Aug
27
A Bad Economics Day
Filed Under American Politics
Obama must have been pleased to be on holiday, considering some of the economics news emerging. And those nasty people at the C.B.O. have been pouring cold water on his Presidency again. He must really dislike those guys.
Based on CBO’s forecast for the average unemployment rate in calendar year 2010, 2.3 million fewer people will be employed on average next year than they projected in January.
Thank God Obama and his administration “saved or created” those 3 million jobs. Oh wait!
How about this one. Think unemployment is high at 9.4%? You’d be right, it’s certainly higher than the Obama Administration expected at this point of the Presidency. Well if the real unemployment numbers are considered, 9.4% is very low:
The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.
“If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking — so-called discouraged workers — and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.
It’s not entirely fair to quote ‘discouraged workers’ as they aren’t part of the official unemployment statistic. It’s only right to measure Obama in the same way that Bush was measured. So feel free to read The Daily Kos analysing Bush’s legacy on unemployment. And they graciously cite darling of the left, Paul Krugman. So 16% it is then.
And then there’s the deficit. As part of the budget process, the Obama Administration projected a 10 year deficit of approximately 7 trillion dollars. Not so, said the C.B.O. (yup, them again), they projected it at 2.3 trillion dollars higher. So imagine the collective surprise when the Obama team upped their projection by 2.3 trillion dollars. The independent C.B.O. were right all along. Imagine that.
O.K., it’s nice for a conservative like me to have a bit of fun at Obama’s expense, and I’m sure that all new administrations have teething troubles, and this economics stuff is complicated. I know, I failed the ‘A’ Level. But that wasn’t the bill of goods sold to the American people about Obama. He was praised and lauded as a super-intelligent technocrat. The economy was supposed to be safe in his hands. He was the new FDR for goodness sake. And yet so far, they’ve lowballed their unemployment estimates and they miscalculated the deficit by 2.3 trillion dollars, hardly a rounding error. If the economy was that much worse than experts predicted, it would be unreasonable to criticise him. But, as the C.B.O. demonstrated, that wasn’t the case. The Obama Administration simply got it wrong, and in a trillion-tastic way.
At some stage, people are really going to have to question the economic competence of these people. But that’s three clear instances where Obama and his team either got things dramatically wrong, or have presided over a worsening economy despite their gasp-inducing stimulus packages. And despite such large errors, they still expect the American people to support them on yet more dramatic spending on healthcare and Cap and Trade. Are they serious?
Unfortunately for America, the answer is yes.
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C. Cabbie,
It is incredible that Obama and his Congressional cronies just keep spending money and trying to pass bills that will cost still trillions upon trillions more… and the only reason I can come up with why they are getting away with it… is the all consuming support of the Liberal Media.
It’s a known fact that there is a billions dollar ‘Green’ deal pending between Obama’s government and NBC. Both NBC and ABC will not air paid TV ADs against the Obama healthcare bill even though ABC gave Obama a two hour free Obamacommerical to sell it to the American public.
Next the Obama administration will pass a bill to support the newspapers and TV stations that are foundering because of the very political stance they have taken and the American public have rejected. And if he can get away with it, Obama will destroy conservative talk radio and Fox.
None of this could have happened without the liberal media…and they will rue the day, if they succeed…it will destroy them along with America.