ObamaCare Killed the Recovery

Fascinating analysis shows that the V-shaped bounce off the bottom and steadily improving unemployment was stopped in their tracks by the introduction of ObamaCare. Even before it passed it started to kill the recovery. Could it be that the expected increased burden of adding an employee scuttled hiring plans? 

If we had stayed on the prior trend, we would be in a clear jobs recovery in three months (Sep 2010). Now it trends out three to three more years.

Comments

[PTrainer]

If anyone cares what Harry Dent has to say, Options University is having a free webinar this evening at 9:00 PM EDT where Harry will be speaking. To register - http://www.optionsuniversity.com/hdent/

[Scrap]

Lol, this is a joke right?

I think the healthcare package is a major failure, and that Obama has been anything but a good leader, but this "fascinating analysis" is utterly lacking in intellectual and logical rigor.

1. Correlation is not causation.
2. Linear extrapolations are hardly worthy of your blog, which says, "The market is a nonlinear chaotic system..." That's because the WORLD is a nonlinear chaotic system.
3. Do you think Obamacare stopped the global recovery? Do you think it caused the Chinese to decide to step on the brakes? Do you think the sovereign debt crisis would have been avoided if not for Obamacare?

I'm a Canadian with no skin in the political game. I'm just disappointed because propagating this kind of nonsense is what undermines serious debate.

Usually I find this blog pretty terrific.

[Scrap]

PS. Claims kept falling until January.

[yelnick]

Scrap, not a joke. Sure, correlation is not causation, but the coincidence is striking and has plausible causality. One chart will not prove it, so consider the surrounding chages in the business and political climate:
That moment represented the start of the Tea party That moment represented the beginnings of disillusionment with Obama from the centerThe bill was forced through with chicanery seldom if ever seen in major legislation. 

While unemployment improved a month more before flatlining, the stats show the flatlining began with the next month. Other events such as China tightening happened after this. I do not suggest the global recovery nor the sovereign debt crisis came from this event, only that the US recovery began to stall and hiring flatlined

Calling it nonsense is simply wrong. The wheels began to come off the ObamaTrain with ObamaCare, and opposition to his policies hardened. The polity in the US became much more polarized. The likely and apparent consequence is a drop in confidence about the future, which leads to a drop in investment/hiring/etc with business. A similar phenomenon was seen in the 1930s, as continuous and ineffectual government intervention and experiment froze private action.

Think of what is facing business in the US:
5 or 6 banks are too big to fail, the other 960 are underwater and sinkinga major tax increase is coming next yeara series of tax and regulatory changes were snuck into ObamaCare and are only months later become apparentthe distaste of ObamaCare is approaching 70% and will likely push more outsourcing by businessthe financial reform bill will further tighten credit for small businessthe financial reform bill has provisions which will pummel venture capital, further plucking the golden goose of growthsome sort of nasty carbon tax or EPA regs are coming to hammer business even more

US business didn't know what they would get in Obama until he shoved the healthcare bill through despite serious opposition. So now they know what they got. 

[bob m]

What effect do you think it will have when Obama stops a publicly traded company like BP from paying a dividend. Did anyone notice how appalled he was that a company would even THINK of paying one while in such a crisis? First he cheated bond holders; now he is demonizing stockholders waiting for a dividend.

[Steven_737]

hello Duncan

although the Leading Diagonal is not really out of the question, I still propose the same count as before.

http://steven737.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/es-spx-analysis-06102010-.html

And the concepts about the factors that would make one bullish are still the same as before.

http://steven737.typepad.com/blog/2010/05/es-spx-analysis-5212010.html

One needs good reasons to become bullish (on the daily time-frame). The 15 min timeframe is a different story.

cheers :)

PS.
a reminder: please post Zoran's findings on wave extensions and statistics of retracements of waves 2 and 4.

[Steven_737]

another one for NQ NDX fans

http://steven737.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/nq-ndx-analysis-06102010-.html

cheers ...

[Jing Chen]

Euro is probably the best opportunity right now - it is where USD was last November, tracing out 5th waves in multiple degrees. Bearish sentiment was running 97%-98% recently, with everyone hating it.

Yet downside momentum is slowing, and Futures open interest is waning. This is a perfect setup for a bounce back into the 1.3 area (4th wave of one lesser degree and 50% retracement level).

I am watching the MACD bullish divergence everyday on the daily chart below.

http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?$XEU

Ideally, I would like to see a bullish divergence on the weekly chart as well. Also a small 5-wave rise afterwards would be another welcome confirmation.

[Scrap]

Yelnick, have you read the Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior? There are many, many examples of leaders being made the focus point for deteriorating social mood. The Tea Party movement would have found something to focus their rage on, whether it was Obamacare or illegal immigration. This is the same rational, level-headed movement that continues to assert that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya and that ACORN somehow managed to steal the election for Obama in order to effect a radical socialist agenda.

The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior also details quite specifically how social events are not exogenous to social mood but are a manifestation of social mood. Big business is facing regulation because 30 years of a Randian utopia has completely messed up our world. Regulation is the natural corrective wave to unfettered greed. Is it going to hurt business? Sure. Should business have had thirty golden years of looting the middle class? Your answer will depend greatly on whether you were an executive or a member of the middle class.

(See "Wealth and Democracy" by Kevin Phillips for more, or any of Elizabeth Warren's work on the subject.)

I also find contentious your argument that government activity in the 1930s froze private action. Sure, not all of the policies were efficient or effective (like the NRA) but it was a crisis that could easily have descended into chaos without something to bring the people together, and that was immediate job relief. (Much of this is discussed in first hand accounts in the work of Studs Terkel.)

Unfortunately Obama has ignored this basic lesson and in my opinion he is likely to be a one-term president as a result. Whoever comes in next will be admitted during a time of massive popular discontent, and I'm fairly certain private action is hardly going to be there to magically start creating more jobs. Wal-Mart can only hire so many greeters. And then we'll see if there are really any libertarians in foxholes.

[Wave Rust]

studs terkel

roflmao

wave rust

[Pup]

Dad; what's roflmao?

Dad; what's studs terkel?

[DG]

Big business is facing regulation because 30 years of a Randian utopia has completely messed up our world. Regulation is the natural corrective wave to unfettered greed.

Nice soundbite, but I have worked in financial services before and I assure you that, after nuclear energy, it is the most regulated industry out there. I would bet that you couldn't read even a tenth of the laws on the books regarding the industry in a full year. How many hundreds of thousands of pages of regulation does the industry need before people like you, who seem to want to live in some static world where nothing ever changes, deem it sufficiently-regulated?

The bigger failure was not letting those who had overshot their risk tolerances fail and have their assets scooped up by better management.

[Thrill]

DG, you nailed it. History will show we missed a golden opportunity to let all this toxic crap die right where it should have - in the hands of the greedy bastards who created it! Now so much of it is public debt, lurking around like an oil spill we can't see......

[Professor Linguist]

I have noticed that the number of laws existing in any given field is usually an inversely related index of the responsibility level of those populating it. (the higher the responsibility level the less regulation is necessary).

The U.S. isn't in a mess for lack of laws and regulations; however, the volume of laws and regulating that we require speaks volumes for where we are as a nation.

In the end it's people and how they care for their fellow man that make a pleasant or harsh society to live in.

Responsibility is different from accountability, just so my point is easier to understand.

For example, someone with a higher responsibility level will be more apt to analyze how his actions may benefit or injure others as amatter of course; those with a lower responsibility level do the opposite and these are the guys that make excessive laws/reguations a necessity.

Sort of like the gun laws that curtail those who don't need those laws in the first place but fail to stop those that should be curtailed.

[coach sale]

Spend time offering assistance to those who are less fortunate than you, so that you may gain perspective.