After talking the economy down on a daily basis for six months, on Feb. 13, 2009 President Obama pushed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 through Congress, based on this promise. With the recovery plan, unemployment would stay below 8%. Without it, it would go up to 9%.
So how did they do with their almost trillion dollar spending bill? The graph below shows the official rates, not including the millions of people who gave up looking for a job.
I don’t know that the unemployment is really all that good. Chiefio (E.M.Smith) did a bang-up piece on the subject:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/unemployment-really-20/
With so much of the economy being employed at wealth consumption (government jobs either direct or indirect which is nothing more than transferring money from one wallet to another with no real tangible results), the 9%+ unemployment translates into something closer to 20% unemployment at the wealth creation sector.
Ouch.
But that is only a half of the truth. All the hordes of government employment will fight newly acquired status tooth and nail. That’s why I see gloom future for the U.S. The government posts will be a “socialist spoils of the US society” and are “in the forefront of the US socialism”.
Regards
I didn’t vote for Obama, but in fairness I doubt “the other guy” would have done much better. In November, I’ll be checking the “None of the above, give me back my tax money and I’ll spend it for you, thank you very much” box.
It’s not like I could do a worse job…