Say it with me boys and girls,
“It happened on Obama’s watch”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy shrank at a worse-than-expected 6.1 percent pace at the start of this year as sharp cutbacks by businesses and the biggest drop in U.S. exports in 40 years overwhelmed a rebound in consumer spending.
The Commerce Department’s report, released Wednesday, dashed hopes that the recession’s grip on the country loosened in the first quarter. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a 5 percent annualized decline.
The Labor Department on Wednesday said that all 372 metropolitan areas tracked saw their jobless rates rise in March from a year earlier. The rate in Indiana’s Elkhart-Goshen region soared to 18.8 percent, a 13 percentage-point increase that was the most in the country.
The national jobless rate is now at a quarter-century high of 8.5 percent and is expected to hit 10 percent by the end of this year. It will probably rise a bit higher in early 2010 before starting to slowly drift downward. Still, the Fed predicts unemployment will stay elevated into 2011, and economists don’t think it will return to normal — around a 5 percent jobless rate — until 2013.
Help me out here….
6-7million Americans out of work
Obama and Democrats’ pseudo-“stimulus” plan is sold as a way to “save or create” 2-3 million jobs.
Now, my math might not be as good as theirs, but that seems to leave juuuuust a little shortfall. No?
Also, how does killing the F-22 program (thereby killing another 100000 Lockheed jobs) and allowing GM & Chrysler to sink HELP the economy?
See author page
TEACHER – “OK, Barry, where’s your ecconomics assignment? It was due today, you know.
ZeroBlanko – “Uh, I …um, well, …uh, ….the pig ate it?”
um, will you take a check instead? No? Well, then you damn well oughta be happy with your [$13wk] tax break!
@Scott Malensek:
LOL!
I guess when the bad student is also the principal he doesn’t have to do his homework. (I wonder if that would make a good movie plot? You know, like “Big,” only with a demonic twist? Steven King, get to work!)
PS, you know how they’ll spin this. “If it weren’t for Obama’s stimulus package 8-10 million people WOULD have been out of work.” . . . now, don’t we all feel so much better?
Actually, they’ve sort of done the equivalent already. Just listen to NancyP about how bad it would be (500 million a month losing jobs), in justifying giving their monster life…
(reference point – US population just over 300 million in 2008)
Wait, scott, are you Wanting him to bailout GM and Chrysler??
Absolutely! Give em all the money they want. It’s a great idea. There should be no limit to which the govt keeps those companies (and more importantly their unions) alive. Right?
OR
Was it a bad idea to help em?
Also there was a 34% slide in equipment & software , a 38% slide in residential investment ( not surprising) but a 30% slide in Exports.
The latter is HUGE. America has to earn money . Those borrowings will have to be paid for .
Things will continue to be worse “than expected” for one big reason: uncertainty.
We are so far out in uncharted waters that we can’t even see land any more. We have never run up this much debt this fast. We have never nationalized major corporations and entire economic sectors before. We have never seen producers so severely punished for producing, or investors get slaughtered for the sin of risk-taking, or moochers and slackers get so rewarded instead of being allowed to suffer the consequences of their bad decisions. In short, the “rules” of free market prosperity have been turned upside down by the tin horn despots in Washington.
If you were thinking of starting a business now, would you? When you don’t know what your exposure to health costs will be, or payroll taxes, or energy costs? When you don’t know if you can freely hire or fire employees, or if you may be forced to negotiate with a union even if you employ only a handful of people?
Investors have a love / hate relationship with uncertainty. Investing in the face of risk can lead to big payoffs if one correctly reads the tea leaves, or can result in liability even beyond the capital invested. Traditionally, the market has rewarded savvy investors and capable producers, and has punished those who provide unattractive or over-priced goods and services, or who fail to manage operating risks, or who invest in the latest fad or bubble without real knowledge. But there is a level of risk that is deemed “acceptable” when prior experience in market conditions can be extrapolated to current conditions. Without that ability to extrapolate — in other words, where the underlying system has changed profoundly — then risk is perceived to be “unacceptable”. Investors will sit it out, on the sidelines, waiting for the system to either return to the previous norms or else to provide enough information on its current behavior that some confidence in assumptions and predictions can be restored.
@Time Traveller:
Got references for those stats? They are very damning, and it’s a hammer I would like to have in my toolbox, if you can supply the info.
Thanks in advance.
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@Michael Moon:
In other words, O’Bunko’s policies are the death-knell of American enterprise, and hence our prosperity? If that’s what you are saying, sadly I agree with you. It’s gonna be a loooooooong 4(?) years!