PrintAugust 10, 2010
White House in the Twilight Zone this 'Recovery Summer'
You know you're in the summer of recovery when both the Wall Street Journal runs editorials titled "It isn't working" and "Why I'm not hiring" and the New York Time's front page story is "U.S. Lost 131,000 Jobs as Governments Cut Back". Listening to the White House and then analyzing economic data is like participating in an episode of the Twilight Zone. In the Time's article we also learn;
"The Labor Department greatly revised its headline number for June, widening the job loss figure for that month to 221,000 jobs, from 125,000. Private sector hiring in June, originally reported at 83,000, was lowered to 31,000"
The people that are supposed to keep track of the number of jobs created from month to month got the number of private sector jobs wrong by 168 percent last month. So the "it's getting better" number that was reported in June was actually much worse. With example after example of this type of incompetence, is it any wonder that polls show that American's don't trust their government?
The private sector isn't creating enough jobs to absorb the new entrants into the labor force each month, are you feeling the recovery yet? The only reason the unemployment rate held steady in May and June is that nearly 400,000 stopped looking for jobs. When one starts to look at the jobs created, the picture doesn't get any rosier. As the Wall Street Journal points out;
"Private employment did inch up in July by 71,000 positions, with a nice 36,000 pick-up in manufacturing jobs, but even that number is deceptive. The vast majority of those jobs were in the auto industry. Alas, not every struggling manufacturing plant in America can have a lifeline to the federal Treasury."
At a time when expect our government to be encouraging companies to hire, President Obama's policies do the opposite. From the coming tax increases to President Obama's recently signed health care legislation, each policy increases the already high costs associated with adding a new employee. It costs a NJ company $74,000 to put $44,000 in an employee's pocket, and so companies in that position aren't going to hire. What happens when taxes go up significantly next year? More companies will be doing more with less because they have to and President Obama's policies have ensured that. How's that summer of recovery working out for you? For more and more people it isn't, and a majority of Americans are placing the blame squarely in President Obama's lap.
What does our President have to say about all of this? The world according President Obama proclaims that it is all George W. Bush's fault. This continual demagoguery might rev up the base, but it's losing independents in droves. It's also backfiring.
In 2008 then candidate Obama supported the initial "stimulus" bill, passed by a democratic Congress and signed by President Bush. When candidate Obama became President Obama, he took the stimulus idea and then doubled down with the passage of the budget busting American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. After complaining about fiscal responsibility, President Obama makes Bush look like a piker when it comes to running up deficits. With the national debt sky rocketing and unemployment high, Americans are taking notice. The mood in America is angry and the White House's summer of recovery is about to become the fall of Obama's discontent.
Aaron Gee is a US based IT consultant whose personal blog can be found at http://www.foundingideals.com
