Another Recession Is Right Around The Corner

November 16, 2012 2 Comments

The fiscal cliff is just around the corner. New jobless claims increased 78,000 last week despite Obama’s re-election. Inflation is on the rise. Poverty has increased. Europe is in a recession. McDonald’s is seeing their sales decrease. Don’t be fooled, this doesn’t mean people are eating more nutritious lunches or that they’re spending money at higher end restaurants like Applebee’s. (did I just say Applebee’s is high end? oy) It means that people can’t afford to eat at a restaurant that historically performs well during recessions. It’s not like they’re running over to Burger King or Wendy’s, their sales don’t make up for McDonald’s losses.

At least one restaurant chain owner is going to charge an Obamacare surcharge. We’re beginning to see what’s going to happen thanks to Obamacare. Taxes are going up for thousands of middle class families thanks to Obamacare. Businesses are cutting back on employee hours in order to not be subject to Obamacare. Many small businesses are making sure they don’t have 50 employees and thus aren’t subject to Obamacare. They’re laying off employees and refusing to hire. All of this while stocks are dropping into recession territory, the dollar is falling, unemployment is going up and historically strong companies are losing sales.

We face a major tax increase on January 1st. Odds are that Congress and the President aren’t going to agree on much, if so middle class families will see a major tax increase. Meanwhile high income earners are pulling their money from investments so as not to subject themselves to higher taxes next year. All of this money is going to be taken out of the private sector, furthering a brewing recession. Nothing can be worse for an economy in recession than removing money from the private sector. How does Obama and the Democrats think businesses will hire people if they have no money?

But of course that question assumes Obama and the Democrats care about Americans working. The last four years suggest that they really don’t. Obama won re-election on food stamps and welfare. Voters on food stamps account for nearly 75% of Obama’s votes. So let’s not pretend like Obama particularly cares about jobs. In fact, the fewer people who are employed the better it is for the Democrats. After all jobs, especially good jobs, remove people from the welfare and food stamp rolls and thus those voters are less likely to vote for Democrats. All you’ll see from the left is more food stamps, more welfare, more handouts and fewer jobs. It’s their pathway to re-election.

For the rest of us, we’re looking at a looming disaster. The middle class is facing thousands of dollars in tax increases on January 1st. If we don’t have health insurance, there are thousands of middle class Americans facing the Obamacare tax. Our jobs are threatened as our employers cut back with Obamacare and upper class tax increases looming. We have nowhere to turn. We make to much to go on welfare and we actually want to work, lessening our will to join the ranks of welfare recipient. The country is facing a disaster and we have a President who just doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to, welfare and food stamps got him re-elected. Not even his dismal economic performance could overcome the freebies the government handed out.

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8.2 Million Removed From Labor Force Under Obama

October 16, 2012 Leave a comment

The economic news in this country hasn’t been good throughout the Obama administration. Second quarter growth was just 1.3%, manufacturing orders and orders for durable goods are down substantially in recent months. QE1 and QE2 failed while QE3 is destined for failure. The Stimulus was a massive failure. Income is down $4,000 during the Obama years while prices are up. There are 48 million Americans on food stamps. If we blindly follow the government’s 7.8% unemployment claim, there are millions of unemployed Americans. If we subscribe to the U-6 unemployment model, the number of millions of unemployed Americans nearly doubles. The economic disaster has been sustained throughout Obama’s years.

The number of Americans in the workforce has barely increased during the last four years. We know that despite claims of 4 million jobs created, the fact is that the number of employed Americans is less than 300,000 more today than it was at the beginning of the recession. Couple this with recent claims from the government about the number of people in the workforce and the unemployment rate and the numbers don’t add up. The following chart was produced by Sen. Jeff Sessions, it demonstrates what the government has done with the unemployed during the last four years:

For every American added to the labor force over the last year, nearly 10 were added to the tally of people not in the labor force. That’s how the government came up with the 7.8% unemployment rate last month, they simply removed 350,000 people from the workforce. Unfortunately the numbers don’t mesh with reality. We need to create 150,000 jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. That is on average how many more people enter the workforce each month than leave it. In other words, we don’t have a sudden increase in retirements that explain these numbers. The government is simply removing people from the workforce to make the jobs market appear more stable and less of a problem than it really is.

One of the chief problems with the jobs report every month has been the small number of jobs created. We had a summer of less than 100,000 jobs created each month, September only saw 114,000 jobs created. Those numbers don’t keep up with population growth. Rather than count new people in the jobs market as unemployed, the government is shifting them into the ranks of people not in the job market. Then they don’t count as being unemployed, thus the unemployment rate drops. But it doesn’t actually drop, it actually increases because new members of the job market (usually young people) want jobs but cannot find employment.

One of the reasons Obama is having trouble whipping up enthusiasm among the young is because of the jobs market. The unemployment rate might not count young, new entrants into the job market as unemployed but the people they aren’t counting sure do feel unemployed. Believe it or not young people don’t want to live in their parents basement playing video games and wasting their lives away. They want to work, they want to be independent, they want their own home. Obama hasn’t worked out for them and they know it. It’s why fewer young people will go to the polls in three weeks and it’s why of those who do go to the polls a smaller percentage will vote for Obama. The government might fool people with a job into thinking unemployment is down to 7.8% but the government isn’t going to fool those who aren’t being counted and want jobs.

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Economic Numbers Show Obama Hasn’t Earned Re-Election

September 7, 2012 20 Comments

Last night Obama barely brought up the economy, at least not in any specific terms. He likely knew about the economic numbers released today, which were not very good. Unemployment dropped to 8.1%. While you think that might sound good, only 96,000 jobs were created while 368,000 people left the workforce. In other words, nearly four times the number of people left the workforce as were added to it. That’s why the unemployment rate went down, it only tracks people actually in the workforce. If someone has given up or otherwise doesn’t want to or cannot work, they aren’t counted. That’s how the number dropped, it’s nothing to get excited about.

Nearly 89 million adult Americans are not working. Less than 70% of adult men are working, the lowest since 1948. There are 261,000 fewer American employed today than when Obama took office, there are 822,000 fewer Americans with permanent jobs. June and July’s job count were both cut by around 20,000 jobs. Black unemployment stands at 17% while young black are unemployed at a staggering 47.2% rate.  Hispanic unemployment is 11.1%, young Hispanics have a 37.4% rate.

This is an economic report that is simply unacceptable three years after an economic recovery supposedly began. We have economic growth in the last quarter under 2%, we’re heading to another quarter with under 2% growth. Unemployment is down but only because the government has removed people from the workforce. There are fewer people in the workforce today than when Barack Obama took the oath of office despite the fact that population growth sees us adding 150,000 people every month. We lost nearly 9 million jobs during the recession, only 46% have been recovered in a three year recession and we haven’t even begun to chip at the growth in working age adults.

The numbers released today don’t suggest things are getting gradually better. They don’t indicate that prosperity is right around the corner or that President Obama’s policies really are working but just need another year or two to really get going. They indicate a stagnant economy that isn’t growing in any measurable way. We’re seeing flat unemployment and more people giving up and leaving the workforce. We’re seeing an economy that has 90 million adults simply not working and thus dependent on someone else. We need more jobs, it’s becoming painfully obvious that Barack Obama’s policies aren’t creating conditions for job growth.

Yet the White House claims this report is good, that it somehow proves we’re on an upswing. What else are they going to say? Their position is pure fantasy and they know it. The economy isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse compared to last year. We face taxmageddon on January 1st because Obama refuses to extend tax cuts, even though both he and Bill Clinton said we shouldn’t raise taxes during a recession. Most Americans think this is a recession, it sure is for our pocketbooks. During the Obama years household income had dropped by $4,000. We’re paying $1,000 more per year at the pump since Obama took office, inflation has caused food prices to rise substantially. So not only are we earning less money, we’re paying more for basic goods.

We deserve better than this. Obama presented no new ideas last night. He has no plan for the next four years, certainly he has no plan that’s any different than the last four years. Unfortunately his plans have failed. We aren’t better off than we were four years ago, the numbers play that out. Mitt Romney isn’t going to be the great savior of the American economy. But you can’t tell me Romney can’t do better than Obama. Like it or not, Obama hasn’t earned another four years based on economic news like today’s. It’s time to give someone else a shot and if he doesn’t do a good job then we can get rid of him in 2016. But at this point, Obama simply hasn’t earned re-election.

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Mediocre July Jobs Report

August 3, 2012 15 Comments

The Department of Labor released its July jobs report, it is at best mediocre. The Department reports 163,000 jobs were created last month, while unemployment increased to 8.3%. The jobs created barely outpace population growth, which adds 125,000-150,000 adults to the jobs market every month. Interestingly the number of people in the work force actually dropped by 150,000 with 195,000 fewer having jobs. The media will try to spin this report as positive for Obama for no other reason than July doubled June in terms of jobs created. But we must remember that April to June was absolutely dreadful for job growth. With that in mind, July really isn’t so great.

In fact looking further at the Labor statistics reveals this j0bs report really isn’t very good. The U-6 figure, which represents people who are unemployed, underemployed or have given up, is 15.2%. The U-6 figure was in the mid 14% range earlier in the year. For various demographic groups, unemployment remains more or less the same.  Adult men at 7.7 percent, adult women at 7.5 percent, teenagers at a whopping 23.8 percent, whites at 7.4 percent, blacks at a staggering 14.1 percent, Asians at 6.2% and Hispanics at 10.3%. Interestingly blacks still support Obama at a 90% clip despite having the highest unemployment in the nation. Hispanics which support Obama at around 60% have the second highest.

No doubt the media and Obama will try to spin this report in a positive way. But there’s nothing positive about a report where unemployment is 8.3%, 195,000 people lose jobs and 150,000 people give up and leave the workforce. While Obama and his surrogates are running around demanding decade old tax returns from Mitt Romney, the economy is stagnant. Unemployment is up and job growth barely out paces population growth and doesn’t even begin to replace the jobs lost since 2008. (we need over 400,000 new jobs a month for three years just to get back to the workforce level before the recession)

What is Obama’s plan for his second term? He surely hasn’t offered one, in fact he’s suggested that his plan has worked. Second quarter growth was 1.5%, is that success in his mind? Surely 8.3% unemployment isn’t success nor is a U-6 number of 15.2%. Obama’s policies haven’t worked. They have created a stagnant economy with tax uncertainty, healthcare uncertainty and regulatory uncertainty. He’s spent a fortune on a massive stimulus that didn’t work. What’s he going to do in a second term, offer us a bigger stimulus? Obama doesn’t seem to have a plan, other than telling us how rich and evil Mitt Romney is. At what point does 8.3% unemployment matter to the public more than Bain Capital or Romney’s tax returns?

That isn’t to say that Romney has a great plan for the future. He’s barely offered his yet. Surely he will offer us something at his GOP Convention acceptance speech on August 30th. He needs to offer the country a clear, conservative alternative to Obama’s big government, failed economic policy. Whether Romney has that in him remains to be seen. He can get across to the public that 8.3% unemployment isn’t good enough, he’s very good at telling us what a failure Obama has been. But the public needs to have a reason to vote for Romney. He needs a solid economic plan to contrast with Obama’s.

Expect Obama to continue harping on Bain Capital and tax returns. Expect him to continue to claim his policies worked while ducking any responsibility for a stagnant economy. At this point Obama’s ads, speeches and strategy is tired and predictable. As such Romney has an opening. No amount of media cheering can take away from 8.3%, Obama simply can’t hide from that number. Romney must exploit it to the fullest and to do that it’s time for him to lay out his alternative, positive vision for our economic future. Romney’s time is fast approaching.

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Obama Is To Busy To Meet With His Jobs Council

July 19, 2012 2 Comments

Remember last September when President Obama insisted on giving a jobs speech before a joint session of Congress? Remember how it sounded more like a campaign speech than anything else? Remember how the President spent the next six weeks running around the country shouting “pass this bill” even though his jobs bill never stood a chance of passing Congress? For all of Obama’s talk of jobs, jobs, jobs last fall, he’s done absolutely nothing on the issue. In fact his Jobs Council hasn’t even met in six months. According to John Carney the President “has a lot on his plate” and thus hasn’t had time for a meeting.

We see here one of the fundamental problems with this administration. Obama does not know how to govern, meaning he doesn’t know how to manage the executive branch of the Federal government. He knows how to issue dictates and he knows how to campaign but he doesn’t know how to govern. Part of governing includes meeting with people, hearing their ideas, listening to their advice and then processing all of that into a plan of action. Obama simply doesn’t do that very much, if at all. From all accounts, meetings with Obama are a one way street. He doesn’t meet with members of Congress unless they agree with him. In fact numerous sources claim Obama constantly whines about having to deal with Congressmen from “podunkville.”

Valerie Jarrett is apparently the gatekeeper at the White House. No one gets to speak with the President unless she approves. All accounts indicate that she won’t let anyone in if they’re going to challenge Obama or bother him with some kind of grievance. In short, Jarrett sees to it that Obama is never intellectually challenged by people who he doesn’t necessarily agree with. As such, groups like the Jobs Council are paraded around the media with great fanfare, meet once or twice and then are ignored because the President doesn’t like to be challenged.

We have had unemployment above 8% for Obama’s entire term. In fact, it’s really much higher in light of the number of people the government drops out of the workforce because they’ve given up. Yet the President seems completely unconcerned about jobs. He’s more interested in the tax returns of a successful businessman from over a decade ago and he’s more concerned about raising taxes than figuring out a solution to the dismal job growth we’ve had in this country. Keep in mind, the last three months we’ve seen only 75,000 jobs created each month, to keep up with population growth alone we need over 125,000 jobs created each month. Apparently Obama has more pressing issues like accusing his Republican opponent of cheating on his taxes without any evidence. (on a side note, if Obama wants Romney’s tax returns from a decade ago Romney should demand the same of Obama)

The country needs to face the fact that we have a perpetual campaigner in chief. We have a President who cannot be bothered addressing pressing issues for the American people if it means sitting down with people who might not present a rosy picture to him or agree with him across the board. That the President has more pressing matters than the massive unemployment the people of this nation are suffering with is insulting and outrageous. The economy is the number one issue for the electorate this election. On the economy, Obama has been absent. He’s given up, he refuses to listen to anyone who tells him his policies aren’t working.

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Obama Flip Flops, Plays Politics On Tax Increases

July 11, 2012 2 Comments

Obama is running around the country these days demanding an end to the Bush tax cuts. He wants the rates on “millionaires’ (read: those making more than $250,000 a year) to go up to 39%. There are two ways we can view this move by the President. We can either view it as a curious flip flop or we can view it as a blatantly political move meant to shore up various constituencies within the Democrat Party. The latter is most likely what’s actually going on because it’s doubtful that Obama really understands economics enough to actually flip flop on an economic issue. In short, all of his economic statements are meant for short term political gain.

In August 2009 President Obama said that raising taxes in a recession is “the last thing you want to do.” Why? Because raising taxes “would just suck up – take more demand out of the economy and put business further in a hole.” Keep in mind, we have 1.9% growth today which is actually less than it was in August 2009. Job growth today is stagnant, averaging 75,000 new jobs a month which doesn’t keep up with population growth. In fact, the second quarter of this year has been the worst in two years. It may not be an official recession but it sure feels like one to most people.

In January 2010, coming off a 5.6% fourth quarter growth figure, Obama had the following to say:

I am just listening to the consensus among people who know the economy best. And what they will say is that if you either increased taxes or significantly lowered spending when the economy remains somewhat fragile, that that would have a destimulative effect and potentially you’d see a lot of folks losing business, more folks potentially losing jobs. That would be a mistake when the economy has not fully taken off.

This is an interesting statement on a couple of levels. First of all Obama always has to pretend that he’s in the center of some broad consensus. Whether there is a consensus or not, Obama always will pretend there is one and he’s right in the middle of it. Second, if the economy was fragile with 5.6% fourth quarter growth in January 2010, which ultimately dropped in the first quarter of that year to 3.2%, then what exactly is the economy today with 1.9% growth? If we don’t have a fragile economy today then what do we have?

In January 2010 Obama made the Republican case for extending the Bush tax cuts. You’ll recall that in December of 2010 Obama negotiated and passed through a 60% Democrat Congress an extension of the Bush tax cuts. Mind you this was with Nancy Pelosi at the helm in the House. He gleefully signed into law an extension of nearly all the Bush tax cuts, including those for the wealthy. The economy in the 4th quarter of 2010 grew at a 3.2% rate, much higher than today’s 1.9% growth rate.

So why did Obama oppose tax hikes in August 2009 and January 2010 while signing a Bush tax cut extension in December 2010? It’s all politics. He pushed for a Bush tax cut extension in December 2010 because he couldn’t politically survive a massive tax hike which was scheduled to take place on January 1st. He’s calculating his risks today. If re-elected, Obama won’t have to worry about another election and thus he won’t personally feel the political fallout of a massive and unpopular tax increase.

Obama has been playing footsie with class warfare tax policies throughout his administration. You’ll recall the ridiculous corporate jet tax he proposed last year which wouldn’t have collected more than a few million in tax. You’ll recall his billionaires tax that wouldn’t have collected more than a few billion in revenue. Obama floats these tax proposals for political purposes. He surely knows they won’t collect anything significant in revenue, he’s playing a demonization game. Demonize the rich and the poor will rally around Obama, or so he thinks.

Since the Bush tax cuts expire on January 1st 2013, Obama can safely support letting them expire without worrying about his re-election chances. Like Obamacare, the country won’t feel the pain until after he’s re-elected and we’re stuck with him. Until now, it’s politically paid for Obama to support lower taxes or at least support not raising them. The political winds have changed though, now he has to shore up his base and since the pain of tax hikes won’t be felt until after the election Obama thinks he’s safe.

But Obama isn’t safe on this matter because he’s spoken about not raising taxes in a recession before. Once again, Obama’s own words will come back to haunt him. This has been a problem for his entire life, he believes he can say whatever he wants and no one will ever call him out for flip flopping or outright lying. He opposed the individual mandate until he had no choice but to support it. Obamacare wasn’t a tax, unless he wanted it to be. He was conceived in Selma, Alabama after the great march on Selma. Except he was born four years before the march and had never been to the mainland of the US until college. He rode Greyhound Buses on vacation when he was 11 except that they don’t have Greyhound Buses in Hawaii and again, he didn’t come to the mainland until he want to college.

We are in double dip recession. It may not be an outright recession but it is a major slowdown in economic growth. The June Jobs Report was dreadful. When we had greater economic growth Obama said we shouldn’t raise taxes. He was right then. So why should we raise taxes now when economic growth has slowed down and is much less than it was in August 2009, January 2010 and December 2010? Obama must be held to account for this flip flop. We have his very own words and actions available to us on You Tube. If the press won’t ask the question, the American people should. President Obama, why do you want to raise taxes in a recession today when you said it was a bad idea earlier in your term?

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Unemployment Claims Up, Taxmageddon Looms; Obama Offers No Solutions

June 21, 2012 1 Comment

It’s been easy the past couple weeks to forget that the economy is the most important issue facing the country in the upcoming election. It’s been easy to get distracted by events in Europe, the Fast and Furious scandal and the absurd claim of executive privilege and it’s been even easier to get distracted by the Obamacare ruling which will be handed down next week. As interesting as all of those topics are, nothing trumps the economy.

Yesterday we got yet another reminder that the economy is not in recovery mode as new jobless claims hit 387,000. This is down 2,000 from last week but only because the Federal government revised last weeks number up by 3,000. The government has revised weekly numbers up every single week but one for the past 15 months. So you can bet that next week they’ll revise the number of unemployed for this week up, likely over 390,000.

But it isn’t just that new unemployment claims are up. The four week rolling average is 386.250 new jobless claims per week. That’s the highest level since early December. We aren’t in a recovery, we’re at best in some sort of stagnation. Europe certainly is to blame for some of these problems but it wouldn’t be as big of an issue if our economy was strong on its own. Unfortunately our economy is not strong and it’s largely because of the policies of Barack Obama. It is the regulations pushed by Obama, his stimulus and his tax policies that have created market insecurity and that has directly affected job growth.

We’ll leave Obamacare alone as we’ve discussed at length how this has negatively affected job creation. The Stimulus clearly failed as it didn’t create the jobs Obama said it was going to. It seems like every week we find out about another Stimulus expenditure that spends an absurd amount of money for limited job creation. The latest is $9 billion spent to create 910 jobs, or $9.8 million per job created.  The waste is absolutely incredible, especially when you consider that that during Obama’s years the government has added $5 trillion in new debt. It is the debt that is creating uncertainty in the marketplace and when there is uncertainty no one hires.

On January 1st 2013 the Bush tax cuts will expire, creating a so-called taxmageddon for the country. Taxes will go up for everyone, including the lower and middle class which benefitted from 70% of the Bush tax cuts. The marriage penalty will return, child tax credits will be cut in half, capital gains taxes will rise by 33%, taxes on dividends will triple, a 10% tax level will be created which will substantially harm the poor, tax cuts for adoptions will be eliminated, student loan interest deductions will decrease as well deductions for a variety of other things and the death tax will increase substantially which will negatively affect small businesses. All of this put together creates uncertainty and yet we sit back and wonder why businesses aren’t creating jobs.

Obama has been a disaster for the economy because he believes in a top down approach. He believes economic policy is set from on high and that businesses will hire because he says so. It’s a very first grade view of the power of the President. But the fact is, jobs aren’t created by government and when they are they costs millions each. That’s not how it works in the private sector. Uncertainty is created via tax policy and since Obama has never been willing to do anything more than extend Bush’s tax cuts for a year or two at a time, all while threatening to eliminate them completely, there is no certainty. Obamacare has created massive cost uncertainty, especially for smaller businesses. Obama’s regulations have been costly, which means there’s less money for job creation.

What’s worse is that Obama has no new ideas, as evidenced by his economic “reset” speech last week wherein he offered no new policies and simply blamed Bush, Republicans, Europe and everyone but himself. The President isn’t willing to compromise on anything, he isn’t even willing to negotiate. Meanwhile new jobless claims are up and you can bet the June economic report due out on July 6th won’t be very good. Worst of all Americans across the country are suffering from lack of work, lack of enough work or fear of losing work. Yet the President offers no new solutions and he won’t consider anything offered by the “enemy” Republicans. With all of this news you wonder why at least 45% of the country is willing to vote for him again.

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Obama’s “Major” Economic Speech A Dud

June 14, 2012 1 Comment

Obama gave an address in Cleveland which was billed as a major economic speech. The President droned on for 54 minutes, boring even his adoring press. He offered nothing new at all, which makes one wonder why this was billed as a major speech. He has no new policies, no new ideas and no new pieces of legislation to introduce. It makes you wonder why he thinks people will vote for him in November. This is a President completely devoid of ideas whose best argument seems to be that Republicans hate clean water, children, grandma and the middle class. During the address you were waiting for him to get out the Alpo can and accuse Republicans of wanting grandma to eat dog food.

Obama seems utterly convinced that the stalemate between the House and White House and Senate is the cause of all of our problems. That is when the cause of all our problems isn’t Bush. Does anyone believe that if Obama is re-elected the stalemate that currently exists in DC will go away? Few are predicting that the Democrats will win the House and it seems almost inevitable that the Republicans will win the Senate considering several high profile Dems are retiring in historic Republican states. If Obama is re-elected, the country will be asking for more stalemate, not less. Surely Obama knows this or does he really believe 2012 will be a 2008 repeat?

Part of the problem is that Obama is spending his time blaming politics in DC as though he isn’t part of the problem. He isn’t the President who told Republicans “I won” and therefore won’t be listening to any of your proposals. He isn’t the guy who refused to even attempt to get a single Republican to vote for Obamacare, even though there were two liberal Senators willing to listen and negotiate. That even liberal Sen. Olympia Snowe can’t be dealt with by Obama suggests the real problem in DC isn’t dastardly Republicans who hate Obama. The problem is Obama. Yet he seems to live in this fantasy world where he isn’t part of DC politics.

Even if there wasn’t a stalemate, Obama would still be blaming Bush. We’re three and a half years into Obama’s Presidency and he’s still blaming the last guy for all his problems. He simply refuses to take ownership for the economy, which is currently floundering thanks to his policies. The economy was on the down swing when Bush left office but Obama has done nothing to make it better. We had 389,000 new unemployment claims last week, which will no doubt be revised up by next weeks report. Our unemployment rate is 8.2% but if we counted the same number of people in the workforce as we did when Obama took office the unemployment rate would be around 11%.

Obama may have taken office during a downturn but he has completely failed to create government policies that will turn things around. Instead he spent a year on Obamacare, which no one wants. Since Republicans took control of the House, Obama has largely taken an all or nothing approach. Either the GOP does what he wants or he’ll do nothing at all. He won’t even negotiate with them. At some point it doesn’t matter what Bush left Obama, it’s up to the current President to fix things. He hasn’t done it. Yet his re-election sales pitch seems to be that we should give him four more years just to see if his plans, which haven’t worked so far, will eventually work.

Romney must be loving every second of this. Obama’s delivering meaningless “major” speeches that don’t include any new proposals or even the slightest outlook for a second term. His scare tactics are almost laughable at this point. The mainstream press is bored to tears and only the most ardent Obama ideologue is excited about his speech. He would have been better off keeping his mouth shut in Cleveland and instead enjoying a pastrami sandwich with the gang at Corky & Lenny’s. Romney has a real opening if this sort of economic speech is what Obama will be relying on for the next five months.

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Obama Economic Comedy: Private Sector “Doing Fine”

June 8, 2012 1 Comment

President Obama declared today that the private sector is “doing fine.” He of course alleges that the private sector has created 4 million jobs and hints that the real problem in the economy is that the public sector isn’t doing well. This would be the fault of Republican Governors and Congress no doubt. Listening to the President you cannot help but wonder why he’s so out of touch with reality. We have millions unemployed, millions less jobs than when Obama took office and real income has declined around $4,000. We won’t even get into inflation or anything else that’s harming the middle class.

In order to believe Obama has created a gain of 4.3 million jobs you have to ignore his first year in office. This is the same little accounting trick that allowed Obama to falsely claim he hasn’t increased the budget. If we look at the so-called recovery we see that the private sector has gained 89,000 jobs a month. Unfortunately we need over 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. In short, we’re losing jobs in relationship to the increase in the size of our population. That suggests the private sector isn’t doing fine at all, in fact it’s retreating.

We need well over 300,000 jobs created every month for three years just to make up for the losses during the 2008-2010 recession. Add in population growth and we need 425,000 jobs every single month. During the so-called recovery we only have seen 89,000 jobs created. So we’re over 325,000 off what we need. That’s why unemployment is 8.2%. If the government were honest about unemployment, the number would be 10.9%. The 10.9% figure represents what unemployment would be if the government counted everyone who was in the jobs market at the start of the recession. As you know, the government has shed several million people from the market largely without cause.

The private sector isn’t doing well. Factory orders have been down the last two months. Consumer confidence is down as well. In the last three months there have only been 105,000 jobs created. In 63 of the last 64 weeks the government has revised the new unemployment claims number up from their original estimates. They claimed 377,000 new claims for last week, that is sure to go up before next weeks number is announced. The amount of money the government spends on food stamps has doubled since Obama has taken office. This is the mark of a private sector that’s “doing fine?”

Obama is completely out of touch with what’s going on in the economy. His statement was a shameless attempt to blame Republicans for poor economic numbers by blaming them for cuts in government employment. The fact though is that cuts public sector employment are not what’s driving the poor economy. The recovery Obama cites isn’t a recovery at all. It’s at best a stagnation. It’s nice that in the last couple years we’ve seen 89,000 jobs created every month. That number doesn’t keep up with population growth and it doesn’t eat into the massive number of jobs we lost during the recession. In short, the private sector isn’t doing fine at all. Obama just doesn’t know what he’s doing, which is perhaps why he believes that he can strengthen the economy via a press conference. He really believes that just by the President yammering the economy can magically fix itself.

If this is what Obama thinks is a decent economy, we should all shudder to think what he thinks a poor performing economy looks like. Obama doesn’t know what a good economy is, he certainly doesn’t know how to take us to one. Never forget that it isn’t government that creates jobs, it’s private people and corporations that do so within the free market. Government can only create conditions that are good or bad for employment and business. There is little doubt that Obama hasn’t created good conditions for the economy, the numbers bare this out. Our national problem though is that Obama doesn’t realize this and has no idea how to make things better.

UPDATE: The White House now says it’s “absolutely clear” the economy is not doing fine. The damage has already been done though, there’s no backtracking from a nationally televised press conference.

Filed under 2012 election Tagged with , , , , , ,

Obama Economy Tanks, Unemployment Up To 8.2%

June 1, 2012 4 Comments

Yesterday former President George W. Bush was at the White House for the unveiling of his Presidential portrait. Per tradition, Obama was there and made some remarks. He of course attacked Bush, albeit not as badly as he would during a campaign speech. Obama is completely unable to be gracious to anyone in the Republican Party. His behavior yesterday was ridiculous and unpresidential. Ever gracious, Bush didn’t respond and spent the morning making lighthearted jokes.

That after three plus years Obama is still blaming Bush for all his problems says a lot about the Obama administration. It means they haven’t been able to fix our economic problems, it means they’ve made them worse. Today the unemployment rate is up to 8.2%. Only 69,000 jobs were created in May. The government also revised the March and April job numbers down 49,000. In short they overestimated job growth in those two months, which you’ll recall wasn’t all that great in the first place. Obama’s blaming Bush, but three plus years into his administration the economy is worse than when he took office.

Not surprisingly new unemployment claims rose by 10,000 last week to 383,000. They’re likely to rise even higher as the Federal government has revised new unemployment claims upward in 62 of the last 63 weeks. The media never reports the revision, leaving the Federal government free to underestimate new unemployment claims to make Obama and company look better. What’s clear is that more people are losing their jobs, which has contributed to the increase in the unemployment rate.

What’s more clear though is that the policies of Barack Obama are not working. His financial reform package hasn’t done anything other than make the cost of business increase. Obamacare has created massive cost uncertainty in healthcare, which has trickled down to employment. Obama’s tax policy isn’t helping either. We have the highest corporate rates in the world and that most certainly affects hiring decisions. Just as bad, Obama refuses to pass the Bush tax cut extension beyond the end of the year. That creates tax uncertainty, something Obama has given us since he took office. When there’s tax uncertainty, people are less likely to invest. If people aren’t investing their money, jobs aren’t going to be created.

Obama has created a regulatory environment that makes it difficult to do business. Obama’s energy policy has made the cost of business increase, which means people aren’t investing. He said in 2008 he wanted to destroy the coal industry and he’s been largely successful. Oil prices have increased under Obama as he refuses to drill oil in America and refuses to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. Electric prices are on the rise thanks to Obama’s demonization and destruction of coal. These energy cost increases directly affect the ability of corporations to hire new employees. If the choice is between keeping the lights on and hiring an additional worker, business is going to choose the lights.

Obama has been a disaster for the economy. His big government, top down approach simply doesn’t work. Let’s face facts, Obama doesn’t know anything about economics. It’s painfully obvious. He’s never run anything, he never managed the executive branch of a government and nothing in his known past shows even the slightest bit of study on economics. He’s being advised by top adviser and apparent decision maker Valerie Jarrett, a leftist ideologue with zero economic experience or study. It shouldn’t surprise us that Obama has no idea what he’s doing or that he’s making the economy worse. We have to ask ourselves whether we can afford four more years of Obama.

Filed under economy Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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