But…but…this goes against the Republican narrative!

American Jobs Act — Final

There really aren’t any controversial elements in here at all. Yes, Republicans are going to push back on any additional spending, but it’ll be hard for them to break this apart and only get the tax cuts through. So it’ll be up to them to go all or nothing. And that’s a risky move right now.

More as it develops…

You can’t look at today’s news and do anything but wince. 18,000 jobs created and the numbers in April and May were revised downward.

Unpacking the numbers a bit, 57,000 private sector jobs were created, while budget cuts pushed 39,000 folks out of work in the public sector.

So how are businesses doing?

Quite well…

Combined second-quarter earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index are expected to be up 13.6% from a year ago, according to an analysis of Wall Street forecasts by Brown Brothers Harriman. “Corporate profits have been much stronger than the economy in general,” says Charles H. Blood Jr., a market strategist at the New York financial-services firm.

Sure there are worries. There are always worries. But that hasn’t stopped corporations from piling up more cash reserves than they ever have and keeping wages low.

In fact, it’s historic…

[...] they say this recovery is unlike any other in more than six decades because of the “absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers.”

The study’s authors-Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada, Joseph McLaughlin and Sheila Palma-write that from the start of the recovery through the end of the first quarter of 2011, national income increased by $505 billion. But none of that growth came from a rise in aggregate wages and salaries.

So what accounted for nearly all of the growth? Pretax corporate profits, which rose by $465 billion-or 92 percent of the total.

The researchers compare this recovery to other post-recession periods since 1975. Of the four, only one-2001-03-saw corporate profits account for more than half (53 percent) of national income growth. And in 1991-92, corporate profits’ share was minus 1 percent, while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for 50 percent.

Let’s make sure we all see that number clearly…92 percent of the total national income has been gained via corporate profits.

What to make of this? Well, I have my opinions, and I’ve shared them before. Frankly, it’s pretty ridiculous, but nobody can force corporations to hire anybody or pay their workers more. But isn’t it a shame that the mood in this country in many C-suites seems to be so stingy? I mean, I get tightening belts, etc, if it’s needed. But it’s clearly not. The big time private sector is flourishing.

And where does that flourish go?

As if you really had to guess…

The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.

Good times.

Looks like businesses are finally feeling some confidence.

Maybe they read my post? Probably not.

Regardless, if the above number holds up when the government reports on Friday it would represent triple what Wall Street was predicting.

Daily Finance has more good news:

Separately, private placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said planned layoff announcements in December by U.S. employers fell 34% to 32,000 in December from about 49,000 in November. That brought 2010 layoffs to about 530,000, the lowest total since 1997 and a 59% reduction from 2009, when job losses reached a seven-year high.

ADP’s December report showed that job gains were concentrated in services and in small and midsize businesses. Services added 270,000 jobs — the sector’s largest monthly increase on record, ADP said. Small businesses added 117,000 jobs; midsize businesses, 144,000; and large businesses, 36,000.

Construction employment was unchanged in December — but that ends the more than three-year-long monthly losing steak that started in June 2007. Goods producers added 27,000 jobs, manufacturing employment increased by 23,000 and financial services added 8,000 jobs.

We had signs that something like this could happen last month when jobless claims hit a 2.5 year low

Long story short, the trends are going the right way. Let’s hope they continue.

Here ya go…

Pretty straightforward. Dems aren’t going to win any economic ingenuity awards, but we’re out of the recession, private sector job growth is still holding on and we’ve got the shopping season coming up, which should drive even more.

But what if the Republicans had their way?

Well, let’s refer back to the Congressional Budget Office’s recent projections, as brought to you by Newsweek. Basically, the Republicans wanted to extend the tax cuts and that’s about it. What effect would that have on the economy?

Extending all of them, according to the CBO, would lower unemployment by 0.3 to 0.8 percent over the next year or so; extending them solely for people making less than $250,000 would produce a somewhat smaller effect, for a difference of roughly 200,000 to 500,000 people.

The problem, as economist William G. Gale of the Brookings Institution has noted, is that “of 11 potential stimulus policies the CBO recently examined, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts ties for lowest bang for the buck.” In fact, he continues, “letting the high-income tax cuts expire and using the money for aid to the states, extensions of unemployment insurance benefits, [or] tax credits favoring job creation … would have about three times the impact … as continuing the Bush tax cuts.”

In addition, it’s unlikely that extending the cuts for the richest Americans would have much of an effect on small-business hiring, which is a claim that Republicans make with some regularity. Why? Because of the taxpayers that report running small businesses on their taxes, only 2 percent fall into the top two income brackets.* The other 98 percent of small-business owners make less than $250,000 a year and wouldn’t pay higher taxes under Obama’s plan.

Now, let’s look at their supposed deficit reduction measures, which they’ve been talking about constantly. Again, we’ll refer to the CBO and Newsweek’s analysis of it, which I’m repurposing here to make a couple additional points.

Obama spent $814 billion on the stimulus plan and Republicans didn’t offer an alternative, so it’s…

D: $814B
R: $0

On health care reform, Republicans want to repeal the law and substitute it with, well…nothing. Some think they’d take the Wyden/Bennett approach, but there’s no evidence that would actually happen. So what’s the problem with repealing it? The CBO says that the current health care law will cut $30B from the budget deficit in the next 10 years. What’s the cost of doing things in the same way (repealing it) ? $455B. That’s right…the health care bill is actually saving us $475B over 10 years. Still, you can’t subtract $455B from the Dem’s total, so Dems are still leading the deficit game in 10 years time…

R: $455B
D: $784B

Now, on to the Bush tax cuts. As mentioned above, only 2% of small businesses owners make more than $250,000 in income every year and their hit would be VERY minimal. For a refresher, let’s go back to the chart we posted a few weeks ago…

That’s right, people making up to $500,000 will have to pay roughly $400 more a year if the tax cuts aren’t extending. Folks who make $250,000 would pay even less than that. Most likely around $200 extra.

Yes…that’s it.

So, don’t believe the Republicans when they say not extending those benefits would kill jobs killer because $400 of salary can’t create a job.

The Dems’ extension of the tax cuts for everybody else will add roughly $3 trillion to the deficit in the next 10 years. What would the Republicans add? Another $700B.

What’s the total budget deficit over the next ten years for either party?

D: $3.784T
R: $4.155T

If you vote for the GOP this fall because you think they’re going to create more jobs and reduce the deficit, you’re a sucker. Plain and simple. They have no new ideas to turn things around and they’re simply referring back to the same play book that got us into this mess in the first place: deregulation and tax cuts.

Also, remember that if the GOP had their way they would reduce the federal government down so much it would cripple an already crumbling infrastructure. We need to innovate and continue to make sure the basic building blocks of our society are the best in the world or else we will not be competitive in the years to come. And, as the evidence shows, the Dems still offer the best plan for that. I’m not saying it’s the best, most innovative plan, but it’s demonstrably better both in terms of jobs and deficit reduction than the GOP’s.

(h/t: Washington Monthly)

The stimulus did nothing for our economy?

It didn’t prevent a second Great Depression?

It didn’t help create demand when we literally had deflation?

It didn’t prop up a system that relied on consumer spending when consumers weren’t spending?

The CBO shines the light:

In its latest quarterly assessment of the act, the CBO said the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points during the quarter ending in June and increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million.

And, by the way…

The higher figure would come close to making good on Obama’s pledge that the act would save or create as many as 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year.

So, let’s talk about that now infamous 8% unemployment number that was floated in 2009. If the Obama administration hits its employment projections…how is it responsible for employers laying off more people than they had expected?

As always, there are the usual caveats…

The CBO cautioned that the the act’s effects are expected to “gradually diminish during the second half of 2010 and beyond,” leaving the private sector to pick up the slack in an economy that is already showing signs of deteriorating rapidly.

So, the question remains…should we just allow the economy to go back into the hole? Or should we figure out a way to stimulate it once again? Because if you’ve studied history and you look at The Great Depression, the deficit hawks swooped in after The New Deal and essentially forced Roosevelt’s hand to start cutting spending.

What happened?

The economy went into a tailspin again…

By 1936, the main economic indicators had regained the levels of the late 1920s, except for unemployment, which remained high at 11%, although this was considerably lower than the 25% unemployment rate seen in 1933. In the spring of 1937, American industrial production exceeded that of 1929 and remained level until June 1937.

In June 1937, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and increased taxation in an attempt to balance the federal budget. The American economy then took a sharp downturn, lasting for 13 months through most of 1938. Industrial production fell almost 30 per cent within a few months and production of durable goods fell even faster. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938, rising from 5 million to more than 12 million in early 1938. Manufacturing output fell by 37% from the 1937 peak and was back to 1934 levels. Producers reduced their expenditures on durable goods, and inventories declined, but personal income was only 15% lower than it had been at the peak in 1937. As unemployment rose, consumers’ expenditures declined, leading to further cutbacks in production. By May 1938 retail sales began to increase, employment improved, and industrial production turned up after June 1938.

But we didn’t truly recover until the war started and we began spending like crazt. Obviously we don’t want something like that to happen, but to ignore history and call for spending cuts right now seems short sided and almost guarantees a double dip Great Recession.

Still, what should we do moving forward? I put the question to all of you.

The good news is that we added 90,000 jobs more than expected, and this job growth is the most in four years. Still, the unemployment rate went up and could stay there for a while. Because if our economy keeps growing and we continue to add more than a quarter million jobs per month, but can’t push down the unemployment rate…what are we supposed to do?

And to that point…the March and February jobs estimates were both revised up:

The Labor Department also revised upward the job numbers for March, saying the economy added 230,000 payroll positions that month as opposed to 162,000 reported earlier. And the nation added 39,000 jobs in February, instead of shedding 14,000.

By the way, here’s where the jobs are coming from…

In April, hiring by the Census Bureau accounted for 66,000 of the net new jobs created as the government took on more workers for the 2010 census.

The private sector increased employment by 231,000 jobs last month, up from 174,000 in March. Job growth came in almost every major industry, with manufacturing adding 44,000 jobs, professional and business services growing by 80,000 and leisure and hospitality payrolls up 45,000.

Now before anybody crows about government jobs, the private sector has just as many seasonal positions too, so save the “government is gaming the numbers” speeches. Jobs are jobs. Just ask the people who are collecting the paychecks.

Here’s a quick look at the trends…

Of course the GOP is hammering Obama for the higher unemployment rate, and that’s their prerogative…but they also don’t offer any solutions. Par for course with the current Republican leadership. Think they might want to link to their plans for job creation in the same release they’re lambasting Obama for not creating enough? Hmmm…well, I guess you can only offer solutions if you have some. So when faced with a reality where they don’t have any, they offer fear instead. Again, completely unsurprising.

As Americans, we’re accustomed to a certain standard of living. Nothing lavish, mind you. Most of us don’t have big, fancy houses or expensive cars. Most of us don’t have investment portfolios bursting at the seams. But we do have families and we do have responsibilities, and given that we pay our fair share into the system, we expect a safety net when circumstances out of our control force us into the ranks of the unemployed.

However, in especially dire economic times…when the system fails us…it’s appropriate for that safety net to be extended until things pick back up. And, as you read the following, let’s remember why unemployment benefits were created in the first place: The Great Depression.

Why did the Great Depression happen? A systemic failure with the banks and no action taken to save them. Why did the depression continue? Because there were no jobs. And no jobs means no spending which means no economic recovery. And so starts a spiral that was impossible to get out of…until the US declared war on the Axis and we started deficit spending like crazy and sent everybody back to work.

Well, WWIII is not on the horizon so extending unemployment benefits is a pretty simple calculation. And yet…Republicans are starting to grumble about extending them?

From Wash Post:

But complaints that extending unemployment payments discourages job-seeking have begun to bubble into the political debate. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) recently single-handedly held up the latest extension, a bill to keep unemployment benefits in place for 30 more days, saying Congress should find other cuts to cover its $10 billion price tag.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) did not join Bunning’s effort, but he defended his colleague’s point of view. Kyl told the Senate he questioned why anyone would see unemployment benefits as helpful to the economy, or to the job market.

“If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said. “I am sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can’t argue it is a job enhancer.”

Actually, Kyl is dead wrong about unemployment benefits not being a job enhancer. Sure, on its face it may seems like it’s not, but let me explain why it actually makes very sound economic sense.

The last thing you want a skilled laborer doing is trying to seek employment below his or her pay grade just to make ends meet. See, to stay an economic superpower, we want computer programmers working as computer programmers, not burger flippers. Why? Because not only does that mean no jobs for burger flippers, but the computer programmer may be missing an opportunity to find a job as a computer programmer and is therefore in a perpetual state of “underemployment.” And the rate of underemployment is always the more important number to look at when gauging the economic health of a country.

Right now unemployment sits at 9.7%, while underemployment sits at 16.8%. Now imagine that second number being 10% higher if we didn’t have unemployment benefits.

Buy hey, Kyl knows this. He’s just trying to get it paid for, right?

Well, tell you what…since the top 1% of income earners took billions out of the system with Bush’s tax cuts…how about we get them to give a little back? See, most of them (like Warren Buffet) are only paying 15% on their investment income…I think they can give up some of their tax cuts to make sure the rest of us don’t lose our homes, stop spending and we all fall deeper into recession…which will effect their investment income.

Sound like a deal?

I wrote yesterday about the scant number of jobs created in the last 10 years, but when compared to the past six decades the news becomes that much bleaker.

Wash Post illustrates…

I’m not saying we should have guarantees our overall net worth should go up or that our economy has to add jobs, but when productivity and GDP goes up, jobs and net worth should follow.

Meanwhile, the rich continued to get richer while median wages have actually gone down…

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 — and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.

As I’ve said in the past, nobody’s suggesting that capitalism isn’t the best way to go. But unchecked capitalism that demands more productivity, doesn’t raise wages and allows everybody to overleverage with ridiculous amounts of debt? Sorry folks, but we’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. The markets obviously don’t regulate themselves and something has to change.

So where do we go from here? Genuinely, I’m asking. How can we fix this?

A bit of good news to report today amid the preparations for New Year’s celebrations. Jobless claims fell more than expected last week.

From WSJ:

Initial claims for unemployment benefits fell by 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 432,000 in the week ended Dec. 26, the lowest level since July 19, 2008. The four-week average of new claims, which smoothes volatility in the data, dropped by 5,500 to 460,250, its 17th consecutive drop. That was the lowest level since Sept. 20, 2008.

The Labor Department said in its weekly report, released Thursday, that 4.98 million people had been collecting jobless benefits for more than a week in the week ended Dec. 19, a decline of 57,000.

So, the unemployment rate might actually drop…

The Labor Department is to release its snapshot of December’s labor market on Friday, Jan. 8. Economists at Wrightson ICAP predicted in a note Wednesday that the jobless rate, last reported at 10% for November, may have inched lower to 9.9% in December.

Still, to put into perspective how big of a hole we’re in right now…over the past decade we’ve added less than 500K new jobs to the economy.

From CS Monitor:

The Labor Department counts 108.5 million nonfarm private-sector jobs as of November, which is 1.5 million fewer than when the decade began. The public sector added jobs during the decade. But the tally of all US jobs, including government positions, is positive by only 464,000 jobs for the whole 10-year stretch. That’s a big problem for a nation where population has risen by about 27 million residents during that time, according to Census estimates.

464K new jobs and 27 million new residents.

Yikes.

Playing the blame game about who’s responsible for this situation is an exercise in futility at this point, but if the economy starts turning around and we add a significant amount of new jobs to the rolls in the next few years…who do we have to thank for that?

Nobody’s signing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but any significant downward movement in the unemployment rate is reason for some early holiday cheer. And there’s more good news beyond this. I’ll share a chart that shows this after the numbers.

From WSJ:

U.S. job losses in November posted the smallest drop since the start of the recession and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined, a sign the labor market is finally healing as the economy recovers.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by just 11,000 last month, slowing down from a downwardly revised 111,000 drop seen in October, as the recovery encouraged some companies to retain workers, the Labor Department said Friday.

Okay, now here’s a graph (with some notations from me) to illustrate how significant this is and how it’s even more evidence that we’re pulling out of this mess…

More from WSJ about how some sectors are recovering…

Employment in the service sector — the main source of U.S. jobs — rose by 58,000 in November. But that was more than offset by manufacturing companies shedding 41,000 jobs and construction companies cutting 27,000.

Health-care employment continued to rise in November, by 21,000. The industry has added 613,000 jobs since the recession began at the end of 2007.

And one last bright spot…

Friday’s report showed that average hourly earnings rose by 0.1%, or $0.01, to $18.74.

More people are employed and we’re making more money.

Win, win.

PS – BTW, if you’re going to talk to me about U6 or the underemployment rate, you better also explain why it was ignored for 8 years under Bush as it skyrocketed past 15% in 2008. In short, don’t get U6 religion now just because a Dem is in office.

We’ve crossed the psychological barrier and this spells bad news for Dems unless they can turn it around in the next couple months. Because this is the highest rate since 1983 and you’ll be hearing that time and time again in the next month.

Here’s more about those numbers:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.7 percent) and whites (9.5 percent) rose in October. The jobless rates for adult women (8.1 percent), teenagers (27.6 percent), blacks (15.7 percent), and Hispanics (13.1 percent) were little changed over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 7.5 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed over the month at 5.6 million. In October, 35.6 percent of unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.

The civilian labor force participation rate was little changed over the month at 65.1 percent. The employment-population ratio continued to decline in October, falling to 58.5 percent.

Thankfully, only 190,000 non-farm jobs were lost last month. That’s lower than September’s 216,000 so the trend is in the right direction.

Also, some good news for those without work…jobless benefits are being extended:

After weeks of partisan debate, the Senate voted on Wednesday to lengthen unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks and to extend the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit.

The closely watched legislation would extend jobless benefits in all states by 14 weeks. Those that live in states with unemployment greater than 8.5% would receive an additional six weeks. The proposal would be funded by extending a longstanding federal unemployment tax on employers through June 30, 2011.

The measure would apply to those whose benefits will run out by Dec. 31, which is nearly two million people, according to Senate estimates. Those whose checks have already stopped would be able to reapply for another round.

The vote was 98 to 0.

How’s that for bipartisan?

More as it develops…

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been posting a lot in the past couple weeks and that’s because the day job has been VERY consuming…but in a good way.

Basically, over the past year I’ve been working on developing a new website for AMC Theatres and it just launched Monday. On it you can find movie trailers, show times, movie news, a community based around our collective love for movies and much, much, much, much, much more.

So drop by AMCEntertainment.com, sign up and tell me what you think at our Get Satisfaction feedback site.

And MANY thanks to my fellow Donklephant contributors for helping fill in the gaps. It is very appreciated.

Numbers just came out today and in July the number was 247,000. This is obviously disappointing because the numbers had been consistently dropping since the beginning of the year and this uptick was not expected.

More from Reuters:

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected non-farm payrolls to drop 180,000 in September and the unemployment rate to rise to 9.8 percent from 9.7 percent the prior month. The poll was conducted before reports, including regional manufacturing surveys, showed some deterioration in employment measures.

The government revised job losses for July and August to show 13,000 more jobs lost than previously reported. Preliminary annual benchmark revisions, released together with September’s employment report showed that total non-farm payroll employment for March would have to be revised down about 824,000. [...]

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed people has risen by 7.6 million to 15.1 million, the department said. While the decline in payrolls has moderated from early this year, companies are still not hiring on a wide scale, likely waiting for a signal that the economic recovery is sustainable.

This can kind of be a chicken and an egg problem. Companies won’t start hiring until they see signs of recovery, but recovery won’t happen until companies start hiring. Yikes!

That’s where the solvency of the banking industry comes into play, and while we have seen some of the TARP money paid back, money is still hard to come by. My continued belief is employment is always a lagging indicator of economic recovery and that we’ll start to see job growth by Q1 2010.

Tick tock…

And the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4%.

This is pretty significant for a few reasons.

First, there’s just the psychological effect of 10% unemployment. The media had been positioning that as the dreaded magic number and now it appears that we’ll never reach it.

Second, economists projected 325,000 job losses for July, so coming in 80,000 below is incredibly encouraging.

Third, we lost 545,000 jobs in April, 532,000 in May, 443,000 in June, and now 247,000 in July. Obviously we’re headed in the right direction.

Still, as the NY Times points out, people are hurting…

Karen Triplett, 61, of Atlanta, lost her job in advertising sales in February and said she has been hitting wall after wall as she looks for work. The only job offer she received, she said, turned out to be a scam.

“It’s dismal to say the least,” she said. “I went from making $60,000 a year to $1,100 a month unemployment. I’ve got two friends who have already lost their houses. I’m struggling just to make sure my house note is met.”

Ms. Triplett said she worked nearly full-time since she was a teenager — as a secretary at a bank, a tobacco company and a television station, as a flight attendant, and selling advertising. She raised two children, bought a house, paid her bills on time and had a credit score of 878. Now, she is trying to stretch her unemployment checks far enough to cover her costs and struggling to pay her credit-card bills.

“I’m beyond down to basics,” Ms. Triplett said. “My daughter’s tried to help me. My son has given me money. But what I can’t do, I can’t do.”

So while we’re not adding jobs yet, I can’t help but think we’re only a few months away from that.

Fingers crossed.

If we’re headed towards economic recovery, the path is unlikely to be a smooth one. At least that’s what June’s unemployment numbers indicate as the nation lost 467,000 jobs, more than 100,000 above estimates.

With unemployment now at 9.5%, a 26 year high, most economists foresee double-digit unemployment before the end of the year with numbers continuing to rise into 2010 before beginning to creep back down. Of course, when you figure in all those who’ve given up looking for a job and those who’ve had to settle for low-paying part-time jobs, the real unemployment rate is closer to 16.5%.

That’s a lot of unemployment for the economy to absorb. Given that some jobs aren’t coming back (automotive for instance) and others will have to come back from new sources (Linens n’ Things, Circuit City, etc.), there is no reason to think any recovery will be quick or easy. I suspect economists will be regularly confounded and estimates will be regularly wrong.

The hope is that, all-and-all, the economy trends upwards. We can handle a few bumps, I’m not sure we’d fare well under a long depression.

Solar Energy: “We’re trying to lay a foundation for a new economy…We are investing not in digging more oil wells but in building more wind farms, investing in solar energy….We are going to have an economy that [is] not based on a bubble.” (Media Teleconference, 6/8/09)

This Tuesday, Joe Biden will be traveling to a solar panel manufacturer near Toledo, Ohio to put his money where his mouth is. Willard & Kelsey Solar Group just received $10 Million from the Economic Stimulus Plan to create up to 3,500 new jobs making thin photo-voltaic cells for residential and commercial use.  VP Biden will tour the facility at 10 AM and hold a middle class task force meeting titled “Promoting American Manufacturing in the 21st Century” afterwards. He’ll discuss the state of the manufacturing industry, how the administration is supporting manufacturing communities presently and what they have planned for the future.

Read more Quotes about Father’s Day and Plans for Michigan here!

Hello this is Mike Fritz from the American News Project. We have a new story out that focuses on those most affected by the bailout of General Motors: laid off autoworkers.

It examines one of the central tensions in the public takeover of the company: Should federal dollars be spent building a lean, mean business model that will please Wall Street and increase value for shareholders (i.e. American taxpayers)? Or, should there be some built-in conditions designed to set aside as many manufacturing jobs as possible for certain people (i.e. American taxpayers)?

Now that we all own 60% of the company, it may be a story you find worth the watch:

As you may recall, on the campaign trail, Joe Biden was heralded as “head of the Middle Class taskforce” – whose activities can be viewed here.

Yet the question remains: What has Joe Biden done for the Middle Class?

Several months ago, I checked the Middle Class Task Force site only to find a discussion of ways to help people send their kids to college… and I thought, “So what?” What is the purpose of going to college if there are no jobs waiting at the other end of the tunnel? Moreover, a 20/20 special posited that Bachelor’s Degrees are “America’s biggest over-rated product.” Upping college enrollment seems to be the wrong approach. After all, 1 in 5 people who are unemployed hold at least a college degree, according to NPR.   

This month, everyone’s clamoring, “Where are the jobs, Joe?” We’re told there’s good news from the White House – that 150,000 jobs have been either saved or created in the first 100 days.

Yet, when questioned how they arrived at that figure, Joe just sheepishly replied, “I’m a little above my pay grade here as I try to explain in more detail how they count spinoff effects of actual jobs created, I’m sorry. I’m not an Economist. My background is in foreign policy and the constitution.”

He told us to be patient, that the $500 million training program was on its way. The latest unemployment figures indicate 345,000 jobs were cut in May, bringing the national unemployment rate to 9.4%. Back in January, we were promised the unemployment rate wouldn’t exceed 8% if the stimulus was passed. (To be safe, Obama changed his figures to a projected 10% unemployment rate before the end of the year.)

Continue reading…

So let’s get this straight…

$87 billion of the $787 billion has already been spent in the past 3.5 months, and the monthly unemployment claims were cut in half last month (when compared to the previous 6 months) and the stimulus isn’t working?

This is in response to Republican lawmakers, specifically Sarah Palin, continuing to push the memes that the stimulus isn’t working and we’re headed towards socialism…the latter of which was “graphically” embarrassed recently.

Listen, I know that this is all positioning for 2010, but do they really think it’s wise to place their bets on this horse? I get that the Obama administration opened themselves up for criticism recently because they estimated that unemployment would top off at 8%, but signs are pointing to a recovery within the year. Because imagine if the monthly unemployment numbers come in at 250,000 next month. And then 150,000 after that. And then 100,000.

What if by the end of the year we’re seeing job growth? What then?

Would they consider the stimulus a failure?

Regardless of economic philosophy, I just think they’re betting it all on red and that could easily turn up a losing hand if they’re not careful.

While the number of layoffs in May fell below expectations, the unemployment rate has now risen to 9.4%, a 25 year high. With 14.5 million Americans unemployed and countless others underemployed, any full recovery will have to be a long one.

Many economists believe the jobless rate will hit 10 percent by the end of this year. Some think it could rise as high as 10.7 percent by the second quarter of next year before it starts to make a slow descent. The post-World War II high was 10.8 percent at the end of 1982.

The Fed says unemployment will remain elevated into 2011 given the expectation of tepid recovery. Economists say the job market may not get back to normal — meaning a 5 percent unemployment rate — until 2013. Economic recoveries after financial crises tend to be slower, economists say.

But many economists also think we could start seeing growth again by as soon as the third quarter of this year. The question is, given the turmoil in the auto industry and continued ups-and-downs on Wall Street, will the economy grow quickly or will it be a creeping sort of growth, fueled more by the fact that we’ve hit rock bottom than by any returning strength?

We’ll have to wait and see. And hope for the best.