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Comment by carsongross | Hacker News Reader

Pretty simple: the U.S. economy is contracting severely, even though the manipulated (and preposterous, if you think about them for more than a moment) economic statistics (GDP, U3) are not.

I'm not saying this is The Big One (I've been expecting it for a decade now) but I do expect The Big One to start a lot like this.

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Do you have any real statistics to back up your statement? I can counter with other anecdotal stuff - where I live, housing prices are rising and unemployment dropping. So I guess I'll state that the economy is growing strongly. That doesn't make it any more true than your unsubstantiated statement.

See below. And see the latest ISM.

Of course there are pockets of growth during any economic contraction. In this case we can expect them to be in areas with first access to the money printed by the federal reserve: government, banking, etc. And there is an energy boom on as well. So it depends.

Do you have any evidence of this contraction? I'd be curious to hear which statistics you think are better indicators.

Sure.

You are looking at one, in gasoline sales.

U6 over 15% looks pretty miserable:

  http://helpthe99ers.blogspot.com/2012/02/graph-of-day-u3-u4-and-u6.html

and the less-easily-manipulated population employment ratio is bouncing along the bottom (maybe contracting):

  http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

General sales taxes in CA are down (although the latest data is not up yet):

  http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/state-taxes/california/general-sales-and-gross-receipts/tax-revenue-per-capita/2011/q3#graph

Generally, the harder the statistic, the worse the situation looks. Which, given that we are in an election year and should expect the govt. to be juicing the economy as much as it can, should be worrying.

None of those three look good, but, as far as I can tell, none indicate a contraction... at worst they indicate that things are remaining bad, but not getting worse. The first appears to be improving, slowly. The second appears to be hovering aroung the same level since 2010. The third link is broken for me, but when I find the data I think you're referencing on that site it appears that there is a dip in the latest quarter, but if you look at the history that data clearly does not track the overall performance of the economy very closely. I can't say I find your claim very credible so far, but if you have additional evidence I'd be very interested.

They all indicate a very weak to declining economy and, of course, they are all trailing indicators. With the ISM miss this month and the latest jobs debacle, I expect us to be officially in recession by the end of the year (with all the experts shocked, of course.)