Average Americans are getting nowhere fast

Harvard historian Niall Ferguson uses this chart to explain why Americans are unhappy with their nation’s economy.

Last week Clinton’s supporters seized on new economic data showing that median household income rose by more than 5 percent in real terms last year.  Poverty is down.  So is the number of Americans without health insurance.  So is unemployment.  Yes, Hillary Clinton has had a few bad weeks. But don’t worry. 

All this seems like grist to the mill of a campaign that essentially promises continuity. Yet there is a problem. Take another look at those figures for inflation-adjusted median household income.  Yes, it was $56,500 last year, up from $53,700 the year before. But back in 1999 it was $57,909.  In other words, it’s been a round trip — and a very bumpy one indeed — since Clinton’s husband was in the White House.

Telling Americans that they are nearly back to where they were 17 years ago and then expecting them to be grateful looks like a losing strategy.  When two thirds of Americans — and even higher percentage of older white voters — say the country is on the wrong track, they are not (as Democrats claim) in denial about the Obama administration’s achievements.

They are saying that the country is on a circular track, and has been since this century began.

Source: Niall Ferguson | The Boston Globe

Hat tip to occasional links & commentary.

Why is the economic recovery so weak?

Source: Sentier Research

Why is the current economic recovery so much weaker than in the previous two recoveries?

I don’t claim a profound knowledge of economics, but here’s what I think.

During the time of peak prosperity, the American economy was based on a benign cycle—high wages supported a mass consumer market, which supported high employment.

Since the 1980s, American wages have been stagnant or falling, and Americans maintained their purchasing power by means of borrowing.  But since the 2008 recession, they have reached the limits of their power to borrow and spend.

Big financial institutions and holders of financial assets are investing more in debt instruments or in production overseas than in job-creating enterprises in the United States.  At the same time government at all levels has responded to hard times by cutting spending and employment.

Both the public and private sector are dis-investing in education and training, in scientific research and in the infrastructure necessary to a productive economy.

Barring a change of direction, I expect things to continue to worsen.

How can we the people turn things around?  Being honest about the situation would be the first step.  Government could stop doing harmful things, such as the no-strings bank bailout and pro-corporate trade agreements.  Corrente’s 12-Point Platform is the kind of thing we should be thinking about.

The fracking boom is ending with a bust

Source: Business Insider.

Business booms are followed by busts—the interaction of overconfidence, oversupply and diminishing returns.

That’s not just a law of the free-market system, it’s a law of human nature.

As the chart above indicates, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas is an industry entering the bust part of its cycle.

The glut of natural gas probably will continue for some time.   Gas companies would continue to pump gas even if they’re losing money.

They’ve already paid for the drilling equipment, and they’d lose less money by continuing to pump than by walking away from their sunk costs.

It’s good that New York state didn’t jump into fracking just now.   We’d have had all the problems associated with fracking and none of the benefits the come with getting in on the ground floor.

The wise thing to do just from a business point of view, aside from all environmental and climate considerations, is to keep natural gas in the ground as long as we can.  If there comes a time when we desperately need it, it will be there.

LINKS

Fracking has collapsed by Wolf Richter of Wolf Street for Business Insider.

Keystone XL, Cold War 2.0 and the GOP Vision for 2016 by Michael T. Klare for TomDispatch.  Fracking is a factor in geopolitics.

Update 2/28/15

As Bill Harvey pointed out in his comment, a decline in the number of rigs doesn’t mean a decline in production—that is, not right away.

Oil rigs and oil production in the United States