Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving which determines many stores success for the year, coined “black” Friday meaning profitable compared to if a business is in the red they meaning they are in the negative, so black Friday is a crucial day for many stores and businesses to ensure a good year. According to many sites,  sales were pretty good this year, possibly a tad higher than last year. An article from smallbusinessnewz.com reported sales increased by one percent from last year, while the startribune.com reported a 3% increase and another article from Yahoo Finance indicated sales rose from 10.3 billion dollars in 2007  to 10.6 billion dollars this year, which sounds like a pleasant surprise considering the current economic situation. Even though total consumer spending was pretty good, businesses may not have fared as well as the numbers portray. The reason being to get consumers to loosen up their wallets stores had to slash prices even more, so even though sales increased, business’s profits may have been lower than previous years. Another thing to consider is that just because the overall sales reported was better than last year doesn’t mean every store did well. An article from the San Fransico Chronicle included figures from many of the big name retailers, and how well, or not so well each of them did. They explained how discount and warehouse types of stores generally did well which is normal during times of economic turmoil, while higher end retailers didn’t do so well. For example Abercrombie & Fitch reported a -28% change in sales compared to this time last year where Walmart had a +3.4% increase. I think it came down to how much consumers could get for their dollar, so they were willing to spend more to get more but couldn’t justify big spending on high dollar items.

OPEC, The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which controls about 40 percent of the world’s crude oil production, decided on Friday October 24th that they are going to decrease their oil production targets by 1.5 million barrels a day to “bolster” falling oil prices. Really as if squeezing our wallets dry over the summer months with record high prices at the pump wasn’t enough. OPEC also encouraged other producing countries to do the same, the reason being, we need to stabilize and protect our gas prices from unhealthy fluctuations. To me it just seems like a sophisticated way to say we were getting comfortable with the profits we were making from 4 dollars plus per gallon over the summer which has caused our appetite for greed to grow even larger. They say the market is off balance and that by decreasing production the will bring it back to its equilibrium and prices will take care of themselves. No the equilibrium is where it is at because of the market, what they are doing is creating a price ceiling that reduces the quantity available causing the price to increase, no question about it. So my concluding statement is really, really OPEC with the Global economy in the pits you’re gonna cause the biggest dependent variable in the cost of transportation to rise once again, thanks.

To read more feel free to check out these articles

“Crude Oil Is Poised for Biggest Monthly Drop as Demand Declines”

“Oil Falls Below $65 on US Contraction”

Every four years, whenever presidential election time rolls around, Saturday Night Live is presented with loads of material on a silver plate, This year the most of the SNL laughs have been at the expense of Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin, John McCain, and Barack Obama, as these links will show;

Saturday Night Live – Presidential Debate

Saturday Night Live – Palin / Hilary Open

Saturday Night Live – Update: Palin Rap

Saturday Night Live – Gov. Palin Cold Open

I will continue to add more to this list.

Alright now the McCain side of things. John McCain’s economic plan covers many topics from clean energy to trade policies. Starting with workplace flexibility, if McCain is elected to office he wants to create a National Commission on Workplace Flexibility and Choice which would touch on issues like making work schedules more flexible, making it easier for people to work at home, make health care more portable so that workers don’t lose it when they switch jobs. On the subject of health care; McCain’s health care reform includes making generic drugs cheaper, dedicating more federal funds to the research of treating and curing chronic disease, he plans to reform the payment systems in Medicaid and Medicare, and create a zero tolerance for medicare and medicaid fraud, he also wants to “develop standards for measuring and evaluating treatments and outcomes” as well as make doctors records more open to the public. McCain has a Pro-Growth Tax Policy which believes that small businesses are the heart of job growth, and that raising taxes on them hurts the whole economy. McCain’s plan intends on keeping the top tax rate at 35% and cutting corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, we currently have the second highest corporate tax rate and as other countries lowered theirs we fell out of suit. Lowering corporate tax rates also inhibits keeping quality jobs in the United States. He also wants to create tax credits on all revenue spent on R&D to encourage further investment in research and development. McCain wants to lower trade barriers and play a bigger part in globalization. To deal with current home mortgage crisis McCain has a Home Plan that will enable hundreds of thousands of deserving families to get out of their over bearing mortgages, and into affordable loans that reflect their homes market value. To combat rising fuel costs McCain would suspend the federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day which would save motorists 6.8 $billion during the summer months. Finally on of McCain’s biggest goals is to reform Washington by preforming an extensive spending review which would terminate certain programs and consolidate, streamline, reprioritze funds. He wants to put a stop to wasteful spending like pork barrel and ear mark spending. He will strive to eliminate earmarks that lead to corruption.

All information on McCain’s economic plan was gathered from McCain’s campaign website

First we’ll start with Obama. His first plan if he takes office, is to jump start the economy by taxing excessive oil company profits, and using the revenue from that to supply American families with a $1,000 emergency energy rebate, Which Obama calls a “down payment on his long-term plan to provide the middle-class with at least $1,000 per year in tax relief”. In terms of taxes Obama wants to completely eliminate income tax for senior citizens making under $50,000 a year, he also wants to simplify the process of filing taxes for millions of Americans, his goal is that people will be able to complete their taxes in five minutes. Barack wants to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, and reward companies that create jobs here in the U.S. with tax breaks. Obama intends to invest $150 billion in clean energy which he believes will create 5 million new “green” jobs. Obama wants to rebuild the national transportation infrastructure, and to finance this he wants to create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, he plans to infuse this Reinvestment Bank with $60 billion of federal money. Obama strongly encourages the advancement of science and supports doubling the amount of federal funds for basic research, as well as creating tax credits for research and development to entice companies to invest in R&D. Barack intends to support small businesses by eliminating all capital gains tax as a well as a by creating a “Make Work Pay” tax credit which is his solution to double taxation. As far as labor goes Obama wants to make it easier for workers to unionize and not be discriminated against for doing so, wants to protect striking workers by banning employers from permanently replacing workers on strike, and finally wants to increase minimum wage so that its adjusted for inflation. To protect home ownership he plans to make a Homeowner Obligation Made Explicit (HOME) score which basically helps individuals understand the full cost of their home loan, so they’re not lured in by low short-term interest rates. He also wants to crack down on predatory credit card companies by making a five star credit card rating system, and provide a credit card bill of rights, both to protect consumers.

I think it will be interesting to see who walks the walk when either candidate is elected, elections commonly evoke numerous promises for change, but I’m curious to see which policies are enacted after our new president takes the oath of office.

All information on Obama’s economic plan was gathered from his personal campaign website

As the chart above indicates that although our GDP may be growing, yet other economic factors don’t look to be doing as well. One of the largest issues is our Unemployment rate. It is has grown 4.7% since last year, which is unprecedented, and is more than 3 times greater than Japan, Britain, and Europe combined. Also we have the lowest GDP per person compared to those other areas.

As The Economist advises that the NBER or National Bureau of Economic Research gives a more realistic overview of the economy, because it takes into account monthly data collected from industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale and retail trade. NBER has yet to declare our economy in a state of recession but I feel their approach to judging the economy gives a much better depiction than just looking at GDP. In my opinion it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or an economist in our case to tell you that our nations soaring unemployment rates are a major contributor to the state of our economy.

Micro looks at the smaller scale and how individual consumers and producers behave in different individual markets in the economy. And Macro deals with the larger spectrum like national production and price levels. A majority of topics and events in the media related to economics, have to deal with macroeconomics, so i will mainly focus on it as well. When you hear the word economics used or described as not doing so well, or our economy is in the dumps, what does that actually mean.

There are many ways to measure or describe an economy, but there are a few basic indicators that will give you a good feel for things. The greatest indicator of the state of the economy is the GDP, GDP or Gross Domestic Product is the total outcome of an economy. It is measured by the market value of the goods and services produced within an economy, which equivilates to basically the total amount the united states spends. It gets more complicated with sub categories but that is not prevalent at the moment. The other big indicator of economic status is CPI, which is the consumer price index. CPI is the cost of living indicator, which allows consumers and economists to see what the purchasing power of the dollar yields.

GDP and CPI are the two biggest measurements of economy so next time you turn to your preferred news source and they mention that GDP has increased 3% then you’ll know that people have been spending more money and contributing to our economy. Well there are some basics, which will be expanded upon in the future. Until next time