Is Economy Doing Well?

[Tim The Enchanter]

Economy kicking butt here. In some areas at least.
The world / town I grew up in is gone to crap.
Down the tubes.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Samsung slashes third quarter profit estimate by a third after pulling plug on Note 7

Samsung Electronics Co slashed its quarterly profit estimate by a third on Wednesday, soaking up a $2.3 billion hit from ditching its flagship smartphone in what could be one of the costliest product safety failures in tech history.

Investors and analysts agreed that the damage to Samsung's brand and future earnings would deepen the longer the market was left in the dark about the origin of the fault. Some have already predicted lost revenue in the region of $17 billion for Samsung.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-smartphones-stocks-idUSKCN12C00B

Mobile phones drive the world's economy. Lithium ion batteries are inherently problematic due to its chemistry.


Battery fire risk goes well beyond Samsung

NEW YORK -- Samsung’s Note 7 isn’t the only gadget to catch fire due to lithium-battery problems, which have afflicted everything from iPhones to Tesla cars to Boeing jetliners. Blame chemistry and the fact that the batteries we rely on for everyday life are prone to leaking and even bursting into flame if damaged, defective or exposed to excessive heat.

That’s because lithium-ion batteries store a lot of energy in a tiny space, with combustible components separated by ultra-thin walls. If something happens to those separators, a chemical reaction can quickly escalate out of control.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lithium-battery-fire-risk-samsung-galaxy-note-7/

The rush to make devices smaller and lighter compromise safety when it comes to lithium batteries.

 

[residentialguy]

I'm seeing help wanted signs for minimal wage jobs asking $15/month.

Now that's what I call minimum wage!

 

[Meandering]

After yesterday's serious drop in the DOW and this morning's continued decline in the futures.........

It is becoming more important to watch the global economy.

.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

lithium-ion batteries store a lot of energy in a tiny space,

I actually had a watch battery explode on my dining room table and it sounded like a .22 going off in the room. I had bought a two pack and put one in a watch. The other sit in the package on the table for a few days before I intended to move it elsewhere. It exploded in the package and was not exposed to water, etc. It was still in its foil package. Blew bits of the package and battery all over the place.

Lithium is NOT the portable energy source of the future.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

I actually had a watch battery explode on my dining room table and it sounded like a .22 going off in the room. I had bought a two pack and put one in a watch. The other sit in the package on the table for a few days before I intended to move it elsewhere. It exploded in the package and was not exposed to water, etc. It was still in its foil package. Blew bits of the package and battery all over the place.

Lithium is NOT the portable energy source of the future.

Seems like lithium batteries need their own cooling assuming the design construction will accommodate that.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

seems like lithium batteries need their own cooling assuming the design construction will accommodate that.

I don't know if it is an issue of temperature or rather a problem with the separator that leads to a electro-chemical reaction. But I assume since such batteries can heat up even when charged too fast, perhaps that heat is supposedly damaging the separation membrane. I read something about the potential for lithium to actually form crystals under heat and this crystal is what initiates a rapid chain reaction in the battery that leads to fire or explosion.

Almost certainly it was a lithium battery explosion that brought down a UPS transport plane several years ago.

 

[Doug in NC]

Is the economy doing well? Well, that depends on who you ask. The Obama regime will tell you it's doing great, and the Obama media will parrot the same. And the Fed wanting to raise interest rates is no indicator. We know the reason they have kept it low for so long is because the economy has been holding its head just above water since 2008. The unemployment rate that we are told is only 5%, but I understand that this rate excludes millions who have given up and left the job market altogether. Maybe one indicator of how average Americans are really doing is to look at their bank accounts. 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, and 21% don't even have a savings account!

Once the Fed does begin to raise interest rates, I hope it is very slow and in the smallest of increments. The last thing the country needs right now is a shock in interest rates. Remember increasing interest rates will also further balloon the National Debt. "Any" percent increase on a figure as large as $20,000,000,000 is going to hurt the economy, because that's money the government is taking out, and consumers don't have to put back into the economy.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

I hope it is very slow and in the smallest of increments.

Can't get any smaller than it is now... What it needs to do is stop pretending it is "data dependent" and not "Wall Street Dependent" and set a course. Simply say we are going to raise rates by ¼% every 3 months until we reach 4% come L or high water. The market isn't reacting normally. It is moving the FED so they can make a small profit and they cannot get a big move because the FED backs off at every global economic sneeze.

 

[Pittsburgh Pete]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/b...sus-household-income-poverty-wealth-2015.html

Definitely good news but probably all made up by the Obama regime and Obama media!