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Economy
Obama: unemployment out of control
2010-11-10
[Iran Press TV] US President Barack B.O. Obama has warned that the country's high unemployment rate is becoming "a new normal," and that the situation is out of his control.
I can remember back to the Carter administration, when the nation's problems were too big and complex to be handled, so we might as well vote for Jimmy rather than risk a Reagan administration. Those problems were the "new normal," too.
In an interview with CBS News on Monday, President B.O. said that getting accustomed to an unemployment rate of nearly ten percent is a danger to the US economy.
Then cut taxes and favor industry rather than smother anybody with capital and favor monopoly financial institutions.
The US president also made an effort to shirk the responsibility of the country's economic woes by calling the situation as "out of his control."
Then step down and let somebody else have a shot.
"You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you're held responsible for everything, but you don't always have control of everything, right?" the US president told the 60 minutes show.
"So really it's not my fault. It's... ummm... somebody else's fault."
The latest data shows the jobless rate in the US remained at 9.6 percent for a third consecutive month in October. This is while the US Labor Department announced a 20,000 increase in initial claims for unemployment benefits last month. The new claims pushed up the number of seasonally adjusted benefit claims to 457,000 in October. The US Labor Department has also announced that almost 15 million Americans currently collect unemployment benefits.

Experts are of the opinion that the outlook for the rest of the year is likely to remain bleak.
Posted by:Fred

#25  Well,when people don't have money, they don't buy.

When people become concerned they might not have money in the near future, they don't buy.
Posted by: trailing wife   2010-11-10 23:17  

#24  BTW, it is kind of healthy to have people to not trust the government to be daddy. It will be painful for awhile, but they will find their calling. Lots of smart people out there and many lend a hand when unkle temple of doom is not breathing down their necks.

Government is not GOD, nor your Father, nor your Mother. It is a security agency to keep you all from being killed by nefarious idiots in foreign lands and a place that hire police and firemen to keep you - from burning in your house or in crime.

With the money they steal from us and waste, we could run our own lives - which was original intention.

Go live in Europe if you like that shit better. They fled to here but if you like big brother, go THERE.

Cut all government to the bone here you can. or live like a banana republic forever.

Why play Jesus to everyone - especially if you have no idea of what it is HE says?

Go back to guts, glory, work, pain, and LIFE instead of trying to make an incubator that will be run over with a train.
You trust yourselves better than you do government, and after-all, we are Americans.

Thats all we really need. That and GOD.
Posted by: newc   2010-11-10 20:47  

#23  We must cut entitlements to gain economy. Thats all there is to it. Entitlements are a tax.

Government must retract before economy improves.
Posted by: newc   2010-11-10 20:33  

#22  And that's the delicate balancing act that's needed .... not only cutting spending but restoring competitive jobs. While US consumers were borrowing like there was no tomorrow, mimicking the gummint, they did so with dollars that were over-valued compared to our actual industrial competitiveness.

Bernanke and the Fed are betting/hoping that a sufficiently cheap dollar will spark more US exports and fewer imports from places like China, which holds so many $$$ in good part due to their own currency manipulation discipline in the face of our addictive behavior. If it works, it will take years .... and I don't think we have years.

Digging ourselves out of the hole we put ourselves in is going to be long and painful.

It's not like we weren't warned. The National Acadamies reported in 2005 on the failure of US leaders and industry to address competitiveness, and issued an updated warning again this year. Free download available here
Posted by: lotp   2010-11-10 20:31  

#21  Having worked all my life as an engineer in manufacturing, I have watched the pernicious effects of taxes and regulation. The only functions that have grown in my company over the last 15 years are HR and HS&E, both driven by government. 30% corporate "income" taxes don't help, either. So cutting taxes and regulation would be a big help.

But another big question is what happens when 'entitlements' are cut? And 'let me be clear,' (in the words of dear leader) they are going to be cut one way or the other.
Posted by: SR-71   2010-11-10 18:39  

#20  "opprobrium" that'a new one for my collection- TKY
Posted by: Dale   2010-11-10 18:19  

#19  "GOP and the Tea Partiers will inherit the opprobrium for this problem by 2012, whether they deserve it or not".

Yes, that is why we must act now. We are a consumer nation or at least have been. England wants to put the unemployed to work. Let people keep what they earn and they will spend. Putting money in gold and hording it as the Romans did will retard growth. They still are finding money buried at digs in Italy.Regan did it we can do it.

Posted by: Dale   2010-11-10 18:16  

#18  It started WAY before 2007, if you discount the growth in debt from GDP, then you get the real economic growth...

There hasn't been any for years, you've been using credit to create an illusion to hide the damage caused by sales and employment and investment taxes.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2010-11-10 17:56  

#17  Watch your local trash dump. it's the easiest indicator. If you do not consume, you do not discard.

Also the decline in sales tax revenue on a city, county and state level. We watched in Colorado as all three reported a 25-30% drop in revenue in'09 while the unemployment was "only" 8% and the feds were saying that things weren't as bad as we feared.

Well, when people don't have money, they don't buy. They don't buy, things don't get made, etc, etc. Nothing at the end at the landfill and recycle plant then at the end of the day.

As soon as all of those pick up and sustain, I'll know the depression is over. Otherwise, no matter what the people in charge say, we are still hurting.
Posted by: DarthVader   2010-11-10 17:40  

#16  P.S. Shipping digest

Trucking

Also, a fine way to track true economy is watching the money spent, and gross types of material in landfill. When landfill and recycle centers are empty, you know something is wrong.

Watch your local trash dump. it's the easiest indicator. If you do not consume, you do not discard.
Posted by: newc   2010-11-10 17:33  

#15   My OTR trucker friend says his company has parked more of their rigs than he's seen for years, has cut back on replacing drivers who leave, and that the truck stops he's used to are not nearly as busy as they once were. (I asked him to keep track of this since the downturn began in 2007.) His "workplace" spans the center of the USA & excludes the coasts. Barge traffic is just one element of gauging business activity. The level of taxes withheld from wage earners and the level of sales taxed by states are two other important gauges.
I don't see how anything the government does can improve employment much in less than 5 years due to the severity of the economic contraction. The very first effect of 'making government smaller', necessary though it is, will be to increase unemployment by turning out superfluous gov't workers. Giving the financial and real estate industries what they deserve (think bankruptcy and a blizzard of subpoenas) will also tend to increase unemployment there. The massive amount of bad debt in these 2 industries alone will strangle the economy, as will the totally predictable spike in cost of our oil imports due to the Fed's money printing. The GOP and the Tea Partiers will inherit the opprobrium for this problem by 2012, whether they deserve it or not.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2010-11-10 14:12  

#14  I thought that was the plan, Bambi. Make more people dependent on the government for survival and stuff.
Posted by: DarthVader   2010-11-10 11:46  

#13  There he goes, tryin' to look concerned again. It ain't workin, kid. You just look like you want to spit.
Posted by: mojo   2010-11-10 11:11  

#12  OldSpook,

... and suspend Obamacare.

Fix'd.
Posted by: twobyfour   2010-11-10 10:48  

#11  I walk along the Mississippi River levee 2-3 times a week. I was surprised to see considerably more river traffic lately than I was seeing during the summer.

Seasonal variation due to grain harvest perhaps? A good bit of midwestern grain destined for export moves down the Mississippi.
Posted by: AzCat   2010-11-10 09:30  

#10  Do not bail out the states that are broke. Go to them and tell them they are going to have to tell the public unions--no more boodle. Tell them to ease regulations that strangle business. Give long-term tax breaks to businesses for locating in these states. Get rid of capital gains taxes. Find ways to keep businesses in America. Tell these states to compete with other states for business and jobs. Be business friendly instead of treating it like your enemy. Keep the Washington bureaucracy from creating such a financial mess such as the sub-prime loan debacle.
Quit meddling. Make government smaller since the current bloated version is unmanageable. There will be plenty of jobs. Our debt to GNP ought to be down around 30% or less rather than the 90+ percent that it is.
Posted by: JohnQC   2010-11-10 09:28  

#9  I know a shipping broker in Singapore and he says rates have fallen steadily in recent months to the worst they have been, excepting a couple of months immediately after the GFC.

This says economic conditions continue to deteriorate globally.

Freight rates are a reasonably good forward indicator of economic activity.
Posted by: phil_b   2010-11-10 08:50  

#8  Simple short term fix: renew the Bush tax cuts, all of them, allow indexing of capital gains against the CPI and cut the rate to 10%, and suspend Obamacare (pending repeal).
Posted by: OldSpook   2010-11-10 08:21  

#7  Freight has dropped off already.
Dale, I walk along the Mississippi River levee 2-3 times a week. I was surprised to see considerably more river traffic lately than I was seeing during the summer. No idea what is on the barges & ships (if anything), but they're moving, at least locally.
Posted by: Glenmore   2010-11-10 08:09  

#6  Obama: unemployment out of control

there FIFY
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2010-11-10 07:59  

#5  GDP is needed to fund all of your short sighted populist policies.

GDP includes government spending which does not, of course, directly fund what government does. If you sum government spending at all levels plus imposed regulatory costs you'll find that what government does plus what it forces the people to do under duress accounts for something in the neighborhood of two-thirds of our GDP already. Pretty insidious that irresponsible federal borrowing pumps GDP as does eventually ruinous quantitative easing, the flurry of activity created by massive regulatory compliance efforts, etc.
Posted by: AzCat   2010-11-10 07:41  

#4  O's next step will be to use the military, police, cameras, drones and secret service to control the American people.
Posted by Dale

The cheese must end in California before this can happen Dale. Keep an eye on California.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-11-10 06:16  

#3  Hello;
"Experts are of the opinion that the outlook for the rest of the year is likely to remain bleak".

Will worsen period. Freight has dropped off already. We are in a coma. Free America from the chains of regulation. Let the energy and drive of Capitalism pull us out of this constipation. This goes back to Stalin. He was told what would pull his country out of his economic winter and the poor fellow was dead a couple of months later. O's next step will be to use the military, police, cameras, drones and secret service to control the American people.
Posted by: Dale   2010-11-10 05:42  

#2  Why can't all these unemployed become community organizers?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2010-11-10 04:22  

#1  Well, Mr President, the people that make jobs that support your huge and massive government do not know what you are leashing them with.

The larger a government, the smaller the workforce to support it. It is just a blatant historical fact.

For every dollar you spend, there is one less working in the REAL economy. Government is not economy - Never is. EVER. It is a bubble of temporary employment that becomes permanent through beuaro. In other words, an aristocracy or a party members country. That does not fix anything other than bloated salaries and lots of vacation time to those that do not contribute to GDP.

GDP is needed to fund all of your short sighted populist policies. Most of which are redundant and charitable already.

When you refuse to balance the budget, monetize the debt, and take a vacation every month - you just do not seem to be learning about what is really going on in the country for which you are to "Preside".

Look that word up; Preside.

Also, this "Quantative easing" will make everything on this planet more expensive right when you plan to raise taxes.

Also, oil makes everything from the dashboard of your fancy limo to the Queens Ipod. Keep your "green" agenda up and see what happens to the economy next year when oil prices, food prices, all prices go up.

Most people would not vote to bash the ship into the iceberg if they were on the titanic, but they did that when they voted for you.

Change course captain.
Posted by: newc   2010-11-10 00:40  

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