2004 Democratic Primary

[NHPolitico]

How many Inderpendents are in office?

1-Bernie Sanders of vermont, who is a socialist.

That tells you alot about Vermont.

Why's that?  You think vermont is a commie hideout?

They call it social justice, not communism/socialism.

[NHPolitico]

NEW HAMPSHIRE (2)
1. Manchester
2. Concord-Granite

NH-1: Queen's City-Seacoast

I'll come up with something for NH-2 later.

[NHPolitico]

Wow, I've only had 3 wrong out of the last 50 some odd elections I've predicted and 2 of those 3 misses were in LA.

Never did care much for the state. Too much French influence!

I've decided to treat them like the Red Sox, except I like the Red Sox. I will predict no Republican statewide victories except in presidential races.  No matter how possible it seems, I now know that the state is hopeless.

[NHPolitico]

Don't you mean "democrat"?

Other Georgia Democrats will join Zell in endorsing Bush.

[NHPolitico]

(Although I see nothing to prove this, i.e no Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein).

We're halfway there.

[NHPolitico]

U.S. December Michigan Sentiment Index Rises to 103.2 From 92.6 Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. consumer sentiment surged this month as stocks continued to climb and unemployment declined, a University of Michigan survey showed.

The university's preliminary January consumer sentiment index jumped to 103.2 from 92.6 in December. Economists projected an increase to 94 this month, based on the median of 53 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey.

"There's a lot of consumer momentum in the economy at the moment,'' said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina, before the report. Consumers are feeling better "given the improvement in the equity market, as well as the general tone of the job market and the expectation that jobs are available out there.''

The economy will expand 4.6 percent this year, the fastest pace since 1984, according to the latest Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey. The unemployment rate fell in December to 5.7 percent from 5.9 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 stock has risen more than 20 percent in the past year.

The preliminary Michigan index is based on a poll of about 250 households. A final reading, with a sample of 500 households, is due Jan. 30.

[NHPolitico]

Turns out my 6.2% was way too optimistic.

Uhhh.... yeah. You could say that.

[NHPolitico]

If I remember correctly it's about 2.5%

Actually, I think it used to be like 6% during the 80s.  Now, it's thought to be about 5%. It can't be as low as 2.5% because the pressure on wages would be too high, inflation would result, businesses would sell less and they'd have to lay off workers and raise the unemployment rate.

[NHPolitico]

Economy.com Survey of Business Confidence: 173.6
Global business confidence remains high.  Manufacturers and
high-tech companies are particularly upbeat.  Businesses continue to report stronger sales and firmer pricing, and most businesses are increasingly positive about their investment and hiring intentions.  Confidence is off from its late 2003 peak, however.  Asian confidence has slipped the most.  Business services, financial services and real estate firms are also less positive.  

[NHPolitico]

Reports Stir Hopes of U.S. Factory Revival
Tuesday February 17, 11:39 am ET
By Jonathan Nicholson


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. manufacturing showed signs of revival on Tuesday, as reports from the Federal Reserve and one of its regional banks showed gains in January and early February.

The Federal Reserve said its gauge of activity at American factories, mines and utilities rose a sharp 0.8 percent in January, led by a weather-related gain in utilities use. Factory output -- more than four-fifths of total production -- rose 0.3 percent, its fifth straight monthly rise.
 
In a separate report, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said its two-year-old Empire Manufacturing Survey's business conditions index rose to a record 42.05 in early February from a revised 38.85 in January.

The two reports may help ease worries over the embattled U.S. factory sector, which has yet to recover from the 2001 recession. Manufacturers have trimmed payrolls for 42 straight months, with about 2.8 million factory jobs lost since President Bush took office in January 2001.

Financial markets started the trading day higher after the data's release. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 63.11 points at mid-morning, while the Nasdaq composite was up a by about 18 points.

COLD JANUARY

January's cold weather helped push overall industrial production up, even as manufacturing gained. Utility output climbed a hefty 5.2 percent while natural gas production increased by 7.0 percent, its biggest jump since February 2003, according to the Fed.

Still, the gain in manufacturing sped up the pace at which factories operated in January. The capacity use rate rose to 74.6 percent in January, its highest reading since August 2001.

December's overall production and capacity use figures were revised downward somewhat in Tuesday's report. Output was revised to a flat reading from the initially reported 0.1 percent advance while capacity utilization was reported at 75.6 percent, down from the original reading of 75.8 percent.

"The gains within the manufacturing sector were fairly broad-based though moderate," said Stephen Stanley, an economist with RBS Greenwich Capital Markets.

NEW YORK AREA IMPROVED

In its monthly survey of manufacturing in the state, the New York Fed said nearly all its respondents indicated they expected conditions to be the same or better in six months.

The new orders' index rose to 34.94 in February from a revised 34.82 in January. The employment index dipped almost 8 points but was still in positive territory at 16.5, according to the bank.

The New York Fed index is one of several measures compiled by the Fed's 12 regional banks that analysts watch to gauge factory activity.

[NHPolitico]

Testifying for the economy

By Lawrence Kudlow

President Bush's bounce from the capture In Iraq of Saddam
Hussein has faded. His State of the Union message had clear vision,
but it lacked enough rhetorical punch to deliver another bounce. And
now the president is taking political hits from all angles,
temporarily slowing the stock market advance.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, on the other hand, is getting a
large bounce from his primary victories, with Bush-bashing on the
Democratic campaign trail nearing a fever pitch. Heavy coverage by
the print and broadcast media is only fueling the charge of the anti-
Bush forces.
Missing WMDs have not helped Mr. Bush, either. Nor did his clear
but somewhat flat performance on Tim Russert's "Meet the Press." Nor
has lower-than-expected job growth — although a steady-rising
household survey, showing more self-employed and private-contract
workers, is still the dirty little secret. Big budget deficits are
also grabbing the headlines, even though they are vastly overrated in
both numerical and economic terms.
What all this says is that the stock market rally has come under
some political pressure. Mr. Bush is the pro-investor candidate, but
his fortunes have momentarily slumped. Mr. Kerry is the enemy of the
investor class, as well as the new Democratic class-warfare hero, but
his veneer has only temporarily brightened. Stocks, of course,
respond to all these factors, passing though they may be.
Time for investors to worry? Not at all. Liberal Yale economist
Ray Fair has a better idea. His economic model projecting the
presidential popular vote is strongly favoring Mr. Bush (although the
rigorously honest Mr. Fair would have it otherwise). With a 2004
growth economy near 4 percent, low inflation and a rising jobs
number, Mr. Fair's model predicts a Bush landslide with 58 percent of
the popular vote.
Alan Greenspan's incredibly upbeat testimony before Congress last
week was every bit as promising for a Bush re-election as Mr. Fair's
conclusions. Mr. Greenspan, of course, as head of the independent
central bank, is an objective economic observer. He concludes that
the health of the U.S. economy is rapidly improving.
Mr. Greenspan's good-news economic gospel included a rosy-
scenario forecast of nearly 5 percent economic growth, with inflation
just above 1 percent. Behind that forecast is a pile of positive
data:
Household and business balance sheets are in good shape.
Spectacular productivity has led to outsized business profits.
Business investment and production are rising more rapidly than
consumer spending, which still remains strong. With the supply side
of the economy so muscular, inflation is in check and interest rates
are staying low. While corporate hiring has been slow, it will soon
pick up steam, with Mr. Greenspan expecting unemployment to drop to
5.5 percent this year. And finally, the current-account deficit is
being comfortably financed by international markets, and an orderly
dollar decline may be bottoming out.
Perversely, Mr. Greenspan's benign interest-rate outlook caused
some market traders to worry that the economy is not really as strong
as publicized. The absence of major interest-rate risk may have even
lowered consumer confidence over the jobs outlook. But things are
different today. While in the past the Fed has always acted quickly
to raise rates in the wake of strong economic readings, Greenspan &
Co. will remain patient following a period of intense deflation.
Given the fact that core inflation remains less than 1 percent and
durable-goods prices continue to fall, the central bank is right to
leave interest rates alone.
During Mr. Greenspan's testimony, numerous Democrats tried to
bludgeon the Fed chairman with the usual deficit hysteria. But Mr.
Greenspan was very clear that the Bush tax cuts should remain in
place in order to grow the economy to its fullest potential. Instead
of tax increases, he argued strongly for new spending restraint —
including new budget rules to prevent overspending.
The chairman was right again: A combination of strong economic
growth and tough budget restraint — not economy-crippling tax
increases — will eliminate deficits.
With a budget-busting highway bill on the immediate horizon, this
is not the message Congress wants to hear. But Mr. Greenspan's firm
stand on budget control may embolden the president to veto the
highway bill (which will undoubtedly be laden with pork). There are
also rumors the president will recruit former-Sen. Phil Gramm of
Texas to design new spending-control laws. This would be welcome news
to conservatives. It was the Gramm-Rudman approach that held down
spending in the Reagan 1980s. And it was Mr. Gramm who almost
unilaterally defeated the single-payer universal-health-care plan of
President Clinton 10 years ago.
If Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Gramm are successful in bolstering the
administration's backbone on spending, business and investor
confidence will improve and the economy will strengthen even more.

I think as long as you have unemployment and budget deficits higher than what we had under Clinton, Bush's approval on the economy will be subdued.

[NHPolitico]

 You again really like talking to yourself dont you? Before you celebrate, look at the U6 unemployment rate from the BLS, the U6 rate is basiclaly the way Europe calculates its unemployment rate, and it was the way the US tabulated its unemployment rate till the late 80s.

 http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

 In any event, the massive injection of liquidity though the "tax cuts", the massive increases in gov spending and the record number of home re-fis in 2003 did the trick for now.

I'd rather they use the "real" U6 number.

[NHPolitico]

Leading Indicators Rise in January 20 minutes ago

By EILEEN ALT POWELL, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - A key economic forecasting gauge advanced a strong 0.5 percent in January, suggesting that the nation's economy will expand further in coming months.

The business-funded Conference Board said Thursday its Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose to 115.0 last month following gains of 0.2 percent in December and 0.3 percent in November. Analysts had expected a rise of about 0.3 percent for January.

Ken Goldstein, the business group's economist, noted that the index has been gaining since last spring.

The rise points to "sustained economic growth, perhaps through the first half of this year," he said.

Still, Goldstein warned that there were factors that could create bumps for the economy later this year.

"Consumer confidence could falter if job and wage growth don't continue to strengthen. Business confidence could erode. The lack of pricing power could be a big problem," he said. "But while these risks are important, their probabilities are not very high."

Also Thursday, the Labor Department reported that the number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week. That offered hope that companies may be feeling better about business conditions and are less inclined to hand out pink slips.

The department said that for the work week ending Feb. 14, new applications filed for jobless benefits plunged by a seasonally adjusted 24,000 to 344,000.

It marked the largest decline since the beginning of November and left claims at their lowest level since the week ending Jan. 24.

Wall Street responded positively to the economic news, as well as strong earnings in the technology sector. In midmorning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 40.82, or 0.4 percent, at 10,712.81. The Nasdaq composite index was up 6.57, or 0.3 percent, at 2,083.04.

The index of leading indicators is closely watched because it forecasts trends in the economy in the next three to six months. The index has a base of 100, set in 1996.

Daniel J. Meckstroth, chief economist for the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a trade group in Arlington, Va., said that the two things needed to boost the industrial sector, which was hard-hit in the recession, were coming back -- exports and investment in business equipment.

In addition, he noted, consumer spending should get a boost in coming months from tax refunds as well as job growth.

"I think we're building the base for a sustained recovery," he said.

The Manufacturers Alliance own survey, released Thursday, indicated that 21 of 27 industries reported new orders or production that was higher in the fourth quarter of 2003 than a year earlier. That was up from 14 industries in the third quarter and 10 in the second quarter, the group said.

The New York-based Conference Board said that five of the 10 indicators that make up the leading index contributed to January's gain: consumer expectations, stock prices, average weekly manufacturing hours, vendor performance and a drop in initial claims for unemployment insurance. Four declined, while manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials was unchanged.

The Index of Coincident Indicators, which gauges current economic activity, rose 0.3 percent to 115.8 in January after showing no change in December.

The Index of Lagging Indicators was unchanged in January at 98.2 after dropping 0.4 percent in December.