Economic Info for the Month of July

All is well....

Man...economic news isn't good:

• Yesterday, the news came out that existing home sales dropped 27% for the month of July.  In order to stabilize the residential markets, jobs have to return and prices have to stabilize. The Obama administration has gotten in the way of both processes. Thanks to ill-advised taxpayer-subsidized interventions, prices have remained unrealistically high, and no one wants to buy until they pay the right amount for the value of their investment. And until we quit penalizing capital and introducing massive ambiguities into regulatory regimes and expanding them, jobs won’t get created and new buyers won’t materialize anyway.
• Today, the Commerce Department noted that new home sales dropped 12% for the month of July; down 37% from last year. Expect more deflation in housing markets this year as sales dive to new lows
• Although the Commerce Department predicted a 3% growth, durable goods orders rose, but only slightly thanks to transportation industry by 0.3%.  Meanwhile the rest of the industry dropped 3.8% last month.  In other words, absent artificial stimulation, we had no growth at all in Q2. Depending on the final revision, due on Friday, we could be anywhere from -0.3% to -3.4% excluding Porkulus in Q2. Recovery Summer, my ass.
• Thanks to last year's Cash for Clunkers, used car prices have JUMPED 10% overall due to a lower supply in inventory.  As predicted last year, the people most hurt by the price increases are those who can least afford them. The used-car market usually attracts people who need transportation on a budget, who cannot afford to buy new. By destroying a quarter’s worth of trade-ins in three weeks and permanently taking them off the market, the Obama administration has forced an artificial inflation by supply restriction. Moreover, they did so by subsidizing new-car sales that would have occurred anyway, eating up three billion dollars in taxpayer money. In other words, the White House spent $3 billion to make used cars more expensive for working-class families. Nice work.

Keep in mind that our entire economic recovery has been in the hands of a Democratic Administration and Congress with little to no experience in running a business in the private sector.  In the examples above, each have been directly affected by the laws passed since 2009 under their watch.  Businesses are sitting on 2 Trillion just to collect interest instead of spending to hire and expand because of the policies passed by the current party in power. Nobody knows what's to come of the new legislations that have been passed. I mean this with the utmost respect.....Wake the fuck up people.

Bye Bye Student Health Insurance, another victim in the wake of Healthcare Reform

After the University of North Carolina issues with health insurance, you'd think that colleges would be set with health coverage for their students. Well, due to a surprise in the new Healthcare bill: (via QandO)

Colleges and universities say that some rules in the new health law could keep them from offering low-cost, limited-benefit student insurance policies, and they’re seeking federal authority to continue offering them.

Their request drew immediate fire from critics, however, who say that student health plans should be held to the same standards that other insurance is.
Among other things, the colleges want clarification that they won’t have to offer the policies to non-students.
Without a number of changes, it may be impossible to continue to offer student health plans, says a letter that the American Council on Education sent Aug. 12 to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, signed by 12 other trade associations that represent colleges.
Additionally, the colleges say that some provisions of the law don’t apply to their policies, including those that require insurers to spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on medical care and that bar them from setting annual coverage caps.

Universities usually offer some form of health insurance to students, but those policies fit the needs of young adults, who generally don’t access the health care system nearly as much as older adults. They have smaller networks, as students generally stay within a small geographic area. Premiums are lower because of the low risk, but also because some comprehensive services don’t get fully covered, usually those accessed by people in middle age or older. In short, the policies are tailored to the clientele, which is why pricing can be more efficient.
 
With the new Healthcare Bill, policies can no longer be tailored to clientele, nor can consumers make choices that best fit their lives. All policies must look mainly alike, thanks to the top-down command “reforms” in Healthcare, which mandate coverages regardless of risk or need. So, a comprehensive policy designed to cover Americans in their 50s would be useless for just about anyone who attends college in their youth, and would be more expensive than they are likely to afford.
 
Universities can either offer policies that are so expensive that only a few can afford to buy them, which creates all sorts of problems in managing a risk pool, or they can simply get out of the health-insurance business altogether. Businesses have chosen to opt out thus far, so there's no reason to believe that the Universities wouldn't do the same.

Democrats are running against themselves!?

Let me start off by saying:  I'm glad the first day of school comes once a year.

Let's start today with the Democrats.....or should I say, the ones distancing themselves from the Democratic agenda as of late:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called them her “majority makers” – the moderate to conservative Democrats in right-leaning districts whose election in 2006 made her Speaker.

And now many of them – and other Democrats in competitive districts -- are fighting for their political lives in a harsh environment and have found it necessary to distance themselves from their leaders and Democratic policies.
After Democrats won a special election in Pennsylvania earlier this year in which the GOP nominee tried to tie the Democrat, Mark Critz, to Pelosi and Obama, the Speaker said, “What we learn from this election and I think hopefully Republicans saw clearly, is nationalizing the election, talking about Speaker Pelosi and President Obama was not as appealing to the public there than Mark Critz talking to them about their jobs.”
Will that also hold true for Democrats talking about Pelosi and Obama in a negative way?

In case you are in disbelief, here are the campaign ads. First, Bobby Bright, D-Ala:



Next, Jason Altmire, D-Penn:



Mike McIntyre, D-NC:



Glenn Nye, D-Va:



Joe Donnelley, D-Ind with 2 ads.:





This is a just a mess.