The ObamaPravda press corpse is excited today over 7.6% unemployment!
In 2009, Obama pushed a trillion dollar stimulus bill through Congress, using this graph.
Obama’s crack economic team said that if Congress failed to pass the stimulus plan, unemployment would be 5.1% in Q3 2013. So Congress passed the stimulus plan, and we got 7.6% unemployment in Q3 2013, 50% higher than if Congress did nothing.
The graph below shows Bureau of Labor reported unemployment in red.
And lets be clear : The unemployment rate isn’t dropping because people are finding employment. They’re dropping out of the work force, or turning to disability or welfare. They’re now a further net drag on the economy.
Looks to me like they literally took a crayon and drew the image they wanted. No data req’d.
Actually, it is because they are settling for part time jobs: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-05/obamacare-strikes-part-time-jobs-surge-all-time-high-full-time-jobs-plunge-240000
And this trend will be much more prevalent once the full weight of Obamacare kicks in and many employers drop their employee’s hours to under 30hrs per week to sidestep the Obamacare mandates. You will see the “unemployment rate” drop a little more, while productivity will drop like a rock. The so-called “unemployment rate” is a scam all in itself. Just go take a look at how it is calculated and tell me that any rational being can claim this to be a measure of “unemployment”.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/number-involuntary-part-time-workers-jumps-332k-june
Unemployment is about 14% while under employment is running at 25%. Blacks are hardest hit with teenage unemployment @ 50%.
Just keep votein’ deamoncrat.
Did you or I or anyone you know ever catch a whiff of that “stimulus” money? It appears that the trillion dollars went down a rat hole as a payoff to Obama’s wealthy supporters.
What? You didn’t get your check?
😉
Have none of you ever heard that that bailout programs were set in place during the Bush administration? The only thing Obama has done (bad enough, IMO) is to extend them. Here’s a primer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
BTW, Obama was sworn in at the beginning of 2009.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
The TARP program, that original $700 billion giveaway program, was signed into law October, 2008.
Since then, the Federal Reserve has pumped untold billions into their babies, the major US banks, under the various QE (Quantitative Easing) efforts. That is, they invented empty money to lend to outfits like Citicorp and Chase. And charged us, the taxpayers.
You should be aware that the Fed is politically independent, and stands well above whichever president may be in office. They are neither Republican nor Democrat, but instead are the superior party, the party of Money.
So you are all correct as to what the problem is– several trillions of dollars were given to the richest people in America, and the resulting debt added to that borne by the US taxpayer. But you have been led to a wrong conclusion by your trusted media. The culprits were not only Obama appointees (most of them hailing from Goldman Sachs) but also the Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration, the last dozen Congresses and, above all, the Federal Reserve System.
Yes, the TARP program was enacted in 2008 by Bush to try to save the banks when the mortgage bubble burst and banks were caught holding bad debts that they had been counting as assets. Big problem. And the TARP program worked in so far as the banks did not fail and most banks repaid the money in later years.
Don’t confuse that with the Obama Stimulus program:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulus_plan
That was enacted in 2009 by president Obama as a gross inflation of federal government spending that was sold as a one time good deal boost to the economy. However, the Democratic controlled Senate and Congress then used the increased spending as the new baseline for Federal ongoing annual spending by refusing to establish a new annual budget. They kept the government running with “continuing resolutions” that made that “one-time-good-deal stimulus” the annual spending level which created unprecedented annual deficits.
The QE program was the Fed’s response to the lagging economy. An attempt to prop up the economy by hiding the effect of the deficit spending by buying the government issued bonds needed to cover the spending using fictitious funds–effectively printing money and devaluing the US dollar.
Don’t confuse TARP and STIMULUS. Two different programs by two different administrations for two different purposes with two different outcomes.
I think my comment went to the spam bin (I used the other term for the stimulus). Thank you for restating what I had said.
Crashex: You’re not from around here, are you? That’s a very intelligent response. Thank you for that.
As usual, a lot of money was wasted in the stimulus program. We’ll probably differ on what was wasted and what was well spent. But fortunately the article you’ve linked to gives us a good box score.
The largest portion went to tax relief. $288 billion, or 37% of the package. Do we think tax relief is a good thing or a bad thing?
Second largest share went to shore up state & local governments, which I think we all know have been badly underfunded. $144 billion, or 18% of the package. Nearly all of this went to shore up Medicaid and the public school systems. And a hidden dimension of this is that state & local governments really DO provide jobs. Jobs we need, like school teachers, safety and sanitation personnel and prison staff. We need these people. Unfortunately, much of the loss in jobs throughout this recession has been in the public sector. And most of that is due to budget constrictions.
So far we’ve accounted for 55% of the program, and I think these are necessary expenditures. Why? Because it isn’t costing us anything to do business that way. With Treasury notes selling at near-zero interest rates, and crowds of people eager to buy them, we were getting a really good line of credit.
Naturally, a Republican-led Congress has pretty much screwed that goose, by calling into question the full faith and credit of the US government. Grandstanding and shenanigans caused real damage to our credit rating, which fell below AAA for the first time ever. Thanks, Republicans.
But we were evaluating the money spent (or not collected) on the stimulus. How about $105 billion for infrastructure development? Not only did we have to repair those roads and bridges, it went almost entirely toward employment. Healthcare ($155 billion), education ($100 billion), aid to low-income workers, the unemployed and retirees ($82 billion)? That’s all money we needed to spend– and nearly all of that went out immediately in the form of goods and services purchased. So it was IMO well spent.
$27 billion for research into renewable energy? Maybe a bad investment. But I’m sure you’re aware that most of our most profitable sectors have been helped by free (to them) government-funded research, Right? So I don’t think we’d want to shut down federal interest in basic research.
There’s not much left on the list. Being the government, I’m sure there have been billions wasted. But had we not spent the money in this package, nearly all of which went back out the door in the form of purchases, we’d be in a lot worse shape now than in fact we are.
A historical note: back in the 1930s the Depression stayed at rock bottom for the four years Herb Hoover was in charge of letting it fix itself with no government help. Then it got better rapidly up through 1936, with federal assistance gushing. Then the Republicans gained control of Congress. And the money stopped like a faucet being shut off.
The result? The Recession of 1937-38, which I would urge that you look up. We lost all the gains we had made. It took wartime spending to really get us out of the Depression.
what an interesting alternative reality evaluation of the utter failure that is Obumble’s “stimulus” plan…
Never trust a leftist when they talk about “history” or temperature records.
michael, don’t go away , I’ll be back to deal with your obvious lies soon enough.
Ignore this post, just testing some tags
Ignore this post, just testing some tags
I’ll be adding a comment at the end of this thread so I can get the largest page width because nested comments become very narrow.
If anyone is curious as to the WordPress formatting bug I am trying to work around, it is that even within <PRE> and </PRE> tags it is quirky. Preformatted according to W3C HTML is supposed to be left alone, but WordPress tampers with it by collapsing both periods and hyphens when they appear in 3 consecutive places.
Compounding that problem of actually altering preformatted code, it doesn’t really collapse the chars, instead it substitutes other HTML ISO entities. Curiously it does leaves consecutive spaces alone, as well as commas, underlines and verticals.
The previous post just above this shows 8 lines of chars, each line is a different char repeated 19 times in a row. Notice that the 2nd and 3rd lines are mangled by WordPress, all but the last char in each line a an ISO HTML substitution, and the last char is the only surviving original ( all chars were originally the same as the last ).
Michael: Thank you. However, you should be more careful with your assumptions; I’m here everyday, though I don’t comment often. I enjoy Goddard’s sense of humor, and though he misses the mark on occasion, he’s largely on target.
My reference to the Wikipedia summary on the STIMULUS was to note it’s difference from TARP, not as any tacit approval of the litany of spending authorizations. You are right, we aren’t going to agree on the merits of the spending.
I’ll comment of some high points but won’t go through the detail that you did. It’s clear that this is opinion, and you won’t be changing your mind because of a blog post.
First, it’s important to remember that all of these funds are EXTRA money to be sent to each of these areas. Each area gets some support outside of this distribution. None of them disappears because they didn’t get EXTRA funds.
Short term tax breaks are usually a reasonable economic stimulator because it leaves money in the private sector to be spent in local environments where it will do the most good. Private sector spending has always been the lifeblood of a vibrant U.S. economy,
State and Local government have their own means of raising funds and should be left alone to manage their own jurisdiction. Sending Federal money to States that have mismanaged their finances only covers state politicians for the consequences of the mismanagement, and in the long term encourages continued irresponsible behavior. Most of this money was a payback to the government employees unions for their political support.
There is a substantial federal gas tax for infrastructure improvements, no EXTRA expenditure is necessary.
Some government research is good, too much government research is wasteful. Let the corporations spend their own money. Set priorities within the annual budget for the various research centers. Change those priorities to emphasize renewable energy if that’s what you think is most important. Just so it’s with the current annual budget, no EXTRA money required. When money is tight because revenues are down, do what corporations do, challenge the managers to manage the resources and costs to reduce the budget by x%. Government research should not be a “growth industry”.
Your comment on the downgrade of the US credit rating couldn’t be farther from the truth. Annual deficits “as far as the eye can see” and no plan to resolve the recognized spending/income imbalance with accumulated debt now greater than 100% of GDP (and growing) precipitated the downgrade. The ongoing devaluation of the US dollar through QE manipulation of the government bond market is NOT a plus. The Republican Congress has passed government spending legislation each year; it’s the Reid lead Senate that has obstructed the process by refusing to pass a Senate bill and negotiate in good faith through reconciliation with the House. Republican obstructionism is a rhetorical fabrication by the Democrats to hide their excessive spending in the drama of potential “government shutdowns” to force continuing resolutions.
Sorry to see that you drank the “government is the answer to our problems” kool-aid. Spit it out. When I was young I was captivated by the emotional pleas. I’ve learned better. Watch for who is making an analytical argument, and who is spouting inflammatory rhetoric; which is more important in making critical long term decisions? Are they saying something to appeal to your mind or drawing on an emotional string regarding how you feel? Accounting is NOT an emotional endeavor.
The data is unequivocal.
Anthropogenic emissions of 1 Trillion units of stimulus have increased unemployment by 50%.
Quantitative Easing Demonstration (QED)
We blew it: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-05/opportunity-squandered-we-blew-it
You make an extremely good point, RdH. Because the only situation where Keynesian stimuli can be effective is when the newly injected money leads to more spending. That spending stimulates production, which stimulates employment. Additionally, sales stimulate profit. So all ships are lifted, both the employees and the investors.
Instead, trillions (not just one trillion) in stimulus money went to the banks. Who sat on it unspent. And since there was no increase in purchasing, corporations banked their profits as well. No one hired anybody because sales were down.
So the program failed, as it was designed to do. Instead, a good Keynesian program would have been to bail out the homeowners who were going under. They could have saved their homes and used their remaining resources to buy products. This would also have rescued the housing industry. And jobs would have come back much sooner.
But that didn’t happen. Instead they bailed out the banks. And the trillions they’ve lent them since 2008 still sit in the vaults today. Doing no economic work.
The Obama administration continues to fudge the unemployment figures, and the empty-headed stenographers in the corporate-controlled media continue to regurgitate the fraudulent statistics.
If the number of workers who have run out of unemployment compensation or have been searching for a job for more than a year are counted, and the number of laborers who are underemployed and working part time are added, the unemployment figures are approaching 22 percent.
Maybe not 22%. But certainly, according to the U6 data, it’s a bit above 14% now. These numbers have been gathered since 1994. They’re just not publicised.
http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp
“The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts “marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons.” Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the “marginally attached workers” include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over ”
But if you do have hard numbers showing 22% I’d like to see them. It’s certainly true that after some arbitrary cutoff date the bean counters have decreed that a person out of work for many moons is “no longer actively seeking work”. So he or she drops off the radar.
22 million missing jobs.
Thanks, Harry. But 22 million missing jobs is not the same as a 22% unemployment rate.
Also, I would suspect the methodology displayed in chart one, being based apparently on a household survey. I wonder how many homes Charles R Anderson interviewed.
The table shown describes “missing jobs” on the order of 13%, staying level from the end of 2010 to date. And I’ll agree, that’s a stagnant situation. One unlikely to ever change, until someone decides to put some more money out there on the street. The money squirreled away in banks and corporate ledgers has not created one single job.
We could decide the argument by electing another Republican. It would mean trying Herb Hoover’s approach again, just to leave things alone and hope they change all by themselves– but to expect different results next time.
Logical fallacy. No one “puts money out there”. They invest. IN both capital and human resources. But to do so they have to know the costs. And that is the problem. The cost of human capital is indeterminate due to both obamacare and new Obama regulations (see war on coal). Companies are not hiding money. They are not hoarding it. Until the new rules (read costs) are known, they will bank the money.
And therein lies your fallacy. Employment is only minimally higher today than it was 4.5 years ago (to the tune of about 250k jobs) source: bls.gov. Why? The cost is too high. That is why full time employment just shrank last month by over 50k jobs. The cost is too high.
I love your conspiratorial insinuations. You do present your talking points well. But like the climate alarmists, they have no basis in reality. You may not LIKE economics and the law of supply and demand, but then facts are not there to like or dislike. They are just the ugly truth of the worst recovery in over 70 years.
And it all comes back to simple economics. If you jack the price up of a commodity, you get less of it. What do you think Obamacare did? What do you think his war of coal is doing?
Go ahead! Raise the minimum wage to $100/hour! That will accomplish 2 things. Make sure that everyone is now taxed as rich who works, and make sure no one is working.
Companies do not hire people because they like to. They do so to make money. When they no longer make money off of the hires, they stop hiring them, and lay them off.
Econ 101.
Germany has no minimum wage law and lower unemployment rate than Eurotard welfare states Greece, France, Spain, Italy. Same with Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark pulling more than their fair share of EU weight.
Stupid American “progressive” social engineering is an albatross on economy and jobs — now hampered by Obamacare and immigration “reform”, the albatross is building a nest and laying green eggs on our back. Green due to “global warming.”
The increase to the U.S. minimum wage initiated by the Democrat controlled House and Senate in 2007 was the start of the job loss trend the helped cause the recession and escalating annual deficits in the U.S.
Germany has no single statutory minimum wage. Rather, Germany has many minimum wage laws, by economic sector. There are also distinct minimum wage statutes for government employees and temporary staff
http://www.mondaq.com/x/213422/Employee+Benefits+Compensation/Minimum+Wages+In+Germany
http://www.staffingindustry.com/eng/Research-Publications/Daily-News/Germany-Minimum-wage-for-all-agency-staff-from-1-January-2012
The crack economic machine were really looking for an unemployment level of 60% so they could take over the entire nation, pronto!
Ah but you completely missed the point.
It was a financial recovery plan….and the banks have indeed recovered!
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EXCRESNS?cid=123
Notice that they gave all that money to banks, not to your purported Obummer base of working class, blacks, and illegals 😉
Reblogged this on The Firewall.
Throughout this thread “Michael” has been throwing out tons of crap to obfuscate his personal political bias of worshiping the (D)ummycrat cult. It’s sad because it means he either has multiple levels of misunderstanding of the (D) and (R) duopoly, or he is employing industrial strength cognitive dissonance. This is because to get to where Michael is you must accept the false premise that (D)s and (R)s in the District of Criminals are substantially different. Note I said “in the District of Criminals”. It is true that all around the country there are massive differences, even within just the (D) or (R) parties themselves, but once they get to DC, 90% of them are NOT different. This is because of the institutional bureaucracy that has nothing to do with elections or even parties. The should be wearing (G) for Government on their sleeves. Michael is either ignorant of this situation or he is a (D) hack trying to spread propaganda and misinformation.
Regardless, he is thread-bombing many things, most egregiously here is the meme that (R) politicians are the fiscal nemesis of the country and even are responsible for the depression! Naturally to get there he must put lies on the record. This one jumps right out …
I did look it up Michael. And just as I expected, you are just making shit up.
Congress by Party Control
Federal Government by Party Control
( see next post ).
The unfortunate reality you need to face Michael is that your beloved racist (D)ummycrat party controlled the vast majority of the federal government for 20 consecutive years. For all of that time they had the White House and the infinite bureaucracies underneath it. For almost all of that time they had BOTH houses of Congress as well, a rubber stamp for FDR. The were not tiny majorities at all, they were legendary and overwhelming majorities. The only small blip on that radar was the lonely 80th so-called “do-nothing” Congress sworn in 1947. An insignificant reprieve from the relentless onslaught of Federal Socialism.
Michael has constructed a mad alternate universe in his mind where the (R)ascals somehow thwarted FDR’s behemoth welfare state and then fortunately World War II came along to save the country from them. I knew children of the depression that talked just like this. They had insane rationalizations to protect FDR, a rich elitist who stepped over the poor in real life but managed to develop an opposite image, a hypocrite of the highest order, much like Al Gore.
So … Michael states that in 1937 those mean (R)epublicrats stopped the welfare faucet. Say what!? That 75th was the most massively overwhelming leftist Congress I can find anywhere. In the House it was (D)=334 to (R)=088. And in the Senate (D)=76 to (R)=16. I would like to point out here the parallel of leftist Michael to all AGW leftists in the way they completely lie about facts and figures. It is in their DNA, the most common characteristic of leftists is their congenital ability to lie to your face. They will do anything to get their way. How unfortunate for this liar Michael that in choosing 1937 he inadvertently selected the worst possible year that exists. This is Peter Gleick level bumbling.
A few more things we should notice about that era, just look at the 2nd table. The (R) party only had control of Congress during 4 sessions during those 26 years. Furthermore, 2 of those were microscopically *slim* majorities and for all practical purposes they were ties. When people criticize Hoover for not doing enough they are wrong on two counts. During his last two years he had a stalemated Congress, an absolute dead tie, so no program he pushed would ever even get a floor vote. Most importantly, because of that tied Congress, “he” did do something, he compromised ( which means just do what the Dummycrats want ), so “he” and the stalemated Congress in fact began the welfare state well prior to FDR, who radically accelerated it.
There are no reliable unemployment stats to compare during these years, indeed the government itself only lists them from 1948 forward ( how convenient right? now you can’t compare DingleBarry’s depression to the 1930’s ). But it is common knowledge that once the crash occurred in 1929, unemployment grew in a straight line from about 5% to an estimated 25% before Hoover even left office. But you see, it could only really go sideways or down from there regardless of who was President or in Congress in 1933. It is known that the “rate” fell for the first couple of years of FDR and the began rising again in his 2nd term despite a White House and Congress chock full of your beloved (D)ummycrats. Indeed it did not decrease again until World War II when something like 25 million men put on uniforms and left the labor force while the federal budget was jacked up by a factor of 10.
I see in other threads you are continuing this Jihad against (R)s. However the smart people here aren’t fooled by (D)ummycrat propaganda and know full well that (R) and (D) is almost indistinguishable inside the District of Criminals. Aside from a handful of pro-American patriots, mostly wearing (R) and mostly in the House, they are in fact almost interchangeable. Your problem in not understanding this reflects your own far left dogma, anyone more moderate than the (D)emocratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders you despise.
Thanks Blade, I meant to address those lies of Michael as well. But got side tracked.
Indeed, the cause of the double, triple, quad, etc. recessions (that came to be known as the depression) was nothing Rs did. It was that each time the economy tried to adjust to higher tax rates and increased regulations, FDR increased it again! and added more. FDR was the nations worst enemy. Not any Rs.
But in order to justify their lies and “utopia” they have to pretend that neither regulations or tax rates affect the economy. Even now, the left is not made at Obama for spending so much, but for not spending enough (see Krugman – the greatest quack since Obama himself). If they can convince the electorate that it only requires unlimited spending to lift themselves out of recession, then they have a free hand. Of course history has shown that to be poppycock (Weimar Germany, Peron Argentina, Mugabe Zimbabwe). But they still want others to believe because that is the only way their logic works. Once people see that it does not work, that it only leads to ruin, they are doomed (just as the communists were in the USSR).
Well done.
Nicely done Blade. Michael has a real issue with telling the whole truth, but then leftists have always relied on half truths and whole lies to move ‘forward’.
The “Great Depression” was just a depression for the rest of the globe, FDR prolonged it here with his insane policies.
Recent government regulation cut my department’s profits in half, and we have had to let many people go and cut pay for those who remained. It is amazing to watch the leftards in my department, who were warned against voting for Skeeter, wallow in their denial that government regulation costs jobs and money.
It is a mental disorder.
I put this in a separate comment so it didn’t get stuck in moderation for multiple links.
REFERENCES for above charts …
Sources: Senate, House