….despite near silence from the news media, and trashing by the Democrats.
Home Sales Rise, Factory Orders Up – AP
Sales of new homes perked up, while factory orders took off in July, raising hopes that the economy can safely weather financial turmoil that has shaken Wall Street.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new-home sales rose 2.8 percent in July, after falling 4 percent in June. The increase in July lifted sales to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 870,000 units. A second report showed that orders to factories for big-ticket goods jumped 5.9 percent in July, the most in 10 months.
Both reports were better than analysts had expected. They were forecasting home sales to fall and were calling for a much smaller, 1 percent gain in factory orders.
<….>
In the manufacturing report, the 5.9 percent increases in new orders for “durable” goods followed a 1.9 percent rise in June. Durable goods are costly manufactured items expected to last at least three years.
Gains were widespread. Orders went up for machinery, automobiles, metal products, airplanes and communications equipment. That blunted a drop in demand for computers, as well as electrical equipment and appliances.
The pickup in demand for manufactured goods comes against a backdrop of a growing global economy, which has produced a bigger appetite for some U.S. exports.
I believe Larry Kudlow has called this the “Chicken Little Economy” — the economic fundamentals are fine…. but everyone is running around hoping looking to have the sky fall in on it.
Hmmmm….. maybe the Democrat Party should change their mascot from an ass to a chicken? Naaaaah.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
I love AP’s phrase, “[the] financial turmoil that has shaken Wall Street…”
What “financial turmoil”? Well, after making an amazing run to Dow 14000, the stock market pretty normally – and wisely – corrected itself to Dow 13000 territory. Which still puts my IRA up substantially for the year. I hope we have lots more of that “turmoil”!
And ILC, funny how the MSM covered the “financial turmoil” last week in terms of “how does this affect the Bush economy,” but (a) nary a word about the recent uptick in the economy and (b) never using the words “the Clinton economy” during the dot-com bust of the 1990s.
Hypocrisy, thy name is liberalism.
Regards,
Peter H.
Yes, whatever DID happen to Democrats and leftists citing the Dow as “proof” of how spectacular the Clinton economy was?
Good deficit news.
Both reports were better than analysts had expected.
Which means it’s time for the MSM to get new analysts, right?
PETE! SPEW ALERT!!!
Hmmmm….. maybe the Democrat Party should change their mascot from an ass to a chicken?
How about the ass of a chicken?
Actually, the Democrats original mascot ,a href=”http://ronwade.freeservers.com/OldiesFDRRoosterSet-1x5_small.jpg>was a rooster (its apparently still used in Kentucky and a few other states), before the national party changed to the donkey.
Yep, thats the Dems, a bunch of total cocks and complete asses.
oops. was a rooster
Well, of course, the performance of the Dow under Clinton was nothing short of spectacular. Consider that the Dow’s performance to date under Bush has been an anemic 26% or so increase. In dramatic contrast, the Dow increase under Clinton to the same point in his Presidency was over 300%! Even math-challenged wingnuts ought to be able to comprehend that performance of the Dow was over an order of magnitude better under Clinton. Of course, who knew way back in 2001 that our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity was finally over? And giving way to the Bush recession and perpetual wars of aggression? But then wars are always convenient ways out of recessions.
Oh, and Bruce, please get back to us when the effects of the credit market meltdown are fully felt.
Ian,
I keep rooting for you, hoping that you’ll get something right eventually. Alas, you give me little reason to hope.
Only an idiot, namely you, measures the performance of the stock market in terms of arbitrary dates in a presidential term. you measure the performance based on peaks and troughs.
While it is true that the stock market peaked under clinton, as did the economy, both the decline of the stock market and the economic recession began under his administration as well.
And if you want to use the stock markets as a measure of economic performance, then youre stuck with the fact that the NASDAQ crash, brought on by the dot.com bubble burst happened long before Bush as well.
And not only did the economic growth end near the end of Clintons term, but that particular growth cycle started under GHWB, not Clinton.
In other words, Clinton inherited a growing economy, pranced around and took credit for it, and it was a shrinking economy before he left office. I’d love to hear what economic policies of Clintons you think are responsible for the dot.com boom (which was the real cause of explosive growth). And please dont say a balanced budget, because not only did that not have anything to do with the boom, but Republicans forced a balanced budget on him, he originally vetoed it.
He inhereted a growing economy that took off because the internet took off. He had nothing to do with it, but may very well have played a significant role in the dot.com bust which started right after his administrations anti-trust suit against the driving force of the tech economy, Microsoft, wrapped up.
Bush on the other hand, inherited a shrinking economy, as the NBER makes clear, and pushed across the board tax cuts to stimulate the economy and bring us out of recession….then on top of that when terrorists struck at the country and the heart of the financial world, the defense dept and attempted to kill congress–which was intended to bring our economy and out defense dept to their knees, and intended to destroy our legislative branch to cripple our ability to respond–president Bush acted decisively–again in the face of Democrat opposition–to pass a strong stimulous package that kept us out of recession when by all means we should have gone into a drastic depression if not a depression!
and the economy has been growing ever since.
the difference? republicans can point to specific economic policies they enacted that caused the economic growth they take credit for, but Democrats cant point to anything Clinton did that supposedly caused the economic boom you all take credit for.
#9:
Nothing arbitrary about taking the Dow performance from the start of the Bush regime until now and comparing it to the same period under Clinton. The only reason the Bushies have avoided total economic disaster is through their profligate spending, the hangover from which will be suffered by upcoming generations of Americans. Much of that spending has come as a result of the war of aggression committed against the Iraqi people and the disastrously mismanaged occupation. Still, it’s all been extraordinarily profitable for the corporatists supporting Bushco if a bit bloody for the Americans actually doing the fighting. But in the GOP view, what’s a few thousand lives of – as Barbara Bush would put it – the “underprivileged” when the Republick Party fatcats can line their pockets.
I love it when Ian demonstrates the duplicity of leftists.
Before, Ian and his fellow leftists were touting the fact that the Dow had hit “record highs” under Clinton as “proof”. Now that the Dow has obliterated that old record and then some, they start babbling about “percent growth”.
The reason they use “percent growth”, though, is obvious; it misleadingly multiplies the effect of any increases. For example, if one starts at 6,000 points and increases 2,000 points, the increase is 33%; however, if one starts at 2,000 points, it’s a 100% increase. You haven’t actually done any more; you’ve just changed a ratio.
Furthermore, the spinning and duplicitious Dems like Ian desperately try to change numbers to make the Clintonistas look better. They tout “26%” because that is close to a comparison between the highest the market ever got under Clinton and where it is now. However, the lowest the Dow ever hit during Bush’s presidency was just below 8,000, in June of 2002. It’s since skyrocketed to a consistent 13,000 and as high as 14,000. That is an increase of 5k – 6k over 8k…..which means the market under Bush, even given the handicap of starting from a higher point, has risen almost three times as much as Ian babbles on a percentage basis.
And finally, the Treasury Department is saying that 2007 will be the highest collected tax revenue year in history — even with the 2001 and 2002 tax cuts in full force. That is impossible to leftists like Ian, who scream and yell that tax cuts permanently reduce revenue and that the government must therefore increase taxes in perpetuity.
And finally, as to Ian’s babbling about the “few thousand”, one should remember that he and his leftist party had zero problem with five HUNDRED thousand children alone dying under their “solution” for Iraq.
But of course, that’s because their deaths made obvious how awful Saddam was and how screwed up the Democrat “diplomatic” (read, “perpetuate billions of dollars in kickbacks to our leftist fellows in Europe”) was. So, just like in Vietnam, they scream over “our citizens” dying while covering up the fact that they’d rather have hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die instead.
#11:
LOL! There’s a reason I referred to the math-challenged. Poor NDT sees no difference between putting his life savings of $1000 1) into the Dow at 3000 and having it go to 6000 versus 2) into the Dow at 6000 and having it go to 9000.
Oh really, Ian?
If you put $1,000 “into the Dow” at 3,000 and it rises to 6,000, what is the final value of your investment?
If you put $1,000 “into the Dow” at 6,000 and it rises to 9,000, what is the final value of that investment?
Calculate and provide in dollars, please.
The reason you can’t and won’t is because you obviously do not understand what you’re talking about. “The Dow” is an index the stock market uses made up of the combined price of thirty specific stocks divided by an divisor, which reflects the number of stocks in the index and includes adjustment for stock splits or spinoffs by any of the companies whose stock is included.
Therefore, you can’t invest in the Dow.
Second off, if you invested in all the stocks in the Dow Jones index, you are arguing that an investment made in them at 3,000 and calculated at 6,000 would be larger than an investment made in them at 6,000 and calculated at 9,000. Not so. If you invest in a stock at $30 and it goes to $60, you make the same amount of money as you do if you invest at $60 and it goes to $90 — $30 net. Since the Dow is a summation of stock prices, it works in exactly that fashion.
What you are trying to do is exploit the difference in percentages calculated using different base values. If a stock goes from $30 to $60, it increases 100% in value (60/30 – 100%), and if it goes from $60 to $90, it increases only 50% (90/60 – 100%) But in both cases, the amount of the increase (100% of $30, 50% of $60) adds up to exactly the same dollar amount.
Finally, the Dow is NOT necessarily an active predictor of your individual investments. Even as the Dow rose this past week, if you held stock in Countrywide Financial, that didn’t help you a bit; that’s because the Dow is only a general index of the behavior of specific stocks. It tends to be highly correlated to the general market, but is not by any means predictive of what will happen to money you invest. That’s why people can make money in the market at any time regardless of what the Dow is doing by investing in specific stocks that are growing and divesting of other ones that aren’t.
And notice, people, that Ian claims to be a college professor with an advanced degree. Furthermore, Ian has claimed that “complex statistical analyses” he has done are proof of environmental change and global warming.
But he can’t comprehend that a 100% change in a stock price can produce the same amount as a later 50% change and insists that the former must be bigger.
#13:
$2,000.
$1500. You were saying…?
I guess you’ve never heard of the ETF known as Dow Diamonds. Really, NDT, I am astounded at your ignorance of the most rudimentary investment concepts and vehicles. I hope you don’t manage your nest egg on your own.
Never have I made such a claim.
Goodness you got something right. Yes, I have a Ph.D. in engineering.
More fabrication from NotoriousDoubleTalker.
Still, it’s all been extraordinarily profitable for the corporatists supporting
Don’t forget DiFi, Lady Bird’s family etc.
I guess you’ve never heard of the ETF known as Dow Diamonds. Really, NDT,
Are you serious? Investing in that ETF is NOT investing in the DJIA. The name alone should tell you that. Or, if you’re too damn stupid, the prospectus should have told you that. I hope you *do* manage your own nest egg. You’ll need the liberals to bring home the pork to you.
And yes, you did claim to be a university professor not long after you claimed to be a lawyer.
Again, Ian, your own source betrays you.
Read at the bottom of this tab:
Index returns do not represent actual ETF performance and are for illustration purposes only. Index performance does not reflect charges and expenses associated with the fund or brokerage commissions associated with buying and selling exchange traded funds.
All information contained in this document reflects index information only, and does not represent the actual ETF product.
You cannot invest directly in an index.
Therefore, your statement that you can invest “in the Dow” is false. You made a false statement, and then, when you were shown that it was false, you lied and tried to pretend that an index fund represented “the Dow”.
Since that demonstrates your willingness to lie when you are confronted with your false statements, please provide the calculations you used to produce your “$1500” and “$2000” assertions so that they can be independently verified.
Never have I made such a claim.
You have on numerous occasions referred to the “courses you taught” to college students.
And if you wish to deny your attempts to crown yourself an expert on “global warning” based on said classes, go right ahead.
#15:
Nope never happened and I defy you to provide cites proving otherwise. I don’t for the life of me know how you ever came up with the claim I said I was a lawyer. I do recall specifically stating I was not a lawyer but had stayed in a Holiday Inn once. It’s truly amazing how you conservatives just make sh!t up.
Of course there is, its an asinine, ignorant comparison.
Clinton inherited a growing economy, Bush inherited the dot.com bust and a shrinking economy as I proved with the link above. Then on top of that an attack on the financial heart of the country and the world. And yet he turned it all around and turned it into a boom.
Anyone who thinks the economy starts over at the beginning of every presidential term is an ignorant ass.
More ignorance. Tell us, when did the Gulf War end? I’ll answer for you, never. We have been at a state of war with Saddam ever since he invaded Kuwaiit. We did not remove him from power based on a cease fire agreement of which he violated every condition.
Secondly, the cost of the war is a pittance compared to the cost of nearly bankrupt social programs such as SS and Medicare that Democrats refused the opportunity to fix, once again, for their own political gain as aways. Becauuse they are reprehensible lying treasonous scum that put their own power ahead of whats good, and even essential for the nation.
And if you’re looking for war profiteers, you’re looking in the wrong direction.
#16:
You can invest “in the Dow” stocks either directly or via an ETF. Deal with it.
You have got to be kidding! LOL! I did them in my head. Look, just go ask your stock broker or failing that, a kid who’s passing math in high school.
Apparently you’ve never attended university else you’d know that not all courses are taught by professors. I have taught a course at the university level in environmental chemistry and my business is focussed on environmental instrumentation. I’m not an expert on climate change but I can certainly comprehend and evaluate the scientific literature in that area.
#17
Nope never happened and I defy you to provide cites proving otherwise….It’s truly amazing how you conservatives just make sh!t up.
Ahem!
March 9, 2007
#20: So where does it say I claimed to be a professor? Not all university courses are taught by professors, something you ought to know if you’ve ever actually attended college.
#21
Aye, I have. Classes are taught either by professors or useless, miserable tampons (lacking employable skills) who wish they were. Sorta like how we wound up with a PhD English teacher in high school.
Nice spin job, Wonder Woman. BTW, how do you stuff a deer’s head into a standard size mailbox?
$1000 investment in the Dow Index.
At 3000, the $1000 represents 1/3 of the index. So when the Dow gains 3000 to go to 6000, the return is 1/3 of 6000, or $2000.
At 6000, the $1000 represents 1/6 of the index. So when the Dow gains 3000 to go to 9000, the return is 1/6 of 9000, or $1500
The actual Dow figure though to see how your investment does is arbitrary. Any investment return depends on the ratio, or percentage increase. In the first example, the Dow doubled (an increase of 100%), so the investment doubled as well. In the second example, the Dow increased by 50%, so the investment increased by 50%.
To see this, suppose the Dow decided to rescale the index down by a factor of 10. With no rescaling, the Dow dropped 10,000 points recently. With rescaling, the Dow only would have dropped 1,000 points. Doesn’t sound as dramatic, but it is the same effect.
From September 1929 to July 1932, the Dow dropped 340 points. When that happens today in one day, it’s not a big deal, because it’s less than a 3% drop. In 1929, that represented close to a 90% drop. So people lost a LOT more money back then.
As for colleges/universities, in most cases not all courses are taught by the faculty. Some courses are taught by other persons who are given the title of either adjunct professor or lecturer. So a person who taught a course (or several courses) is not necessarily a professor, although if the person was given the title of adjunct professor, I suppose they could truthfully say they were a professor. I’m not sure what the difficulty is. Ian’s saying he taught a college course does not equal his claiming to be a professor.
As for the point of the post, I usually don’t give much credit or criticism to a President for the economy. It does so happen that there was more economic growth when Clinton was President than when Bush was. Towards the end of the Clinton Presidency, the economy did start to turn downward, and by the time Bush was President, we were in recession. Again, I don’t blame that on Bush, because it appears that the recession would have happened no matter who was President. I do give some credit to Clinton and the Republican Congress by taking advantage of the growth and reducing the deficit. Spending was controlled and we were able to get to what at least appeared to be a surplus.
Unfortunately, Pat, your valiant effort to protect Ian ignores two fundamental facts:
1) The Dow is an index, not an investment vehicle; therefore, you cannot invest in it.
2) The Dow divisor is not equal to 1; therefore, you cannot state that a one-point increase in the Dow is equal to a one-dollar increase in an investment.
This is why I explained matters above in terms of share prices, since those are what the Dow is based upon; it eliminates the distortion effect of the Dow divisor and provides a much better demonstration of value.
Meanwhile, given that Ian is now shrieking that TGC and I never attended college,my suggestion would be that you disengage yourself from his lies immediately.
Also, Pat, I think it important to point out that you are technically right, if you ignore the other points that I mentioned. However, that is not what Ian said, or how Ian started, and given the numerous number of insults he is making based on false assertions, I am not inclined to overlook anything.
#24-25 hey, you and ILoveCorporatism are the ones who brought up the Dow in the first place. You can certainly invest in the Dow stocks and weight them in your portfolio such that their aggregate performance will track the actual DJIA. And if you don’t want to buy the stocks directly, you can do so through an ETF like the Dow Diamonds. Put $10,000 into the Dow Diamonds when the DJIA is at 10,000 and a hundred point increase in the DJIA will yield almost exactly a $100 increase in the value of your portfolio.
BTW, it’s a hoot to watch your furious back-pedaling and arm waving. At least you’re no longer disputing Pat’s patient explanation of what any high-schooler should be able to calculate. As for whether or not you went to a college, the fact that you apparently are not aware of the different types of instructor positions found at institutions of higher learning suggests that if you did attend, you weren’t particular observant of your surroundings.
Unfortunately, Ian:
— You can’t invest in the Dow directly, as you claimed
— You can’t say that x gain in the Dow is equal to x dollar amount, as you claimed
— You can’t claim that either TGC or I never went to college, as you did
And what is more hilarious is watching you try to pretend that you never said those things and — in a particularly ironic twist — throw more insults on the way out the tiny escape that Pat provided for you, an act of altruism which you only exploit to harm other people.
#27: Unfortunately for you, NDT, financial experts commonly refer to “investing in the Dow.” It’s shorthand for “investing in the stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average using the appropriate weighting scheme to simulate the Dow Jones Industrial Average performance.” But all your ranting about that was simply an attempt to distract everyone from your serious misunderstanding of how such an index works and why percentage changes in an index are more significant than the actual numerical fluctuation.
Regarding your collegiate experience or lack thereof, I only suggested you might not have gone; “apparently” being the crucial modifier.
It’s possible to invest in mutual funds and/or ETFs (exchange-traded funds) that **attempt to track** a particular index; and that is commonly referred to as “investing in the index”.
It’s also true that the entity which owns, calculates or publishes the reported index is rarely-if-ever the same entity that sells or manages such an investment fund, and it would probably be illegal if they were; hence, you still aren’t literally investing in the index, despite the (incorrect) language commonly used.
I take no other position in this thread except to offer the above facts; mainly because I have found Ian and his little games profoundly inane too many times, and hence, I don’t care to read this thread or follow its claims / counter-claims in any great detail.
Again, Ian, you continue to spin.
You can’t invest in the Dow directly, as you claimed
– You can’t say that x gain in the Dow is equal to x dollar amount, as you claimed
– You can’t claim that either TGC or I never went to college, as you did
Instead, you continue to come up with elaborate equivocations that require one to completely suspend language, financial understanding, and disbelief.
#30: Give it up NDT, even ILoveCorporatism has thrown you under the bus. LOL!
hmm, are those crickets i hear?
Give it up NDT, even ILoveCorporatism has thrown you under the bus. LOL!
So whenever somebody says that Ian is a lying SOB, that’s some sort of code for throwing NDT under the bus? Interesting.
NDT, as far as I know, one cannot directly invest in the Dow Index. There are funds and a stock known as Diamonds that basically track the Dow Index. My understanding is that Diamonds purchases an equal portion of the 30 Dow industrial stocks. They set the share price to be equal to 1/100 of the Dow Index. Since this investment works like any others, I think it’s fair to use the Dow Index like any other investment tool for comparison purposes.
True, $1 does not 1 point of the Dow Index. I believe it initially did. But every time there was a change, such as a stock split, or change in the makeup of the Dow 30, a continuity correction factor was placed in so that it could be tracked like any other investment. Otherwise, the Dow Index would be reset to a new starting figure every time.
And it doesn’t matter how high the Index is in terms of tracking. If the Dow increased from 1000 to 2000 during a certain time period, that does only represent a 1000 increase. But if someone decided that the index should have included an additional factor of 10, then the increase would have been 10000 and 20000, a 10,000 increase. It’s simply inaccurate to say that this 10,000 increase was tougher than the 1000 increase above. They both represent a 100% increase.
But as I said before, this information in itself does not make Clinton a better President than Bush. I give little credit to Presidents for how the economy goes.
As for the professor flap, I am not defending anyone’s name calling or games here. In fact, I called out on it before, and I lost. Since then, I decided to stay out of the name calling and let Bruce and Dan take care of it. So please don’t think my silence on this matter is a defense. However, several people made the claim that Ian said he was a professor, and he claimed he wasn’t, but that he simply taught a course. He challenged people to find a post where he claimed he was. The only thing was a quote that almost verbatim stated almost exactly the claim that Ian said in the previous post. Yes, it is possible to go to college and not be aware of such a thing. In fact, when I was an undergrad I wasn’t aware of it. But no one else challenged or addressed the point that there are persons who are not professors that teach college courses. I stated that it is possible.
For the record, I don’t love corporatism at all. But Ian does. As do leftists generally; but they never admit it to themselves and, being great liars-to-themselves, many “honestly” (hah hah) can’t even realize it, or understand what I’m talking about. From encounters on this blog, I know Ian to be a liar of that kind (and others).
(P.S. see HillaryCare as but one horrible example of proposed corporatism which leftists gladly support and I oppose; any protectionist measure would be another example; anything which makes it difficult for growing businesses to capitalize and thereby artificially protects the position of the largest businesses, such as most Democrat tax and regulatory policies, is yet another.)