Bloodthirsty Liberal

The soft, squishy, flaccid, limp hold summits:

President Obama took time Thursday — before jetting off to Asia for a 10-day tour — to announce a December jobs summit aimed at synching job growth with the massive government spending meant to “break the back” of the recession.

The announcement came as the Labor Department reported another 502,000 new jobless claims, two high-tech mainstays announced big layoffs and the unemployment rate reached 10.2 percent.

Obama said the White House forum will gather CEOs, small business owners, economists, financial experts and representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups “to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again.”

You just have to admire the kind of mind that would think of asking nonprofit groups how to create jobs and make money. That’s brilliant.

Unless by nonprofit group he means General Motors and Chrysler.

“The economic growth that we’ve seen has not yet led to the job growth that we desperately need,” Obama said.

I know, it’s just so unfair. You bankrupted this country and paid off every special interest group that supported you (thanks, teachers!), and how many jobs do you have to show for it? Negative-190,000 last month alone.

Summits. This guy loves summits so much he should have a constant nose-bleed.

The beer summit, remember?

And who could forget the Fiscal Responsibility Summit (ummit-ummit-ummit), without which we’d be in a whole lotta trouble.

Oh, come on, you remember:

That is why today, I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office.

…

To start reducing these deficits, I have committed to going through our budget line-by-line to root out waste and inefficiency…. We will replicate these efforts throughout the federal government, eliminating programs that don’t work tomake room for ones that do…. We’ll end thetax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas and stop the fraud and abuse in our Medicare program….

But that money is now promised to pay for health insurance—it can’t reduce the deficit if it’s paying off a new entitlement.

And why have you been promising to do this since March? What’s stopping you?

That is why I have called this summit today, and why I have invited leaders from both sides of the aisle:because we all have a role to play in this work. Because I believe it is time for a frank conversation about thefiscal challenges we face—challenges that concern every single one of us, no matter where on the politicalspectrum we fall.

So today, I want all of you to start talking with each other and exchanging ideas. I want you to question eachother, and challenge each other, and work together not just to identify problems, but to identify solutions.

That is the purpose of the breakout sessions that are starting right now. I know that each of you brings a wealth of expertise and experience on a broad range of topics, and I appreciate your willingness to participate inthese sessions. I expect that this process will be engaging and productive, and I look forward to hearing the results when you report back later this affernoon.

Did anybody mention tax cuts, Mr. President? Or do you have an F-chip to bleep out such unpleasant words?

This is who he is and what he does. We thought we elected a president, but we got a kindergarten teacher.

What happened to 9.9%? What happened to “less worse” numbers than feared?

What happened to my job?

The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.

In October, the number of unemployed persons increased by 558,000 to 15.7 million. The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 8.2 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 5.3 percentage points.

…

The breaking of the psychological barrier of double-digit unemployment is a watershed moment for the Obama administration. It has continued to claim success in its Porkulus effort with shell-game “saved or created” metrics for jobs while unemployment rises unabated. Meanwhile, Obama pushed Congress to spend trillions of dollars we don’t have on efforts that have nothing to do with employment or revitalizing the economy. Even the latest CNN poll shows a 17-point swing to the worse for Obama on economics.

This is now Obama’s economy. He owns the double-digit unemployment level, having bought it with the $787 billion stimulus plan that he promised would keep unemployment no higher than 8%.

Unemployment didn’t just rise; it shot up like a geyser.

This is too cynical even for me to say (but not to write, I guess), but the Obama administration must be (unconsciously) pleased that there is a bigger headline than this catastrophic news.

Which old recession?

Bush’s recession (”which I inherited”)!

The U.S. economy grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter, ending a string of declines over four quarters that resulted in the most severe slide since the Great Depression. But some economists raised doubts about how long such strong growth can last.

The increase in GDP, reported by the government Thursday morning, was slightly better than expectations. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast 3.2% growth in gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s economic activity. The economy shrank at a 0.7% rate in the second quarter.

The positive GDP report is one more sign that the economy has likely pulled out of the deep recession that started in December 2007.

The reading by itself doesn’t mark an end to the recession; the economy actually grew in the second quarter of 2008. (The National Bureau of Economic Research, which officially dates the beginning and end of recessions, is not expected to declare that the current recession has ended until sometime in 2010.)

That’s rather uncharitable toward President Obama. I thought a recession was a definable term—it was declared after two consecutive terms of “negative” economic growth (aka shrinkage, though the term has other connotations). Wouldn’t a quarter of growth—better than expected growth—automatically define the end of the recession?

I think so.

Because I want the next recession to belong to Obama all by hisself.

This, ahem, “recovery” reminds me of what I heard an engineer say about a particular airline design (747?): if you throw it hard enough, anything will fly.

Cash for Clunkers, credit for first-time home buyers (as young as four!)—these programs did indeed inject much needed fuel into the economic engine.

But they forgot to fill the tank. They did nothing to restore the free market, they merely replaced it.

And left it worse off then before:

The Obama administration on Thursday lashed out at a prominent critic of its Cash for Clunkers program, arguing that the popular trade-in initiative helped give the auto industry and the economy a much needed boost in the past few months.

…

On Wednesday, Edmunds.com released a study that argued Cash for Clunkers did not have a great impact on the auto industry. The report said that 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the program last summer, but that only 125,000 of them would not have been sold without the Clunkers rebates.

As a result, the report said, the administration’s economic claims for the program “have been rendered quite weak.”

…

The Edmunds report also said that taxpayers shelled out an average of $24,000 per car sold as a result of the program.

But the White House fired back, saying Thursday’s Commerce Department report that showed auto sales contributed 1.7 percentage points to the economy’s 3.5% growth rate in the third quarter is proof that Cash for Clunkers had a meaningful impact on both auto sales and the broad economy.

My point exactly. Which is why they’re so pissed someone’s questioning the value of the program.

And why this news—which never changes, so it’s hardly news—is more telling:

The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance were little changed last week, the government said Thursday, with a total figure that missed analysts’ expectations.

There were 530,000 initial job claims filed in the week ended Oct. 24, down 1,000 from an unrevised 531,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said in a weekly report.

…

The government said 5,797,000 people filed continuing claims in the week ended Oct. 17, the most recent data available. The number was down 148,000 from the preceding week’s revised 5,945,000 claims, and marked the second time since late March that continuing claims fell below 6 million.

…

But the slide may signal that more filers are dropping off those rolls into extended benefits.

Continuing claims reflect people filing each week after their initial claim until the end of their standard benefits, which usually last 26 weeks. The figures do not include those who have moved to state or federal extensions, or people whose benefits have expired.

One could go on and on. I just hope Obama enjoys economic news while it lasts. The rest of us are still waiting for some.

UPDATE

And as for that other claim:

The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus bill directly saved or created about 650,000 jobs as of the end of last month, administration officials announced this morning.

…

Factoring jobs indirectly created from the stimulus — not reflected in these numbers — an administration official says in a statement that “because these reports show that less than half of the spending through that date created or saved about 650,000 jobs, they confirm government and private forecaster’s estimates that overall Recovery Act spending has created and saved at least 1 million jobs.”

…

The “majority of funds” came from state governments because Porkulus distributed the money in block grants to the states. What did the states do with that money? They did save jobs, but primarily bureaucratic jobs. States used the money to temporarily paper over budget gaps which would have forced the layoffs of state employees, which should have been a necessary step in slimming down state-level spending.

The administration will claim that it saved the jobs of teachers, police officers, and firefighters with the data submitted by the states. Indeed, we have already seen this in New Hampshire, which listed almost all of its “saved or created” jobs from their education system.

…

No one was going to have a mass layoff of police officers and teachers in New Hampshire or anywhere else. The jobs really at risk were administrative jobs within state government, primarily union jobs (in large part represented by Obama’s ally, the SEIU), as states had to confront an economic reality of lower revenue and rising spending.

They’ve created nothing. And the bacon they saved won’t stay good for long.

Is that anything like Erica Jong’s “zipless f**k” from Fear of Flying?

I have to admit I never got the z-less f (”got” as in “understood”); the jobless recovery is another oxymoron I don’t get:

Many of Massachusetts’ key industries have begun to rebound along with the broader economy, increasing sales and production, but hiring only cautiously - if at all.

That caution is contributing to what is almost certain to be another jobless recovery in Massachusetts and elsewhere, a pattern that has marked economic turnarounds since the early 1990s. Even though the economy is expanding, it is not growing fast enough to generate jobs and reduce unemployment in the state, already at its highest level since the 1970s.

Over the next year, economic activity in Massachusetts will increase more than 2 percent, slightly faster than in the nation as a whole, but employers here will still slice 37,000 more jobs, according to forecasts by Moody’s Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pa. That job loss, while significant, is less than the projected rate nationwide.

That’s a great slogan. “Massachusetts: It Could Be Worse”

“We’re at the bottom, and it looks like we’re going to bounce along the bottom,’’ said Michael Goodman, eco nomic analyst and professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. “It’s going to be a long, hard slog.’’

…

Ultimately, Rosengren said, the state’s expansion will depend on whether the US economy can transition to a self-sustaining recovery from one fueled by stimulus programs. “The question is what happens when these programs go away,’’ Rosengren said. “To what extent is the private sector going to pick up activity as the government sector pulls back?’’

…

Such caution is among the reasons economists expect a jobless recovery lasting into next year. Another reason: Many companies cut employee hours to avoid layoffs, so as business picks up, they are likely to increase hours before hiring new workers.

At the same time, firms are boosting productivity, or getting more production from existing workers. In the second quarter of this year, productivity jumped 6.6 percent nationally, according to the Labor Department, more than triple the historical average.

“Overall, there’s a lack of confidence,’’ said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “Businesses are curtailing their layoffs, but they’re not hiring.’’

Let me see if I have this straight: stimulus money didn’t boost private investment, it merely replaced it. And it appears it had no carryover effect. And private firms are making do with what employees they still have.

That’s your economic brain trust at work. Timmy Geithner’s motto: why pay taxes when you can just raise them for everyone else?

I don’t know about “zipless”, but we’re sure f**ked.

PS: Rasmussen says only 1/3 of Americans polled think the stimulus helped the economy. As awful as that number is for the president’s number on domestic initiative, I do have to wonder if the decriminalization of medical marijuana is such a good idea. A good number of us already appear to be wasted.

That’s not even editorializing. That’s fact.

But you wouldn’t know it to read the MSM:

A top White House economist says spending from the $787 billion economic stimulus has already had its biggest impact on economic growth and will likely not contribute to significant expansion next year.

Christina Romer, the chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said Thursday that the $194 billion already spent gave a jolt to the economy that contributed to growth in the second and third quarters of the year. She told a congressional panel that by the middle of next year, the impact of the stimulus will level off. Romer said spending so far has saved or created 600,000 to 1.5 million jobs but warned that unemployment will remain high, above 9.5 percent, through the end of 2010.

The idea of a “saved” job is dubious, but I suppose there are some—in certain favored sectors of the economy:

President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan spared tens of thousands of teachers from losing their jobs, state officials said Monday amid a nationwide effort to calculate the effect of Washington’s $787 billion recovery package.

…

In California, the stimulus was credited with saving or creating 62,000 jobs in public schools and state universities. Utah reported saving about 2,600 teaching jobs. In both states, education jobs represented about two-thirds of the total stimulus job number. Missouri reported more than 8,500 school jobs, Minnesota more than 5,900. In Michigan, where officials said 19,500 jobs have been saved or created, three out of four were in education.

That’s great news… for teachers. But then, they earned it:

Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have enthusiastically welcomed the election of Barack Obama, a “friend of public education,” to the White House.

“So much about this campaign has been historic and electrifying,” said AFT president Randi Weingarten. “The incredible voter interest Barack Obama generated, especially among young, independent and first-time voters; the sea change in voting patterns across America; and the election of America’s first African-American president are all extraordinary milestones for our country.”

“As we pause to savor this moment for its historic significance, we should also consider what it means for the children of our nation,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel, adding that President-elect Obama “knows that our long-term economic strength requires a renewed commitment to public education.”

…

The NEA and AFT, representing millions of teachers and education workers across the United States, played a significant role in the campaign. Both unions mounted pro-public education campaigns and websites, and reached out to their members and their families with millions of pieces of mail, phone calls and emails. Both unions also educated young members and first-time voters on issues related to public education and college affordability.

Mm-hmm. And now they want a return on their investment. There are stories in the news about Obama facing down the teachers unions (over merit pay, year-round school, etc.), but he’s got their back and they have his.

Meanwhile, the country circles the drain. The stimulus package was supposed to cap unemployment at 8%, but we’re looking at 10% soon, and for a long time to come.

As Rush likes to say, New Zealand is looking better and better.

Will the last person in America who has a job please turn off the coffee pot and the photocopier?

The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for jobless benefits rose more than expected last week, after falling in five of the past six weeks, as employers remain reluctant to hire even with the economy showing signs of recovery.

The Labor Department said Thursday that new jobless claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 531,000 last week, from an upwardly revised 520,000 the previous week. Wall Street economists had expected only a slight increase, according to Thomson Reuters.

…

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell slightly to 532,250, the lowest since mid-January and about 125,000 below the peak for the recession, reached this spring. But claims remain well above the 325,000 that economists say is consistent with a healthy economy.

I always love that little caveat: the economy’s improving, even if no one’s working. It reminds me of Mark Twain’s aphorism that Richard Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

BTW, one thing’s always puzzled me—but I think I’ve figured it out. A healthy economy can still shed 325,000 jobs because it’s creating that many and more. The half a million-plus jobs that we’re losing week after week after week after week don’t take into account the jobs created. But even if the net loss is 200k jobs, and not 500k, the figure is still alarming, with no relief in sight.

That’s the lesson I take from this news:

The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September, the highest since June 1983, as employers cut far more jobs than expected.

…

The Labor Department said Friday that the economy lost a net total of 263,000 jobs last month, from a downwardly revised 201,000 in August. That’s worse than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 180,000 job losses, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

So Wall Street thought that the population of Tempe, Arizona had lost their jobs, but instead an additional Dearborn, Michigan got canned too.

Lest you think that’s the sucky news, howe’er, read on:

More than a half-million unemployed people gave up looking for work last month. Had they continued searching, the official jobless rate would have been higher.

The number of people out of work for six months or longer jumped to a record 5.4 million, and they now make up almost 36 percent of the unemployed — also a record.

All told, 15.1 million Americans are now out of work, the department said. And more than 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007.

Did you get that? All of Albuquerque, New Mexico just gave up hope of ever finding a job—last month alone.

We covered a story the other day that many of them are retiring early, straining an already skint Social Security system. Half a million lost souls slipping out of the work force, shades of their former selves, fading into oblivion, banished to limbo by this jobless “recovery”.

Pretty soon, you’re talking about a real depression:

The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment insurance rose to a seasonally adjusted 551,000 from 534,000 in the previous week. Wall Street economists had expected an increase to 535,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The increase comes after three weeks of declines. Weekly claims have been trending down since the spring, but the decline has been painfully slow. The four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, dropped to 548,000, about 110,000 below its peak in early April.

Okay, so it may not be as bad as April, but isn’t 548,000 a week over four weeks still well over over 2,000,000 a month?

Even the good news is suspect:

Consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of total economic activity, jumped in August by the largest amount in nearly eight years even though personal incomes continued to lag.

…

A 24.1 percent jump in the sales of new motor vehicles — due mainly to the clunkers program — led the overall increase in August. Excluding new auto sales, consumer spending rose 0.9 percent, though economists worry that activity will fade in coming months.

In other words, the battery’s dead, and the attempt to jump start the engine has failed.

Unemployment is likely at 9.8%, on the way to 10+, and Obama struts about, crowing about all the jobs he’s saved.

Let’s remember what we were promised:

Without the recovery plan, we were told, it would be economic armageddon. We should have been so lucky. At least they could find a job in Armageddon. (”Bring out your dead!”)

Ed Morrissey:

Joe Biden keeps talking about the fabulous improvement on the economy he’s seen from the stimulus, but thus far, those effects have mostly been limited to the White House.

That’s literally true. Government is the only sector of the economy that’s growing.

I owe President Obama a sincere apology, and I offer it without reservation.

I thought the stimulus was a brimming crock of s**t, but I have learned otherwise.

He has created jobs. Sorry, Bo.

Fourteen of the top federal agencies responsible for spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act say they’ve hired about 3,000 workers with stimulus money. That’s helped fuel the continued growth of the federal government, which increased by more than 25,000 employees, or 1.3%, since December 2008, according to the latest quarterly report. During that time, the ranks of the nation’s unemployed increased by nearly 4 million, Labor Department statistics show.

National unemployment is nearing 10%, but the Federal government is hiring bureaucrats and fat-asses like they’re going out of style. I think we should all work for the Federal government. We’d have full employment, and everyone would be happy.

After all, it worked in the Soviet Union.

He was the change they were waiting for… but they’re still waiting… and waiting… and waiting (pass the joint, will you man?):

The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.

And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults — aged 16 to 24, excluding students — getting a job and moving out of their parents’ houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession — in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost.

…

“There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country,” Angrisani said in an interview last week. “All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses.”

There are six million small businesses in the country, those that employ less than 100 people, and a jobs stimulus bill should include tax credits to give incentives to those businesses to hire people, the former Labor official said.

“If each of the businesses hired just one person, we would go a long way in growing ourselves back to where we were before the recession,” Angrisani noted.

Gee, how come no one else thought about cutting business tax rates to spur hiring by the private sector? How come nobody said (over and over) that the business of government is not running business, but abetting businesses by cutting their costs and then getting the hell out of the way? How come no one said that blowing billions on stupid, splashy programs like Cash for Clunkers instead of seeding the business sector to grow the economy from the bottom up was bass-ackwards and an appalling waste of time and money?

Oh wait, we did!

Well, my slack-jawed slacker friends, how do you like your hope’n'change now? You rocked the vote, and what do you have to show for it but all the time in the world to get stoned? Here’s some free advice: put down the Doritos, take a shower, swill some mouthwash, and volunteer your time, if you can’t find a job. They say unpaid internships are often a good first step to getting a job. But you might want to lose the Guns ‘n’ Roses t-shirt before you show up for the interview. And hitch your pants up.

PS: Anyone think the minimum wage might have something to do with the above?