Government Shutdown and the Economy

Friday morning about 8:30, the Dept of Labor was supposed to publish their monthly payroll report.  This, in my opinion, is the most important data the government publishes on the performance of the US economy.

Instead, the DoL was silent, and money was spent barricading off parks and memorials, many of which would normally be free and accessible to the public. In other words, they spent more money on them, for the sole purpose of creating an inconvenience to the public.  This spending of taxpayer money for the purpose of annoying the public was, of course, vengeance against people who think the government spends money on things it should not.

No matter. Commercial elements that study the economy for the purpose of, themselves, making money, tell us the payroll report would indicate we are still treading water.  Because business continues to become more and more efficient, the US economy, as a whole is gaining, so we are in a sort of up cycle.

As I indicated in last month's post, we can expect this upcycle to last about 18 months, more or less, and begin to collapse on itself again sometime around the end of 2014.  This is kinda bad news for the Republicans and other fiscal conservatives, since, if they win the election in 2014, and take office in Jan 2015, they will be there to blame when we go into a downcycle in 2015 and 2016. 

Well, more on this later.