Was listening to the radio while I was doing a home project this weekend. Some guy calls into the talk show and says, basically, that he can’t understand why folks are so upset with President Obama over the economy, since we’d experienced 20-some months of job growth.
And then I just laughed, and shook my head. I hear that same talking point over and over, and over again on MSNBC, ABC, Huffington Post, etc., and it’s spin. Pure, unadulterated spin.
First of all, we’ve covered this already. We aren’t growing. We can’t. There are too many new government restrictions coming at us daily, and the only certainty in the economic landscape is not promising. So you have companies going with the sure things, being unwilling to take the sorts of chances that must happen for an economy to actually grow.
Obama’s recovery, orchestrated wholly by him, has been a disaster. All talks of “It’s Bush’s fault” aside, when you take over a job, a company, etc.,… it can be argued after 6-8 months that you’re working on it. A year: sure, things take time. But over THREE years?? In that amount of time, you need results. And in Obama’s case, we needed to be adding jobs at a much, much greater pace in order to make up the ground that we lost.
And that, ladies and gents, is exactly what is not happenin’.
From Larry Kudlow @ RealClearPolitics.com:
You would think $1 trillion in spending stimulus and $2.5 trillion of Fed pump-priming (via Quantitative Easing – JTR) would produce an economy a whole lot stronger than 1.9 percent gross domestic product, which was the revised first-quarter number. And you’d think all that government spending would deliver a whole lot more jobs than 69,000 in May.
But it hasn’t happened.
The Keynesian government-spending model has proven a complete failure. It’s the Obama model. And it has produced such an anemic recovery that, frankly, at 2 percent growth, we’re back on the front end of a potential recession. If anything goes wrong — like another blow-up in Europe — there’s no safety margin to stop a new recession.
And that brings us to the grim May employment report, which generated only 69,000 nonfarm payrolls. It’s the third consecutive sub par tally, replete with downward revisions for the two prior months. It’s a devastating number for the American economy and a catastrophic number for Obama’s re-election hopes. All momentum on jobs and the economy has evaporated.
Read the whole thing.
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Coincidentally, I heard Larry Kudlow being interviewed on Don Wade & Roma (a Chicago radio show) and he summed up his feelings towards the current administration by quoting Oliver Cromwell from 1653:
“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
To which I say: Amen.
Two Heads are Better Than One 
I’m consistently amazed at how critical stats like unemployment and GDP are initially announced: they put the number out there and we get a solid news cycle of how the “numbers aren’t impressive, but they aren’t ‘that bad’ either.” Shortly thereafter, the numbers are invariably revised DOWN to what would be considered “bad”…..yet, you just DON’T seem to hear much at that point other than from the Alternative Media, which seems to be the only place to get factually based numbers anymore.
PGH: you’re right.
The old, revised numbers have consistently been timed for at least the last two years to coincide with the newest numbers, which are then better by comparison to last month’s newly acccurate yet lower results. This is only until the next (downward) revision, of course, but by then the newest, artificially high numbers are out, and the cycle continues.
And always, always, always …..the lower results are described as happening “unexpectedly”.
Makes me wonder about the sanity of someone who can have ‘expectations’ that are that unrealistic, every single month.
Ironic, isn’t it? And they can’t seem to find any other time to release the “revisions” except on Friday afternoons…..go figure.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Yeah, that’s it: a coincidence….