Economic “Growing Pains”
[Guest post by DRJ]
Today’s bad economic news includes higher-than-expected unemployment numbers and weak factory output that suggests any recovery is a long way off:
“First-time jobless claims rose more than expected last week to a seasonally adjusted 551,000, the Labor Department said. Economists viewed it as a sign that employers remain reluctant to hire.
Economists think the economy lost 180,000 more jobs in September. The unemployment rate is expected to climb from 9.7 percent to 9.8 when the government releases its monthly jobs report Friday.
And factories are struggling to mount a rebound. A gauge of manufacturing activity came in at 52.6 for September, the Institute for Supply Management said — enough to signal growth for the second straight month but still down from August.”
The good news for the Obama Administration is that the media is willing to frame any discouraging news in the best possible light. The first sentence of the linked article is “The U.S. economy is having growing pains.”
On a related note, I don’t understand how jobless numbers are reported. The linked article makes it sound like there could be up to 3 million jobless individuals receiving benefits from federal emergency programs who may not be counted as unemployed:
“Unemployed workers are having a hard time finding new jobs. The number of people continuing to collect unemployment benefits fell by 70,000 last week to the lowest level since April, but there were 6.1 million still on the jobless rolls.
When federal emergency programs are included, almost 9 million people were getting jobless benefits in the week that ended Sept. 12. That’s little changed from the previous week.”
Either way, I suspect John Stossel is right. No matter what the numbers show, the Obama Administration will call it a success.
— DRJ
Joe Biden was just saying that the stimulus bill, except they aren’t calling it that anymore so he has to get back on message, was working beyond all expectations so obviously there are either errors in that data or they are just blips reported to distract people from the number one deficit reducing task at hand – health care reform. People should not be worried about jobs and the economy when we can reform health care.
daleyrocks (718861) — 10/1/2009 @ 8:13 pmYou know what Cramer and the dorks on CNBC will say about this:
“Green shoots! Green shoots! Buybuybuy!”
I honestly can’t wait to see what happens when this debt monetization/stock market bubble pops–not because I take pleasure in my fellow Americans suffering, but because maybe it will finally wake them up to the fact that a debt-based economy–which we’ve had since the Great Depression in varying degrees, and which has really ramped up since the oil crisis in 1974–has a limited life span. A nation with over $50 trillion in cumulative debt across all sectors of the economy is going to see that economy blow apart eventually. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when the math finally catches up to you.
The housing bubble was the last real hurrah for this kind of mentality–two whole generations that counted on spending to their hearts’ content and relying on the equity in their house to be there to use as an ATM even before they retired. They haven’t quite grasped yet that the party is over, but when they do, it’s going to be very, very painful to accept. For the long-term health of this nation, though, it’s what needs to happen.
Another Chris (f29ad3) — 10/1/2009 @ 8:14 pmthere are either errors in that data or they are just blips reported to distract people from the number one deficit reducing task at hand – health care reform.
That’s what kills me about Biden–he’s so spectacularly wrong so often, I have to wonder what they put in the water in Delaware that they sent this loser back to the Senate time after time.
A federal government with $12 trillion in debt is going to provide complete and total healthcare for 310 million people (which is what the implementation of a “public option” would eventually lead to, regardless of the propoganda coming from the Obama administration and their supporters)? When Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going tits up, and organizations like the Post Office are running in the red? Yeah, right.
Another Chris (f29ad3) — 10/1/2009 @ 8:22 pm“Growing pains”?
So, the economy must have been screaming during the great majority of Dubya’s terms.
Techie (482700) — 10/1/2009 @ 8:25 pmJust a few points, before trollery strikes again:
1. GWB was not a conservative, but he was a Patriotic President. Many of his spending decisions were wrong-headed, other than conservative, and detrimental to this nation.
2. Republicans, including the left-of-center RINO McCain, gave dire warnings regarding Congressional mandates for banks’ self-destructive watering down of lending requirements, and gave dire warnings that FM2 were going to collapse like a house of cards. Democrats outright denied those claims and called the claimants racists.
3. GWB inherited a recession and we pulled out of it under Republican Fed. Note again, I already said GWB was not a Conservative. Neither were many of the Republicans and, obviously, the RINOs.
4. The economic growth under GWB, while not explosive, remained sturdy for several years.
5. The collapse occurred after both Houses of Congress turned Democrat. While it would be fallacious to declare cause-effect, it cannot be entirely ruled out. There was, after all, a very large leftward shift in policy and spending and suchlike.
6. While Republicans did have majorities in both Houses and had the Presidency, it cannot be stated too stridently that Democrats still had full filibuster power in the Senate and used it or threatened to use it in order to weaken Republican (again, not exactly conservative) bills, and to kill GWB’s appointments.
7. Week after week, month after month, I keep hearing from state-run media that “unemployment unexpectedly rose” or similar claims. Always unexpected. I have to ask, just who unexpected these wholly logical results to the liberal actions?
8. (This should come before 7, but I want this to resonate more strongly.) BHO inherited an economic crisis the Democrats created, as shown in the above points. BHO cannot honestly lay blame at GWB’s feet. And, recessions, being cyclical, naturally end much sooner than this one. Unless, of course, someone with POWAH is doubling down on the recession-causing activities.
John Hitchcock (3fd153) — 10/1/2009 @ 9:52 pmI don’t care what you say, it’s still all Bush’s fault. Case closed.
Dmac (5ddc52) — 10/2/2009 @ 7:04 amPatterico:
Obama can call it a success. He’s just playing with different goals than the rest of us.
Anon (f43943) — 10/2/2009 @ 7:07 am