More evidence that Obama doesn't have a clue about basic economics: Impact of the Keystone XL pipeline on gas prices

President Obama doesn't seem to understand that there is a worldwide market for gasoline.  If you lower the price in Europe, it will lower the price in the US.  Oil companies will ship gasoline to the place where they can get the higher price and they will keep doing that until the prices in all the places are the same.  From Bloomberg:

“Understand what this project is: It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the Gulf where it will be sold everywhere else,” the president said yesterday during a visit to Yangon, Myanmar. “It doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.” . . .

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Median family income has fallen during the Obama "Recovery" by about as much as it did during recession, for poorer families the "Recovery" has been worse

Family income for the poorest families has fallen continually during the Obama "recovery."  Indeed, the drop in family income for those in the 10th and 20th percentiles is larger during the recovery than during the recession.  The drop in family income for the 40th percentile and the median is about as large for the recovery as it was during the recession.  Only the wealthiest families those in the top 10 percent have seen their incomes go up, but even then their incomes are lower than before the recession started.  The Current Population Survey data is available here.

Take the same time period after the Reagan Recovery started

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Median Household Income still much lower today than it was when the recession ended!

Click figure to enlarge.  The original figure is available here.

It is one thing to say that the economy is worse than before the recession hit.  It is another to say that we are lower now than when the "recovery" started.

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So can the bad winter storms during the first quarter of 2014 explain the shrinking economy?

The Obama administration has blamed the slow growth on the “historically severe winter weather, which temporarily lowered growth.”  Jason Furman, the chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, made this assertion again on July 3^rd. 

In a list of the worst United States winter storms since 1888, Epic Disasters, using National Weather Service data, lists five of the ten worst occurring since 1947.  Four of the five saw economic growth.  Only during the fifth worst storm did the economy shrink.  

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Obama administration upset because Hobby Lobby prevents women from getting "free contraceptive coverage," Obama doesn't understand economics, clearly nothing is free

White House press secretary Josh Earnest: "Well, as the constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office would tell you is, he would read the entire decision before he passed judgment in terms of his own legal analysis. What we have been able to assess so far ... is that there is a problem that has been exposed, which is that there are now a group of women of an indeterminate size who no longer have access to free contraceptive coverage simply because of some religious views held, not by them necessarily, but by their bosses.   We disagree and the constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees with that conclusion from the Supreme Court. And that's why we--primarily, because he is concerned about the impact it could have on the health of those women."

The notion that "contraceptive coverage" is free is absurd.   If an insurance company completely covers 100% of the cost of RU-486 or other contraceptives, that costs the insurance company something and means that the premium is going to have to be higher.  Even worse, Obamacare forces up the premiums for younger people (those who are obviously most likely to use contraceptives) relative to older ones.  If Obama was concerned about the relatively small costs of contraceptives, why doesn't he first not raise young people's premiums so dramatically?  This is the reason that Obamacare needs a lot of young people signing up to keep the premiums down, they cross subsidize the others getting insurance.

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The incredible 3% drop in GDP can't be blamed on the cold weather

The Obama administration suggests that it was unusually cold weather that explains the drop, but looking it is hard to see any relationship between abnormally low temperatures and GDP growth.

Click on figures to enlarge them.

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US GDP growth falling farther and farther behind trend as the Obama recovery continues

Click on figure to make it larger.

With the final measure of GDP growth during the first quarter of 2013 just being released (2.6%), I thought that I would graph out how GDP growth has preformed during the Obama "recovery."  As economists know, during previous recoveries GDP growth grows much faster than the trend growth rate until GDP growth catches back up to trend.  This is the first recovery where that isn't the case.  As you can see from the above figure, GDP growth in the current recovery keeps growing more slowly than the trend rate.  

Real GDP increased by only a paltry 1.9 percent in 2013.  It was down from the already weak 2.8 percent in 2012.

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