Is Trump - gulp - making America great again?

[Balderdasha]

I guess that could make sense. I've never taken uppers. I've realised recently though that most of my reluctance to try a lot of drugs is because I experience those sort of highs and lows and various weird effects naturally because I have bipolar, and for me, the idea of voluntarily intensifying those experiences is literally insane. I got myself sectioned while 100% sober. Maybe if you don't have bipolar life is really dull and then various high / low-triggering drugs are appealing.

There are of course, many people who have bipolar who do choose to take lots of drugs (one of the symptoms is often lack of impulse control). What they experience then must be completely off the wall.

[ursus arctos]

As is the case with so many aspects of the US health care "system", the use of psychoactive drugs here is appalling and scandalises those familiar with more civilised approaches.

They generally are not the subjects of multi-zillion dollar advertising campaigns aimed at consumers, but there has long been a tradition of family doctors writing scripts without much basis (and less knowledge/understanding). They tend to become incredibly popular among the middle class in waves. Valium (diazepam) ruled the roost here for quite a while, only to be supplanted by Prozac (fluoxetine), which was then replaced by Xanax. The fact that the latter has become "recreational" is an indication that it is no longer the clinical drug of choice.

[Balderdasha]

What is the clinical drug of choice now then?

I've been prescribed fluoxetine in the past as well. Another one that zaps your personality and that I'm glad I've now weaned myself off.

[ursus arctos]

I'm not sure.

Perhaps thankfully, SSRI regimens are less a subject of general conversation among our circle than they used to be.

[The_Purple_Cow]

1. U.S. unemployment is at a historic low because companies are employing workers for low-paid, low security, jobs rather than investing in modern machinery to improve productivity. This is one of the main reasons why productivity n the US economy is falling, borrowing money for investment is also at an all-time low. Meanwhile US corporate debt is also at exceptionally high levels but that money is being used share buy-back rather than for productive use. Despite US interest rates approaching 0% US loans for investment are actually falling, not rising.

2. Trump's trade wars have exacerbated a fall in global trade, down 1.1% in 2018 - the fourth consecutive year of contraction.

3. Both the rate and mass of profits of US corporations are falling. Low profitability in productive sectors of the US economy has stimulated the switch of profits and cash by companies into financial speculation. In the US this is done largely by buying back their own shares. Buybacks have become the biggest category of financial asset investment in the US (and to a ;lesser extent in Europe.) US buybacks reached nearly $1trn in 2018. That’s about 3% of the total market value of US top 500 stocks, but by boosting the price of their own shares, companies have attracted other investors to push US stock market indexes to record highs. More than half of all buybacks are now funded by debt. – “sort of like mortgaging your house to the hilt, then using it to throw a lavish party.” (AS S & P put it) But once a recession inevitably arrives, the result could be nasty for companies with lots of debt due to buybacks.

4. The value of tradeable US Corporate debt is now $8 trillion. This has led to the rise of the so-called 'Zombie company'. Companies that earn less than they owe in interest payments, and are only able to continue to function because they can borrow more. A staggering 28% of all US companies with a market cap below $1 billion are in this situation. Should (or rather, when.) interest rates rise for their current historically low values, their future looks extremely bleak.

[anton pulisov]

The question is if interest rates will rise again. I've been seeing investors and banks predict for 10 years that interest rates will rise in the next couple of years, but the central banks know that we are dealing with a fake recovery and that an interest rate hike will kill the economy. If all this money that has been printed globally in the past decade had been invested in economically productive enterprises then we'd be laughing now, but as you say, it's all been piled into stocks, bonds and housing.

[Femme Folle]

I always think of Xanax and lorazepam, diazepam, etc. as PRN drugs, unlike fluoxetine, which must be taken for a couple of weeks before it even starts working. I'm not saying that people don't experience side effects from fluoxetine, but it's not exactly in the same category as the 'pams.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

A european unemployment rate of 5% and an American unemployment rate of 5% don't really mean the same thing do they? As ursus pointed out in a way, the proportion of the working age population that is economically inactive in the US is way higher than the EU average. (If I remember correctly, it's comparable to Ireland) If you're of working age, you're 25% more likely to have a job in germany than the US. How do undocumented workers feed into such statistics?

Rogin, Something you have to remember about the US is that their economy is growing at about the same rate as the overall EU economy, but while the EU govts as a whole have a budget deficit approaching Zero, the US is borrowing about a trillion dollars a year, or about 5% of GDP to pump into the economy to achieve that same level of growth. That is a recipe for disaster, particularly with the world steadily sliding towards a recession. This could get extremely messy.

[ursus arctos]

Undocumented workers are included if they are active in the workforce (though the surveys do not ask about immigration status)

Unsurprisingly, they tend to be more difficult to count when they are unemployed

A number of labour economists believe that the administration is manipulating the figures by aggressively removing individuals from the workforce.

[anton pulisov]

TAB, despite the bailouts etc, US debt to GDP is still only 105%. Eurozone is 88%. Not that big of a difference.

And the US economy is not "growing at about the same rate as the overall EU economy". Growth the US has been consistently faster than the EU since the financial crisis. All that EU austerity has had a deflationary effect that essentially limited growth. The eurozone rules were seemingly designed by people who thought the gold standard still existed. Within the EU, the eurozone countries are all at the bottom of the EU growth table. Notable exceptions are high growth eurozone country Ireland (fake GDP) and low growth non-eurozone country UK (currently carrying national economic self-harm project). Economic growth in Germany, the great eurozone rule follower, is only 0.4%, which is not even beating inflation.

The main risk for the US (and EU) economy is that growth has been concentrated in economically non productive sectors. Once that growth gets tapped out then that's it, there will have been no benefits for the wider economy which can take things to the next level.

[The_Purple_Cow]

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.c...ckle-dries-up/

[Lurgee]

TAB, despite the bailouts etc, US debt to GDP is still only 105%. Eurozone is 88%. Not that big of a difference.

Weren't we told that if debt went about 90% the economy would go into a death spiral and we'd all be reduced to eating our grandmothers?

You mean economists are just as prone to spouting biased politicised rubbish be wrong like the rest of us?

[anton pulisov]

Depends. If you own the printing press for the world's reserve currency then you have a lot of leeway.

Also, the the type of banking morons on mainstream media only talk about public debt, but you have to look at public + private + corporate debt. The bankers would of course prefer to see public debt cut, for obvious reasons.