LogikAndReazon
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- Feb 21, 2012
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I was briefly tempted to take a tiny bit of pity on the Obama administration after Fridays awful employment report [1]. After all, one can make a pretty strong case based on the raw (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) figures that the number of jobs added after seasonal adjustment should have been at least 50,000 higher than the official result of 96,000. That still would not have been enough to support a claim that the job market or the economy as a whole are legitimately recovering, but it would have sufficed to prevent the Obama-loving but self-protecting establishment press from reluctantly pouncing [2] on how bad Fridays news was, and how it will harm Dear Leaders reelection prospects.
But then I read the reactions of Alan Krueger and Hilda Solis.
Krueger, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers and as such is supposed to be financially and statistically literate, was last month seen complaining that Julys reported unemployment rate of 8.3%, unrounded, was only 8.254% [3]. Shortly after Fridays release, he claimed [4] that todays employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Solis, the insufferable apparatchik who serves as Obamas Labor secretary, piled it on even thicker [5], asking us to believe that our recovery remains on a stable trajectory of positive job growth. Smart and steady wins the race.
Forget about the sympathy. If anyone deserves a bad break from seasonal calculations 60 days out from the presidential election and just desserts for avoiding at least three previous months when the seasonal sausage-makers could defensibly have reported initial job losses (August 2011 [6], April 2012 [7], and June 2012 [8]), its this reality-denying crowd.
Three years and seven months into the Obama administration, theres no longer any reasonable doubt that were living through the worst presidential exercise of economic stewardship since Franklin Delano Roosevelts rabid progressivism known as the New Deal locked the Federal Reserve-created [9], Herbert Hoover-enhanced [10] Great Depression into place for eight additional years. In 1932, the year before FDR was inaugurated, the unemployment rate was 23.6% [11]. In 1940, it was still 14.6%. In between, it never fell below 12% [12]. The economy only recovered because of the military build-up required to win World War II.
PJ Media » 43 Months of Depressing Misery » Print
But then I read the reactions of Alan Krueger and Hilda Solis.
Krueger, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers and as such is supposed to be financially and statistically literate, was last month seen complaining that Julys reported unemployment rate of 8.3%, unrounded, was only 8.254% [3]. Shortly after Fridays release, he claimed [4] that todays employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Solis, the insufferable apparatchik who serves as Obamas Labor secretary, piled it on even thicker [5], asking us to believe that our recovery remains on a stable trajectory of positive job growth. Smart and steady wins the race.
Forget about the sympathy. If anyone deserves a bad break from seasonal calculations 60 days out from the presidential election and just desserts for avoiding at least three previous months when the seasonal sausage-makers could defensibly have reported initial job losses (August 2011 [6], April 2012 [7], and June 2012 [8]), its this reality-denying crowd.
Three years and seven months into the Obama administration, theres no longer any reasonable doubt that were living through the worst presidential exercise of economic stewardship since Franklin Delano Roosevelts rabid progressivism known as the New Deal locked the Federal Reserve-created [9], Herbert Hoover-enhanced [10] Great Depression into place for eight additional years. In 1932, the year before FDR was inaugurated, the unemployment rate was 23.6% [11]. In 1940, it was still 14.6%. In between, it never fell below 12% [12]. The economy only recovered because of the military build-up required to win World War II.
PJ Media » 43 Months of Depressing Misery » Print
