A Faux Compassionate Christmas, Courtesy of the Left
Roughly thirty months since the beginning of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy, the latest available government figures show a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 9.8%, only 0.3% lower than the October 2009 peak. Total labor underutilization is stuck at 17%. The category known as “Not in Labor Force, Want a Job Now” is up to 6.2 million Americans, having climbed almost half a million in the past six months. When the POR economy and the recession as normal people define it began, that number was 5 million.
Meanwhile, the housing market is close to wrapping up what will be by far its worst year ever. In November, 21,000 new homes were sold in the entire country, the lowest total for any month in any of the 48 years related records have been kept. This year’s total for new home sales will be roughly 320,000, 15% fewer than last year’s record low.
We’re supposed to be impressed that growth in the third quarter came in at an annualized 2.6%, when the economy is only about 85% of the way back to where it was before the properly defined recession began.
This is how, five quarters after the recession officially ended, the left wishes America a Merry Christmas — oh, I’m sorry, “Happy Holidays” — with a sputtering economy it demands we accept as “the new normal.” By contrast, at the end of 1983, the fifth quarter of Ronald Reagan’s tax cut-driven recovery, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, which had peaked at 10.8% a year earlier, was already down to 8.3%, and it dropped another full percentage point the following year. The economy was growing at a torrid annualized rate of 8.5%.
At the end of last year, I asked an obvious question: “Economic Rebound? What Economic Rebound?” I was ridiculed in some quarters for questioning the validity of the recovery. Does anyone now reasonably believe that the economy as a whole — that is, the non-Obama golf, non-White House partying economy — is improving in any meaningful way that the average person can see?
None of this should have happened, and it could have been stopped long ago.
In mid-2008, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then-candidate Barack Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid began an unprecedented campaign of trash-talking the economy — which, though clearly struggling, was still growing — while promising drastically higher taxes and energy-starving “climate” initiatives. The record shows that enough entrepreneurs, investors, and other businesspeople to matter began heading for the hills, trimming employment, virtually ceasing new hiring, and canceling growth and expansion plans.
A weakened economy was no match for the amazingly timed perfect storm which followed shortly thereafter. It’s almost as if the Pelosi-Obama-Reid triumvirate knew that what they began in June would cause the serious problems in home lending and homebuilding to reach critical mass several months later. I suspect that someday someone with a conscience will let us know that what looks like an amazing set of coincidences was anything but that.
In early September, Democrat-dominated, government-sponsored home-lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac imploded. Thanks primarily to those two entities’ deliberate efforts to lower credit-approval standards in the entire industry, and their 15-year “fraud by design” campaign of deceiving the credit rating agencies about the nature of the loans they had securitized, financial market mayhem ensued. Not letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats seized the opportunity to stampede the president and Congress into creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It purpose was supposedly to buy up bad housing loans.
Less than two weeks later, in a complete shift from what the American people were promised, one that we’re supposed to believe was unplanned and totally unrelated to anything preceding it, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson pointed a figurative gun to the heads of large bank CEOs, demanding that they accept government “investment” in their institutions. Thus began the left-inspired statist encroachment that has since moved into more areas than can be named, some of which include auto manufacturing, small agriculture, education lending, and even school bake sales.
The statist “solution” for improving the economy they brought down was Keynesian “stimulus” — y’know, the strategy which was tried and failed with FDR in the 1930s and in Japan in the 1990s. We were supposed to keep a straight face when they told us: “This time it’s going to work.”
It becomes more reasonable with each passing day to believe that Pelosi, Obama, Reid, and the White House’s group of economic lamebrains knew it wouldn’t work, and didn’t care. Why? Because almost two years and over $3 trillion in debt later, after stimulus has clearly failed, it’s still the only “solution” they offer.
The so-called “tax-cut compromise” unfortunately agreed to by enough Republicans to enable passage is, of course, not a tax cut at all. It only achieves a continuation of what has been the income tax status quo for eight years, and only does so for another two, instead of the five or more needed to significantly influence business behavior. Worse, it contains more failed Keynesianism, including $57 billion in additional unemployment benefits. The economy may marginally improve, but almost no one believes that the unemployment rate will significantly come down any time soon.
The millions of unemployed who are legitimately trying to find work and can’t, and whose families continue to suffer as a result, are where they are largely because of the POR Economy’s fundamentally flimsy, stagnant substance. It’s almost impossible to believe that this genuinely bothers them, because if it did, they’d try something that works.
The economy is whatever 0bama and his bootlickers in the media say it is
to hell with reality- this is politics, dammit!
Listening to the news about Christmas shopping…the economy is rebounding and people are feeling SSSOOOOOO GGOOOOOD about spending money this season. It’s a “Christmas miracle” for retailers..etc..
I do not understand if so many are unemployed how the sales are so high this season. Where is the money coming from?
According to the media, I think I’m the only person on a budget and saving where I can. I wonder what I am missing about the economy.
AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!
The week before Christmas, I had to do some shopping in our local Target, when I went in it looked no worse than a typical Saturday or Sunday grocery shopping day, they only had 5 lanes open and none of them had more than 2 or 3 people in line. If this holiday season is suppose to have been so good for recovery why is it that so much of the visual man on the street evidence is otherwise, the media is trying to set and agenda don’t believe their numbers
I have a neighbor walking away from their house because they can’t pay the real estate taxes. This is the second year they’ve missed paying. The total taxes for the two years, would be about $7500.00, including penalties, on a house that, during the bubble, was assessed at about $750,000.00. They were heavily invested in other properties, and were riding high on the bubble. This was their primary residence, and they lived there from mid 1990. And, obviously, they haven’t got enough equity to make it worth while to pay the taxes and stay.
I know it’s an executive decision, but, this goes to show the economy is taking it’s toll on families in the upper level income bracket.
Barrack and Michelle would giggle with pride at this accomplishment of ‘redistribution’. Obamunism at it’s finest.
Compassion, as I understand it, presupposes respect for the other, for the one in distress, who you maybe should help or maybe should leave to his own devices. How can you have respect for a number, a thing? Which means that those, like liberals or progressives or whatever label they’re using to misrepresent themselves, aren’t compassionate when they do TO those they don’t even recognize as fully human. They are the humans. The only humans. And they do TO the lesser breeds. All of us.
Bottom line? It is obscene to even think of compromising with the Left. Not if you cherish liberty.
More people are choosing to believe their lying eyes over the MSM when it comes to the economy. If it comes to Barry’s intelligence or Michelle’s beauty, it is another question.
Our economy is always going to be at the mercy of the Corrupt, UN-moderated FEDERAL RESERVE and our eternal indebtedness is just a symptom of our ‘shell-game’ with “funny money”.
It’s a good thing the left got out front describing themselves as “brilliant”, “intellectual”, and “elite”. If judged by the consistency of their words and actions, by their regard for people not like them, or by the impact of their policies on the economy and national security, we would be using far different terms.
The country will begin to regain its strength when The King of Self Esteem and his Angrier Half have left the building. They, and people who think like them, do not want (economic) power in the hands of the people they want it in the hands of the federal government. The housing market, the Dow Jones, and consumer confidence will all improve dramatically when a Democrat of this ilk is back on the golf course full-time. Here’s hoping that change happens in two years.
To all the PJM Regulars, you too BC, have a very Merry Christmas! May the new year bring greater prosperity and joy to you and yours.
Happy New Normal Day!
It comes down to greedy bankers, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, and ill informed consumer. Smart money went to Gold and hard assets, away from credit financed assets.
It was the roaring 20′s all over again as soon as president Clinton signed repeal of glass steagal in 1999 and unleashing banks to rape and pillage as they did in the 20′s.
Except this time the Bush and Obama Administrations transferred Trillions out of the country and into the pockets of Bankers in Europe.
Those that don’t learn the lessons in History will repeat them.
Did you ever stop to ask yourself how someone could be victimized by a “greedy” lender? How many times has a pickpocket put something into your pocket? Without the removal of lending risk by Federal guarantees and without the continual drum beat to force lending to otherwise unworthy borrowers, this would have never happened.
Then when the financial industry created CDOs it was without much scrutiny from regulators because politically they knew that the only way to get the banks to continue such imprudent lending was to find greater fools to assume the debt. Then came credit default swaps which brought all the gamblers and scammers into the picture.
The government – specifically the Democrats – are very complicit if not fully responsible for this mess.
There are misconceptions. Debt is not capital but capital suplies the debtor so he has capital and you take the risk of getting your capital back. That capital did not originate with the debtor but was created elsewhere. If I loaned you a bushel of seed potatoes with the expectation of receiving, say, two bushels of potatoes at harvest, you still have to plant those potatoes and successfully harvest the crop before you can pay me back.
Since we are talking cash money it is still the same. You just convert your hard assets to cash to return the seed money.
Debt is not capital nor a source of capital. It is a capital investment in the future with an expectation of repayment. Otherwise it would be a gift.
Why or learned economist do not seem to recognize this bit of physics has been a mystery to me.
You plant one potato and get half a dozen back more or less. That is your increase. You keep your seed for the next crop, consume a portion and the rest is surplus that you can trade or invest. Without this surplus there is nothing to sell or lend, no source of capital.
At the age of 57, I am one of those who are considered “too old to rehire, and too young to retire.”
If Barack Hussein Obama has his way, there will never be a job at a living wage for the likes of me. That is not a “bug” – it’s a feature of his economic policy. I am firmly convinced that, having pushed us older, professional/technical white folks (who, of course, did not vote for him) out of the middle class, Obama and his administration would prefer that we simply die in poverty, and the sooner the better.
Having been laid off from an IT job early in 2008, I am one of those who have no more unemployment benefits. I am currently working as a part-time retail clerk, at minimum wage. To put it bluntly, I am a diligent and reliable worker with a clean record and a cooperative attitude, and I am exceedingly frugal, but it is flat-out impossible to survive on what I earn. I have requested more hours, but business has been much too slow.
Unless my situation drastically improves after the beginning of 2011, I am seriously considering emigration.
WHY did this happen to me and so many others?
It is not only the economic collapse that you have so correctly explained above. IT and other tech workers have been hit even harder than everyone else, and it is because of the H-1b visa program, the tax and regulatory structure that encourages offshoring, and the abuse of the stimulus program to create jobs OVERSEAS at the expense of jobs in the US.
Please read the rest of the story here. This article provides a wealth of links and information on this topic. There will be more to follow.
Who Are The 99ers?
We all need your prayers!
This is a sad fact. I’ve been through the same, and it certainly does seem to be by design. The career resources supplied by the IT company I worked for just validated the point, since it seemed that there were a disproportionate number of IT folks on the conference calls I attended.
Although the shedding of jobs has been going on for almost two decades.
They wanted our resources, and they got them. TRILLIONS were redistributed in Sept / Oct 2008. Trillions more since then. The savings of decades were reduced to zero.
Not a word has been said about it.
Now they want us to stop eating.
We not only eat, we are an enormous threat to them.
A very familiar and common story in many other middle income career choices as well. And as many of us were diligently trying to determine how best to become productive and valued in America’s businesses, who would have guessed way back when that the better career move was government service.
When you consider the amount of money that a private sector individual has to earn and save (after taxes) to achieve a retirement equivalent to those in the public sector, the professional middle class private sector worker has – year in and year out – earned less than the lowest government pay grades.
Socialist have no “rights” but they do believe they have entitlements which they call rights.
You do not have a right to a job any way you look at it. I would not hire you because you need a job unless I also need your help. I might give you a hand or a handout but not a job. That help has variable values toward supplying my need.
All agriculture requires a plot of ground, even hydroponics and what that piece of ground yields varies with what we use it for and such factors as moisture and fertility plus climate. In other words an acre of ground has different production potential according to any number of variables. When that acre becomes more expensive that its potential to produce it will be idled. That is what has happened to our “living wage” and the sole reason for unemployment. For some things the wage is very meager but if it can put food in your stomach you survive. There is nothing our government can do to stimulate commerce since that is a product of demand for things offered. Sine all the government can offer is control that cannot be converted to food.
Those things must be produced before they can be offered and then they must be priced within the reach of the customer. This is what drives employment and wages drives demand. When they are properly proportioned they are most efficient.
It all boils down to how we manage our garden. We have limited ground and we need to plant the most useful varieties in the right mix if we expect to live on the fruit of the garden. Commerce is on that same pattern so if we let the market supply the demand and the demand supply the jobs and the jobs supply the customer we have a system similar to the one that keeps our rivers flowing.
The river needs the rain as well as the vegetation. The river waters the animals and always flows downhill. Liquid water is too heavy to move uphill but its vapor is lighter than the surrounding air so it can rise. A cubic inch or water make approximately a cubic foot of vapor at sea level. Warm, dense air holds more water that cold thin air so, as the vapor rises it reverts back to water and comes down as rain. Very good system that has worked for centuries. Our natural commerce followed that same pattern and always did work. There just doesn’t seem to be any political shortcut to make it more efficient.
1389AD you are in a fix, I got crossways to a controller a few years younger then you and ended up out of work, not being able to find world I ended up on a VA pension. One Obama seems to be trying to destroy through inflation.
I stole this from a previous article, it is appropriate.
To My Democrat Friends: Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2011 but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
To My Republican Friends: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I meant work, not world.
“A weakened economy was no match for the amazingly timed perfect storm which followed shortly thereafter (in Sept/Oct 2008). It’s almost as if the Pelosi-Obama-Reid triumvirate knew that what they began in June would cause the serious problems in home lending and homebuilding to reach critical mass several months later. I suspect that someday someone with a conscience will let us know that what looks like an amazing set of coincidences was anything but that.”
Thank you Mr. Blumer for being an exceptionally rare pundit with the courage to say out loud what is obvious to anybody with a brain.
The crash of 2008 was undoubtedly engineered by the radical left to get it’s man into the white house. As you say, about 5 once-in-a-lifetime (some less frequent than that), perfectly timed events occured in a two-month timeframe, starting the VERY DAY MaCain/Palin took their first lead in Gallup, the poll of record.
It’s the greatest crime in history.
Not a word is said about it.
High unemployment is absolutely vital to the regime in order to keep the war machine humming. I recently read a comment on a CNN.com article from a woman whose son left the Marines, only to return a year later when he couldn’t find a civilian job. Obama and the Army need the “depression draft” to keep recruitment & retention from totally collapsing, especially now that DADT has been repealed. Otherwise they’d have to fulfill Chuckie Rangel’s greatest fantasy and revive the real draft.
What most people do not realize is that the government is operating a slot machine economy. We all know that the slot machine cannot pay out more than it receives and, if the owner is to profit, substantially less than it receives. Therefore the slot machine cannot produce abundance. Just as the lottery collects and concentrates money into payouts it must discriminate, charging the many for the benefit(?) of the few. The cash in play is capital earned from some other source.
If you were the only player you would eventually run out of money to play the machine. This tells me that When we expect to win someone else must lose. If I plant a garden and then sell the surplus we both can win. I win because I have received capital and you win because you have received wholesome food doing something else besides tending garden.
When I was growing up we were pretty well on subsistence farming. That is, we were responsible for what went on the table because is was coming from our own effort and not the supermarket. With wages we produced things of value to those who produced our food and it was more productive than subsistence farming. Both them that earned wages and those who produced the food could have a better living. We have lost sight of this phase of our economy and believe that we can stand in front of the slot machine, feed it with our taxes and the government will be able to supply all our needs.
We all know that we can exist on much less than what we consume but do not believe that when we are supplied what we need that is the bare minimum for existence.
We need to retire this slot machine mentality, reaffirm our property rights and trade our goods for the best possible deal we can arrange. With subsistence farming there is no “minimum” wage. Sometimes our best efforts come up a total failure for which there is no income, only loss. When we are bankrupt we become slaves to those we chose to take away our wealth.
You’re right. The point of Obamanomics was never to stimulate the economy into recovery, but bust it enough to where the dems could (in their minds at least) create the justification for a VAT. It almost worked. If it had we might be looking at these economic imbeciles eventually getting effective control over broad sectors of the economy, not to mention the money that goes with that power. Last November’s election saved us all.
Yes, but gang, take heart in the fact that Obama is going to “focus like a lazer beam” on the economy this year, even though he’s been saying that now for two years. Don’t you get it, the other pieces of the liberal agenda had to come first, like socialized medicine, nationalizing the banks, buying our own debt, a stimulus that stimulated only union jobs (and not many of them at that), gays in the military, the START treaty (which we don’t even need), and passing (last year) a pork-filled budget that drastically increased the size of the Federal Government. Obama HATES business and could care less if there was 20% unemployment, like in Spain. Keep the people dependent on the Federal Government and don’t give them any work. That way, they’ll support all far-left liberals in power in order to keep federal benefits coming in. That’s working out just aces in Greece, right?
Hopefully, the conservative Congress that’s coming in soon will put an end to this spending madness. That’s the only way this economy will turn around. Shrink the size of government AND spending, and reduce the debt while taking less money out of the private sector (by reducing taxes). It has worked in the past and that’s the only way it will work in the future. What we are doing now will only guarantee high unemployment for two years to come.
Gosh Darn! President Obama claims that He “is going to “focus like a lazer beam” on the economy this year . . . .” That gives me tremendous confidence. It strikes me that He has been doing that all along; rather like focusing a laser beam on an approaching aircraft either to blind the pilot or knock it out of the sky. And, of course, He has done a great job of it. Credit where credit is due; China might be willing to help.
It would be much better were He to direct His laser-like “focus” elsewhere; maybe on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, “comprehensive” immigration reform, school lunches, keeping His remaining Democratic Party allies happy and, of greatest importance, the destination for His next family vacation. These things are of greatest importance. If His focus can be there for the next couple of years He will greatly enhance His place in history.
It is not reasonable to pin TARP on the Democrats. Face it — that particular piece of sordid legislation was written by the Bush administration.
The original three-page TARP proposal was written by Hank Paulson’s Treasury Dept. and Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve (likely, I believe, with the assistance of people where Paulson’s buddy, the next Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner of the Federal Reserve of New York, was hanging out):
LINK
At the link, note that Congressional Democrats lengthened the bill to 40 pages.
By the time it passed TARP was a 451-page behemoth:
LINK
At the link:
Your assertion that the Bush administration wrote “that particular piece of sordid legislation” appears to be at least 99% not true. If Bernanke’s and/or Geithner’s peeps wrote the original three-pager, your statement is totally untrue.
Bush of course deserves heavy blame for promoting the legislation and signing it.
Tom, I would tend to agree with you. The concept behind TARP will trace back to the Bolshevik origins of our Socialism. It is and has been contrary to Republican belief and conservative principles. What we call Repubican today would have been soundly rejected a hundred years ago but those called republican.
George Bush did not seem to understand the principles and let himself buy a pig in a poke. From what I could see Bush would not have voluntarily followed that path or been attracted to its concept.
hmmm valid one