Poll News - Obama's Disapproval On Economy Now at 62%

My only question is, why this isn't much higher?

Link.

h/t to Ace and Jammie Wearing Fools.

Um, Whee? Unemployment at 8.1%

The latest unemployment figures are out for August. They fell a whopping .2% to 8.1%.

I guess it's time to break out the party favors, pour a glass of champagne and celebrate. Happy days are here again! Except for one teeny, tiny little thing: labor force participation is at a new 30-year low. Both the civilian labor force (154.6 million) and the labor force participation rate (63.5 percent) declined in August. The employment-population ratio, at 58.3 percent, was little changed.

The economy saw an increase of 96,000 jobs. Keep this number in mind. Just to keep up with population growth, we need to add around 240,000 jobs per month.

This, gentle reader, is pathetic. It's a direct result of Obamanomics, that curious blend of Soviet-style command and control economics, coupled with far too many regulations and laws that stifle job and wealth creation. In other words, this is the "new normal" we hear so much about. Despite this administration's attempts to cook the books to make these figures appear to be not quite as bad as they look, the results are the worst "recovery" since WWII.

But wait! There's more!

One thing you won't hear on the nightly news from the MSM is that the July figures were revised downward, "unexpectedly."

But job reports for June and July were revised lower. The June count fell from 64,000 to 45,000, while July’s number came in at 141,000 from an originally reported 163,000.
Despite hopes that job creation would be better than expected, the monthly report fell short of economist expectations that 125,000 jobs were added for the month. The government said private payrolls increased by 103,000, about half the 201,000 that ADP reported Thursday.
 

Oh joy.

But take solace that things are proceeding as planned. President Obama said the private sector is "doing fine."

Here's a video to help you understand how Obamanomics works, courtesy of Professor Glen Reynolds...

How to Revitalize the Economy - Watchers Council

OK, here's another post from Watcher of Weasels that adresses today's topic - What steps would you take to revitalize America's economy?

Read the whole thing.

Unemployment Rises to 8.3%. Corrected: Make that 8.254%

Corrected and Updated per The Ministry of Unemployment Information.

As if we needed any more evidence that Progressivism is a destructive force to our economy, today's new unemployment figures show the rate is increasing. It also notes that June's anemic job numbers were revised downward from 80,000 jobs to just 64,000, a little news item that's conveniently omitted from most news outlets.

In other words, Obama's plan is working.

As I've noted before, these numbers are somewhat misleading since they count the total number of Americans in the active workforce, which has been greatly reduced over the course of this recession/depression. If you were to accurately compile this figure, it would be far closer to 11% than the already-awful number of 8.3%. And that's just the U-3 category, the best-case scenario.

The other metric, the U-6 is a far better figure for showing just how bad this administration's economic policies have become.

A measure that takes into account those who have stopped looking for jobs as well as those working part-time for economic reasons has hovered near 15 percent. The so-called "real" unemployment rate, or U-6 measure, is above 20 percent in Nevada and California.

"So-called "real" unemployment rate?" I'm not sure if that's an attempt at snark on the part of CNBC or not. I guess that falls under the "Lies, damned lies, statistics and CNBC reports" category. Anyway, here's their explanation...

The government's most widely publicized unemployment rate measures only those who are out of a job and currently looking for work. It does not count discouraged potential employees who have quit looking, nor those who are underemployed — wanting to work full-time but forced to work part-time. 

For that count, the government releases a separate number called the "U-6," which provides a more complete tally of how many people really are out of work.

The numbers in some cases are startling.

Consider: Nevada's U-6 rate is 22.1 percent, up from just 7.6 percent in 2007. Economically troubled California has a 20.3 percent real rate, while Rhode Island is at 18.3 percent, more than double its 8.3 percent rate in 2007.

In a normal world where everything wasn't backwards, this administration would be changing its policies away from increasing regulation. But, nothing of the sort is coming or should be expected from this group, the majority of whom have never held jobs in the private sector, nor owned their own business.

If you'd like a better big picture of the failure of Obama, here's a not-too-confusing chart that shows job growth for presidents from 1948 through today (shamelessly stolen from Ace).

Notice that itty-bitty space in the lower left-hand corner? See who it belongs to? That tells you everything you need to know about the Obama administration's job performance. It's what those of us out here in the real world call "results."

And they suck.

A Recession So Nice, We're Doing It Twice

Aren't things just wonderful? Don't you feel good about your future prospects and those of your family? Are you going to buy that vacation rental house on the coast? You know, the one you'll rent out when you aren't using it?

How about that new car to replace your old one that is in need of repair? That kitchen redo you've been needing for a couple of years? Some new clothes?

No?

I suppose inside the Beltway, things are just peachy. Even President Obama says the private sector is doing just fine with all those businesses you didn't build.

It's doing so well that it appears we're about to have another recession.  Whee! Summer of Recovery IV!!

While this quarter's earnings reports have crossed a substantially lowered profit bar, future expectations through the year indicate a recession could be on the way.

Estimates for the third and fourth quarters have been dropped to levels not seen since the days of the 2008 financial crisis, below even the muted 2 percent expected level of inflation.

That's an ominous recession sign for an economy that has barely managed to attain positive growth this year even with the strong level of earnings beats, according to an analysis by Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx in New York.

"Revenue estimates for the back half of 2012 have been slowly working their way lower this year," Colas said. "This trend, however, has accelerated to the downside over the past 30 days and we are fast approaching levels where these estimates are unambiguously pointing to the risk of a U.S./global recession later into 2012 and 2013."

Shorter message: BOHICA.

Regardless of what you think about Glenn Beck, he accurately described a big problem with the "global economy" thingy a few years back. I looked on YouTube to find that particular episode where he outlines the plan to connect all the world's economies in the misguided hope that we'd all be too busy working to declare war on each other. I couldn't find the video clip, but I did find this transcript.

He compares the concept of warfare and Mutually Assured Destruction with Mutually Assured Economic Destruction. He says,

I read "Tragedy and Hope." It was written in the 1960s by a very well-respected professor — he's taught at Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton — named Carroll Quigley. He was a very close mentor to Bill Clinton; he's advised other presidents.
Quigley had a better idea than the Doomsday Device or mutually assured destruction to prevent nuclear war; tragedy is war, the hope was an end to the wars.
Instead of tying everybody to a master computer, they decided to tie the world's economies together. That way no country would dare wage total war on another without risking the destruction of its own economy. The book came out in the early '60s — can you think of a war since then where there has been a clear winner and loser since then? Vietnam. The Gulf wars. Afghanistan. The War on Terror. They did this to stop wars. Just like it's mutually assured destruction if someone launches a nuclear weapon; this is mutually assured economic destruction.

I've touched on the idea of economic warfare before. Be sure to click on the link inside that post to read the PDF that puts all the pieces together, after you get yourself a good stiff drink. You'll need it.

I've also mentioned how to stop a catastrophic global economic meltdown from happening here. We must decouple ourselves from this global economy as much as is practical. I'm not calling for protectionism or a trade war, or anything like that. We need to turn inward and make ourselves as whole and self-sufficient as possible. This means generating our own energy, mining our own ore, building our own products and creating as much wealth and circulating as much of our money within our shores, for each other, as possible.

I'm not claiming to be Miss Cleo, Batman, or Sarah Connor or anything, but I see a storm coming.

Obama in the Economic Shadow of Carter

There’s a wonderfully optimistic post over at Politico today: President Obama dashes 'Jimmy Carter' label. It’s optimistic only if you’re a far-left, progressive Democrat. (h/t to Instapundit)

This article gleefully reports that Obama’s approval numbers show a 12-point uptick in his popularity in the wake of the successful bin Laden operation. Noticeably absent is any mention of George Bush, whose policies Obama continued and to whom Obama owes his singular political success.

The author is saying, essentially, that the 2012 presidential election has already been decided in Obama’s favor and that Republicans may as well start waving the white flag of surrender.

Not so fast there, Sunshine. The folks over at CNBC are showing only a three point overall bump from his pre-raid approval numbers. That’s notable because they’re not a stronghold of conservative thought.

As the euphoria of bin Laden’s demise slowly wears off, we’re returning to the reality of an American economy on life support. Last Friday’s new unemployment numbers are but one indicator that Happy Obama and his Merry Economy Wrecking Crew are still busy doing their best to strangle the private sector and drive our federal debt to unprecedented and unsustainable levels.

Perhaps they need a few reminders that we still have all the wonderfulness of Jimmy Carter II in the White House.

The nation’s unemployment numbers rose back up to nine percent. Understand that this number is somewhat misleading due to the way the numbers are obtained. Those who have been out of work the longest aren’t counted. If you aren’t actively collecting state unemployment money, you’re not considered unemployed. As people exhaust their benefits after two years, they are simply no longer counted.

Similarly, the price of groceries and gasoline isn’t figured into the inflation index. It’s almost as the prime drivers of unemployment and inflation aren’t counted. Hmm, wouldn’t that make the numbers appear to be better than they actually are?

Why yes, yes they would.

It’s funny how the progressive, anti-American left seizes onto just one victory by their little hero and it’s game over for the Republicans. Until that event, Obama was on the express elevator to the bottom of popularity as his policies (along with those of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in the previous Congress, don't forget) chug along as planned. A drastic erosion of our standard of living will do that to a president.

Granted, taking out bin Laden was a feather in Obama’s cap. But how is that helping the growing number of Americans struggling to purchase gas, or groceries, or find a job? The answer is it can’t and it won’t. But you knew that already.

That doesn’t stop the wishful thinkers on the left from crowing from the barn roof that Obama is invincible and that all the GOP candidates should just go back home where they belong and let Obama work his magic for another four years.

Sorry, but we can’t take four more years of Obama. The first two have already been quite enough, thank you. How much longer can we continue our downward slide toward the gaping maw of the economic Sarlacc? How many more of your friends and family will lose their jobs? Their homes? Their self-sufficiency and sense of worth?

Almost everyone I know has lost either a job, or a home or both. Before you say I need a better circle of friends, understand that I know machinists, salesfolk, engineers, business owners, nurses, and degreed professionals of various backgrounds. They’re all hurting.

This economy and the policies that caused it are responsible for the greatest waste of intellectual capital this country has ever seen. Why should a degreed software engineer be forced to unload trucks for a living? That’s not me, BTW, but my situation is no different. The waste isn’t confined to one sector of the economy, it’s everywhere you look.

People want to work, preferably in their chosen field. In America, we once had that opportunity, but efforts to engineer our society have resulted in big policy decisions at the national level that have done little to expand our economy, still the world’s largest. I point to NAFTA as the beginning of these destructive policies, and they continue to this day.

Do you really think that Obama’s illegal moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf isn’t contributing to high gas prices? If you think that, then I don’t know what to say to you. Your grasp of economics is tenuous at best. Get thee to the Interwebs and start educating yourself on the wonderfully simple Law of Supply and Demand. In five minutes, you’ll know more than all the president’s current economic advisors combined.

But if you see the economic truth, then you also see that it’s not the free market that’s causing our malaise. It’s a direct result of policy stifling that market. Our economy is being engineered by people who don’t know what they’re doing, unless, of course, they’re intent upon ruining it.

We grew to become the world’s largest economy precisely because we were free. This is called “organic growth” and led us to the top of the world in economic growth, technical innovation, and prosperity. There was diversity in the job market, and even if you didn’t have a college degree, you could still make a respectable living with your hands.

But in the mid-nineties, someone somewhere in Washington decided that we, as a nation, were to move to a “service oriented” economy. This simple decision was the beginning of the end of our free market. Have you noticed how many economic bubbles have formed and burst since then?

Ask yourself why anyone would want to suppress a vibrant, free market for any reason other than to cripple it. Any effort or policy that deviates from the principle of freedom doesn’t improve a free market economy. That’s why it’s called what it’s called.

The current president looks with wonder upon this nation and its economy. Having no experience in the business world, and surrounding himself with like-minded people, he is captaining the Titanic, hereafter renamed the Jimmy Carter. Brave and bold, full of himself, enjoying the view from the bridge while heading straight towards the iceberg. Even when the ship strikes it, the captain isn’t worried because he’s been assured that he’s at the helm of the most advanced ship ever to ply the seas. After all, it’s unsinkable, isn’t it?

And that’s a best-case scenario giving the president the benefit of the doubt. All of the benefit.

In a worst-case scenario, our economic demise is being planned and guided by someone with a track record of destroying entire countries’ economies and America would be the trophy he’d most like to mount over the fireplace.

Not that I’m into conspiracy theories, but I keep asking myself, as do many, if Obama were purposely destroying our economy, what would he be doing differently?

This period of history makes Jimmy Carter look positively stellar by comparison. There isn’t one traditional economic indicator showing us emerging from a very deep recession. Obama’s policies are directly to blame. I don’t employ the double standard the Progressive Pravda uses that pins the blame only on Republican presidents when the economy heads south. Obama owns this economy. There are no two ways about it.

We’ve reached the tipping point. Our federal government has grown so big and influential (in a negative way) that it now controls our economy. New laws and regulations, regardless of their intentions, are having a downward pull on us that’s rapidly exceeding the force of gravity.

Knowing what the problem is will go a long way towards fixing it. The solution is simple, but not easy: we need a reduction in government away from central command and control. It’s been tried before and has failed every time.

What’s needed is a change in the national mindset. A smaller, weaker government should be demanded by the American people. And when I say weak, I don’t mean that in a militaristic way. I mean that in the way that we shouldn’t be struggling under counterproductive rules, red tape and high tax rates. Washington is simply too big, too powerful and economically damaging to continue upon its current path. We have to rein it in if we are to ever have a hope of being the country we could be, where each person has the opportunity to set his or her own course through life, secure in the knowledge that some bureaucrat somewhere far away isn’t busy concocting ways to justify his salary by making up rules as fast as possible, rules that restrict the creation of wealth and prosperity.

In other words, it’s time for some change, only this time, the positive kind.

Economic Madness Writ Large - The Current Tax Debates

If it weren’t so serious, the implosion of the hard-core left (otherwise known as Obama’s base) would be rather amusing. I’m talking about the debate surrounding the President’s compromise on the extension of the Bush tax cuts. It seems that a deal has been reached that has managed to piss off just about everyone.

Everyone in Washington, that is.

The interesting part is, the issue that has their knickers in a twist is exactly what should have happened two years ago. Our corporate tax rates are the highest among developed nations, and this is greatly harming our ability to compete in the global marketplace. There is an economic axiom, known by all except those inside the Washington Beltway who craft our economic policies, that if you want less of something, tax it heavily.

Even more intriguing is the fact that simple, proven, economic principles aren’t well known, nor it appears, comprehended by our ruling elite. There can be no doubt that the past four years of a Congress led by progressives have resulted in economic catastrophe for the country. For a short list, click here.

As I’ve chronicled, there are very sound reasons for our economic plight, none of which need to happen. We could be free from this recession if only we had the proper people in place in Washington who knew what the rest of the country already knows about finances. Despite what the elites tell you, economics is a simple science: if you’ve ever balanced your checkbook, then you know more about economics than Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke combined.

And Nancy Pelosi, who thinks that unemployment insurance payments stimulate the economy. Sorry, Nan, you couldn’t be more wrong. UI is merely a placeholder until a real job comes along. I don’t know anyone who would rather be collecting unemployment when they could make far more money with a real job.

The disconnect with reality in Washington is breathtaking.

In addition to the needless confusion about what to do to kickstart the economy, there is another wrinkle of this debate that should concern you – class warfare.

Doesn’t it strike you as rather odd that a group of millionaires should want you to be angry with millionaires? Why? What did a millionaire ever do to harm you? Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t find a scintilla of logic in that argument. What I do find is psychosis, namely the psychosis of power, willing to divide a nation along economic lines to achieve it.

It wasn’t always like this. There once was a time when we aspired to greatness in America. Someone would create a better mousetrap and the world would beat a path to the mousetrap makers’ door, cash in hand. Every American wanted to become rich, every American had the opportunity to become rich. We still do, but there has been a movement, closely tied to the political left, that has poisoned this once-great idea. It’s become so entrenched in Washington, said so often in sound bites, that it’s starting to affect the rest of the nation. That poison is called class envy. It’s practitioners, well versed in their own foibles, project their problems onto the innocent in an effort to appear perfect in their own eyes.

This has led to the perversion that mistakenly thinks that everyone should be equal instead of having equal opportunities to excel. Note how this runs counter to their professed belief in diversity. We should all celebrate diversity, however when it comes to recognizing that people have diverse abilities, and thus will have diverse outcomes given the same circumstances, they all of a sudden demand equality.

That, gentle readers, is psychosis.

And we’re seeing psychosis writ large in this debate on maintaining the Bush tax rates. Millionaires on the left criticizing the moneyed in our society, the very thing that allows these elites to run for office. There aren’t many working folk running for office, due primarily to the constraints of money: they are too busy providing for their families.

Let’s stop for a moment and use their twisted logic:

1. They want us to hate the rich because they are somehow evil.

2. They are rich.

3. Yet, they don’t want us to hate them.

4. ?

In fact, the opposite is true – the ruling elite wish us to become disengaged from politics so we can leave everything to them. They balk at any efforts to reduce their power or restrain them in any way. Hell, they won’t even subject themselves to the laws that they create for the rest of us.

Folks, in case you haven’t noticed, we can’t keep going on like this. Not and keep our freedom and prosperity.

We must restore sanity to our government. We started to do that in the mid-term elections. We must insure that this is the last gasp of progressivism in our nation. Like an exorcism, all of the evil comes spewing out at the last, right before the evil spirit's death and things get back to normal for the victim.

We must eliminate the mental illness of political liberalism if we are to survive.

Just What America Needs to Recover - Union Leaders at the Wheel

You would think, during one of the longest peacetime recessions in history, union leaders would be at the front of the crowd, cheering on the free market that gave birth to them.

You would be wrong. Or as the late, great Johnny Carson might say, “Wrong, spreadsheet-breath!”

Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, writes in the Detroit News.com this piece whose title says all the right things: Stop outsourcing to save Michigan Jobs, middle class.

He starts off this way:

Outsourcing. Isn't it time to halt the hollowing of our economy and employ smart policies to rebuild American manufacturing and keep good jobs here?

He then veers wildly from the road of economic prosperity by spouting the tired, worn-out clichés that greedy corporations have been more than happy to ship American jobs offshore in their bloodthirsty quest for profit.

For three decades, American laws governing business have followed the lure of ever-lower labor costs, cheap debt, weak environmental regulations and lobbyist-written free trade pacts. It's the result of a profits-over-people strategy that caught on like a fad, and it's the underlying contributor to our Great Recession.

Then, like a drunken driver, he manages to find the correct lane, but only for a moment.

It turns out that cheap, offshore labor makes for lousy consumers, because people without good-paying jobs can't support our consumption-driven economy.


Back in the 1980s and 1990s, we were told that only the machining and assembly jobs were heading offshore. Yet in the last five years alone, we lost the jobs of 1 million scientists, software developers and high-tech researchers. Those were the jobs we were supposed to keep. But R&D follows the factory floor.


The bottom line is this: Long term, no economy of our size can be sustained if we don't invest in jobs, build things here and insist on a level playing field. That's why America needs a strong national industrial policy to rebuild, strengthen and modernize our manufacturing capacity. We need to get rid of the notion that we can't compete in the global economy.

Then we hear the tires thumping against the lane markers again…

We need to pursue with urgency opportunities in green technologies, high-end manufacturing and infrastructure. In Michigan, tens of thousands of jobs have been created through the Recovery Act, which has supported clean energy projects to develop a sustainable, green work force. Michigan now leads the way with advanced battery research and production for hybrid cars, with over a dozen companies investing here, creating tens of thousands of jobs.


Projects like this create a virtuous chain of innovation by spurring private investment and spin-off benefits. A relatively small, but key, federal investment in these projects makes the difference.

Hmm, there’s that word "virtuous" again. Now where have I heard that word recently? Oh yeah, President Obama’ recent press conference and the back yard confab where he touted his efforts to turn the economy around, which has resulted in record poverty levels in only eighteen months. Helluva job there, Barry.

It should be common knowledge amongst my two readers that “green jobs” are as much of a myth as was “global warming”. Spain proved that for every green job the government created, 2.5 regular jobs were lost. And that “small, but key federal investment” in green technology is precisely what’s wrong with it. We’ve been working on this technology in the free market for years with little success. Private companies have poured great sums into research for solar panels and the like with no marketable results. In short, we’ve already proven that green tech needs to mature in order to be effective.

Until that such time as it becomes effective, there are traditional methods of energy generation like nuclear power. However, these efforts are under constant attack from radical environmental groups seeking not clean energy, but a crippling of our country economically. It seems to be working quite well.

Mr. Gaffney concludes,

Without a massive investment to create jobs, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, it may take as long as 11 years for the economy to recover the jobs necessary to lower unemployment to pre-recession levels.

He speaks, of course, of the “investment” of our tax dollars, something that the free market would normally do on its own, thus creating jobs and tax revenue instead of draining it.

This trip is starting to become more than a little dangerous. What Mr. Gaffney needs is a designated driver. What he has is a passenger who is far more inebriated than he is: Richard Trumka.

If they don’t manage to wreck the car, you just know he’ll be the one who starts cussing out the police officer who pulls them over. That’ll help.

We know what Rep. John Boehner will do if he gets the Speaker’s gavel – because he’s told us! He’ll privatize and cut Social Security, protect the corporations that send our jobs overseas, slash taxes for the super-rich. There will be no more extensions of unemployment benefits. No jobs legislation. No infrastructure spending. No Davis Bacon. No retirement security. No health care.

Trumka looks as though he may hurl any second now…

That’s why I say to the hand-wringers, to the naysayers, to the detractors, to the Party of No: If you don’t believe in America, get out of the way!

Oops, they just ran into a fire hydrant. Quick, drink this six-pack before the cops get here.

Economics 103, Courtesy of Amity Shlaes

With the skewing of the economy in favor of an interventionist administration, we're on the brink of forgetting that we once had a free market that was independent of Washington. We once had a free market that was the primary source of income for a majority of Americans, and could be again with the right people in charge.

Naturally, the wrong people seek to make you forget that fact. In their mad quest for ever more power, these people want you to forget all about your old, outdated free market thingy. That's soooo "Twentieth Century", they'll say. Here's a bright shiny new thing called "governmental command and control" that will make sure nobody ever suffers from the natural variations in market forces that we used to plan for. As long as you belong to a union or other "friendly" group, that is. See, you can even have your own automobile manufacturing company!

If you manage to think of yourself as an independent American, you're SOL.

When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's kinda hard to remember that you were originally sent to the store for a loaf of bread. Some things take precedence over others.

That's why I'm glad to allow Amity Shlaes to present today's lesson in economics. Her article in Bloomberg.com entitled "Obama Misreads Message of "Live Free of Die" outlines the tale of two states, New Hampshire and Maine, separated by not by miles, but by light years when it comes to their experiments with government and taxation.

In the face of failed Keynesian economic theory, this short treatise fits right in with the national discussion that we should be having now. After years of a declining economy under a "progressively" controlled Congress, this shouldn't be a long conversation.

After all, there are only a few economic rules that need to be understood. Rule #1 is that the free market is capable of producing all the things that modern life entails all by itself. Free people love to innovate and create new products. It's a way of channeling energy into a productive occupation that also just happens to elevate others in the process. It's a win-win scenario for freedom.

But there are people for whom the freedom of others is anathema. They just can't stand the sight of someone living without their supervision. Necessary to this warped mindset is a large ego. The desire to control others is as old as mankind itself and is the prime mover of discontent and the major cause of strife around the world today. Notice, if you will, that the most self-absorbed among us seek out political office. Now, that there is either a classic Catch-22 or a good Groucho Marx joke: if you want the job, you're automatically disqualified because you'd just misuse your power.

And *waggles a cigar menacingly* we've seen the abuse of power lately.

But again, I digress.

Kindly click on the link above to read a short history of taxation and fiscal growth seen through two very different sets of political eyes. I won't give away the ending, but the results speak for themselves.

Just as it will eventually with the nation.

Oh, and today is election day in many states. Do your civic duty even if it is just a primary.

You'll get warmed up for November.