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Updated Unemployement Charts – How’s that Stimulus Bill Working Out?

Monday, May 10th, 2010

The unemployment charts (links on top of this page) have been updated with the most recent data.

The first chart shows that, for folks 20 and over, there is still a big gap between the unemployment rate of men and women.  Probably a logical explanation for this if you take the time to dig through the data…  types of work men typically do being hit harder? Men being targets because of higher salaries compared to women?

Second is a straightforward unemployment rate chart for 16yrs and older.

Third chart had to change this time around because of available data on the Bureau of Labor Statistics site.  The data I was using appears to be gone, but I did find data focused on non-farm jobs in the private sector… so I replaced all months with this new data.

This third chart uses February 2009 as the baseline, when we were promised the stimulus bill would create 3,500,000 new jobs by 2011.  This chart extends to December 2011 to give the folks in power the entire year of 2011 to accomplish this task.

Unfortunately, we have lost jobs since the start of the stimulus, so the stimulus now needs to create 6,871,000 jobs by the end of 2011 to reach the total of 3,500,000 promised. That is an average of 343,550 new jobs per month, every month, between now and the end of 2011.

Seems a bit unlikely…

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Posted in Economy, Obama, Pelosi, Politics, Reid | 1 Comment »

Remembering the good old days of “high unemployment”

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Remembering the good old days when Dems criticized Bush for huge unemployment rates…

On the Hill – June 6, 2008 – The Democratic Congress is working to address the faltering economy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charges, blaming President Bush for fiscal woes as the unemployment rate increased to 5.5 percent.

“The New Direction Congress will send the President legislation to provide urgently needed assistance to millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and are struggling to make ends meet,” Pelosi adds. “Just as we worked cooperatively in passing a stimulus plan to put $117 billion into the hands of more than 130 million Americans, we urge the President to support legislation to address the needs of America’s unemployed and struggling workers. Today’s unemployment numbers demonstrate that this is an urgent challenge.”

Wow!  5.5%… who wouldn’t take that today?  Good to see Pelosi was tackling this as an urgent challenge two years ago…  a bit strange that it is no longer an urgent challenge now that we are close to 10%… guess she met her goal.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi March 7, 2003 – “President Bush’s first $1.7 trillion tax cut came with a promise — that it would create jobs and grow the economy. We all know that it has not. The rhetoric was good, but the reality couldn’t be more different. Today’s unemployment numbers show that 308,000 jobs were lost last month, the biggest one-month job loss in 18 months. Overall, President Bush has the worst record on job creation of any President in nearly 60 years.

“We need policies that create jobs. It is that simple. Democrats have proposed an economic stimulus package that nonpartisan observers say will create 1 million jobs this year, five times more than the Bush plan. President Bush’s policies have produced record job loss — Democrats propose policies that will create jobs. The choice for the American people is clear.”

The unemployment rate was 5.9% in February and March of 2003, unacceptable to Mrs. Pelosi.  For the record, the average rate under President Bush was 5.3% over 8 years; amazing when you factor in the major hit to the economy on 9/11.

So… how’s the Obama record?  Perhaps too soon to tell.  So let’s look at the Pelosi/Reid record.

When Pelosi, Reid and the Democrats took over congress in January 2007, the unemployment rate was down to 4.6% with a Republican president and congress. Today it is close to 10% and likely would be over that if not for the temporary census jobs inflating the employment figures.

But jobs are not job one with Reid, Pelosi and Obama.  First we need health care legislation, “stimulus” bills that are laden with pork, cap and trade, denial of the right to a secret ballot for folks voting on unionization…

Maybe they should look to some of the “failed policies” of the Bush administration to see if we can at least get back to the good old days of high unemployment rates like 5.5%.

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Posted in Economy, Election 2010, Obama, Pelosi, Politics, Reid | No Comments »

Liberal Vision: A Nation of Vampires

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

As the Reid/Pelosi/Obama vision of America continues to materialize before our eyes, one thing is already very clear… an America dependent on government is a sustaining source of power for those who feed that dependency.

In a warped perversion of the old “trickle down” economics, far-left liberals are accelerating the flow of wealth with high powered siphons and are doing so without even trying to hide their disdain of those who supply the life-blood of our economy.

Impatient with voluntary trips to the economic blood bank by those who live and thrive in our economy, they have turned to vampirism and will greedily feed off the hosts until they are bled dry.

When 40% of the country not only pays zero income tax but actually receives a check from the government at tax time (that’s right, 40% of the country actually makes a profit on April 15), when 10% of the country pays 73% of all income taxes collected by the federal government, what we have is a major redistribution of wealth.

But even that is not enough for the far left, they want to expand the number of available hosts (declaring more of us to be rich in the process) and ramp up the flow from all available hosts to feed more of the vampire class and expand their base so that, in their minds, perpetual power will be within their reach.

Vlad would be proud.

The problem is that this is not sustainable.  When all hosts are bled dry, the economy will collapse and all will suffer, the vampires, the hosts… and those of us caught in the middle.

What works best for our country?

The same thing that has worked, albeit cyclically, for decades.

  • Those of us with lots of money who invest in our nation and fuel the engines that creates jobs
  • Those of us doing fairly well, buying lots of stuff and keep the economy afloat
  • Those of us getting by and working hard for a better life for our families
  • Those of us struggling that need our help
  • And.. a government that protects those of us who struggle while staying out of the way of the rest of us

When the government becomes the economy, the economy will collapse from the top down as the rich stop creating jobs, the well off and those getting by have no money to feed the economy, and finally those who are struggling no longer have the rest of us to help them out because we are standing beside them instead of reaching out with a helping hand.

A nation of vampires is doomed to a life in the shadows…

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Posted in Culture War, Economy, Government, Obama, Pelosi, Politics, Reid | No Comments »

GM Solved My Credit Card Problem!

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

I was impressed this week to see a commercial proclaiming that GM had repaid loans from the American people five years early.  Very impressive indeed, and surely a sign of economic recovery that this huge auto manufacturer was able to dig out of a hole and pay back what they owe.

Well…  maybe not.

From Senator Grassley’s note to Treasury Secretary Tim “TurboTax” Geithner”:

General Motors (GM) yesterday announced that it repaid its TARP loans. I am concerned, however, that this announcement is not what it seems. In fact, it appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.

On Tuesday of this week, Mr. Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for TARP, testified before the Senate Finance Committee. During his testimony Mr. Barofsky addressed GM’s recent debt repayment activity, and stated that the funds GM is using to repay its TARP debt are not coming from GM earnings. Instead, GM seems to be using TARP funds from an escrow account at Treasury to make the debt repayments. The most recent quarterly report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for TARP says “The source of funds for these quarterly [debt] payments will be other TARP funds currently held in an escrow account.”

<snip

In reality, it looks like GM merely used one source of TARP funds to repay another.

Wow!  This is a great idea and an example for all of us to follow.  Pay off your loans with a loan from the original lender.

In fact, from now on I plan to pay my credit card bill in total by using that same credit card…   no more worries about credit card bills for me.  They will be paid in full every month and it won’t cost me a dime.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out… perhaps there is a reasonable explanation.  If not, there is surely an explanation that will satisfy the kool aid drinkers among us.

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Posted in Economy, Government, Obama | No Comments »

Obama ready to borrow $10B/year to give to “developing” countries

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Let’s say you go to a rather generous banker and borrow a million dollars.  As a newly minted millionaire, you decide to be generous and give away all of your money.  No worries, next year you can just borrow another million dollars and give that away too.

You can do this over and over again because… you’re rich!

Except for one minor technicality.. you still need to pay back the generous banker… with interest.

Sound like a good plan to you?

Apparently President Obama thinks this is a logical and fiscally sound approach to global citizenship:

FoxNews - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Copenhagen the United States is willing to commit up to $10 billion a year by 2012, and would support a global fund of $100 billion a year to help developing nations deal with climate change, provided the nations here are willing live up to the ‘transparency’ demanded by the U.S.

$10 billion per year, money we do not have, paid to “developing nations”.  Like China… who just happens to be America’s generous banker.

So… we are promising to borrow money from China so we can send money to China and other developing countries so that those countries will agree to reduce CO2 emissions.

Nothing wrong with that plan…

No worries though… President Obama knows where he can get that money to pay back our bankers.  All us rich Americans, and our kids, and their kids, and their kids will be happy to pay a large chunk of our pay checks so that we will one day live in a world where people no longer live in fear of CO2.

In fact, we can all do our part here… please refrain from breathing out.  It’s not your fault really, you can’t help yourself.  As long as you breath out you release CO2 into the air and contribute to global warming.  No one is suggesting you stop breathing in… just don’t breath out.

Thank you for your support…

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Posted in Economy, Global Warming, Obama | No Comments »

Can the government create real jobs really?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Let’s say you have five kids.  Four have jobs, one doesn’t.

You feel bad the fifth doesn’t have a job, so you take 25% of the income from the four employed kids and “hire” the fifth kid to do shovel ready projects around the house.

Does the fifth kid really have a real job now?  Is it self-sustaining?  How long before the other four kids get tired of paying the fifth kid?

Of course it’s not a real job…

When our government makes temporary jobs to hire people for shovel ready jobs, jobs that are not self-sustaining,  jobs that can only exist as long as people with real jobs are able to pay for these jobs out of their own pockets… these aren’t real jobs either.

The Pelosi controlled House has passed a “jobs” bill:

FoxNews - President Obama’s Democratic allies in the House have muscled through a year-end measure aimed at creating jobs through a second round of stimulus spending.

According to documents released by Democrats, the measure would cost $154 billion. But there’s also another $20 billion from the federal treasury to keep the highway trust fund afloat.

The bill is funded partly with unused money from the government’s unpopular Wall Street bailout program called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The bill redirects $75 billion in that fund to infrastructure and job investments to further stabilize the economy.

Ummm.. wasn’t that TARP money supposed to be repaid to us after it was no longer needed to save the country from imminent ruin?

This is nothing more than transferring money from the pockets of those who have jobs to the pockets of those who don’t.

Not that it is a bad thing to help folks out, but wouldn’t they be better served by stimulating the private job market so that there are self-sustaining jobs out there?

How do we expect private industry to afford to hire new employees if they keep having to send more money to the government to hire government workers?

The method utilized by this Democratic controlled government is an anemic attempt to address unemployment in the short term that will result in a extended weakness in the economy, extended weakness in the real job market, increased debt and taxes, and ultimately inflation and high interest rates.

Other than that… a great idea.

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Posted in Congress, Economy, Obama, Pelosi, Politics | No Comments »

Unemployment gender gap: Was beginning to think no one else noticed

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

July 2 this year we published a chart showing a significant and growing gap between the unemployment rate for men and women.  Even sent a copy of the chart to a couple of media folks.  Either missed all of the media discussion on the subject or no one thought it was interesting enough to report.

Yesterday’s opinion piece in the WSJ, by David Paul Kuhn, is the first I’ve seen on the subject.

Why is this gap significant?  If we assume that in most American households the man is still the main source of income, the impact of the unemployment rate on American families is greater than has been reported since the rate for men 20-years and older passed 10% all the way back in July.

Here’s the latest chart:

Not sure why this has not been worthy of discussion before today, but here are some excerpts from the WSJ article:

Last month the unemployment rate climbed above 10% for the first time in more than a quarter century. Less noticed is that male workers crossed this same threshold six months earlier. Since the U.S. became the world’s dominant economic power, no downturn has fallen more disproportionately on one gender.

The unemployment rate for men, 11.4%, based on seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, outpaces the rate for women, 8.8%. We now have the largest jobless gender gap since tracking became possible in 1948.

<snip>

And yet, for all its unprecedented scope and nature, the limited attention and passive response it has received are remarkable. Imagine the outcry if women amounted to roughly three in four lost jobs in this recession.

<snip>

The solution is not a male version of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau. Men don’t need to start viewing themselves as victims. But the stimulus or new jobs bills could be adjusted to address the wave of male unemployment by expanding public works spending. It would make for more effective policy and be fairer. As the feminist movement taught us, what happens to one gender happens to us all.

Especially since the impact spreads to the whole family when dad is out of work.

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Posted in Economy, Government, Politics | No Comments »

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