements "designed to instill fear about the economy."
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6. Also be skeptical of those who appeal to shared political or religious beliefs.

--Percy

What makes you say that? My post was about investing in gold. Why are you replying about Bitcoin? No, EvC was not saying this. Are you perhaps trying to say that someone posted a message at EvC saying this? Where is that post? I did not mention conspiracy theories or the people who promote them. Why are you replying about this? Again, why are you replying about Bitcoin? This is unintelligible. Why are you replying about this?--Percy

Yes! Yes! Exactly! And that's why you have to buy gold now. Sell you car, sell your condo, sell little Fufu, and buy gold! Buy, buy, buy like there's no tomorrow!--Percy

There you go again, trusting what someone says on the Internet. In this case you've somehow chanced across someone with correct information, but what are the odds of that ever happening again? They cannot go to the gold standard because the world money supply is around $50 trillion while the world supply of gold is around $3.5 trillion, and that includes confiscating everyone's jewelry.What is it about there not being enough gold in the world that you don't understand? How do you not get that this is just one of the things gold sellers make up so as to send people into a state of hysteria so that they buy gold. It is amazing that you have even a single asset left because you are a scam just waiting to happen. Given your recent posts, I'm betting your A1C is off the charts again.--Percy

Definitions for how you're using these words:

• Elitist: someone who thinks he knows what he's talking about and has the evidence to show it
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• Hillbilly: someone who thinks he knows what he's talking about but hasn't a clue nor any evidence nor the ability to interpret evidence presented to him but nonetheless insists his opinions deserve equal consideration

--Percy

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. You don't need sources, which is just the fallacy of argument from authority. You need evidence, which you don't have. You don't even have a plausible argument. You're still listening to guys trying to scare you about the economy. And they're succeeding, because you're a complete rube.If your position had a leg to stand on you wouldn't be citing sources and repeating baseless assertions. You'd be presenting actual evidence in a coherent and persuasive manner.--Percy

Gee, thanks a lot. I just sprayed my coffee all over the room.--Percy

You're not going to improve your understanding of anything, including macroeconomics, by listening to Internet wingnuts.--Percy