Possible 900,000 jobs lost?

[MalibuMan]

This and I keep hearing the stimulus is working! lol

Ten most troubled states in the U.S. - Yahoo! Finance

 

[Neubarth]

This and I keep hearing the stimulus is working! lol

Ten most troubled states in the U.S. - Yahoo! Finance

We presently have Thirty Three Million Americans Unemployed. This is the greatest Depression of all time.

 

[william the wie]

I lean towards Neubarth's position with two Caveats:

We have not yet reached 25% unemployment to overtake the 1930s but momentum will take us there in terms of U6 or SGS data since by every reasonable measure UE is 18-22%. However the kill date in the UE benefits extension act (01/01/10) could screw up UE reporting from all sources for upto a year.

There is very little data on the post-revolutionary depression of 1783-95(?) and even less on the double whammy of the Mississippi scheme and South Sea Bubble of the 1720s and both of those downturns were probably worse than the 1930s. Proving something in the absence of data for comparisons is very rough indeed.

That said the deterioration in the economy from real estate peaks (25 vs. 06) to unemployment greater than 10% has been much more rapid this time than in the 1930s. UE did not begin to trend up until 27/28 vs. 07/08. Progression past the traditional 10% UE depression mark less than 27 months from the Real Estate crash by government measure (and even less by all other estimates) this time vs. 57 months for the 1930s. That sure looks like a lot worse than the 1930s to me. And by the way I have sandbagged on a lot of metrics so feel free to attack.

 

[PoliticalChic]

This and I keep hearing the stimulus is working! lol

Ten most troubled states in the U.S. - Yahoo! Finance

When has a stimulus ever solved these problems?

The only stimulus in a capitalist economy is profit.

"Nor is this remote port in western Japan unusual. Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.

Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience. While Japan is not exactly comparable to the United States — especially as a late developer with a history of heavy state investment in infrastructure — economists say it can still offer important lessons about the pitfalls, and chances for success, of a stimulus package in an advanced economy. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/wo...prod=permalink


"Beginning in 1991-1992, Japan adopted the spending approach now advocated by many in the U.S. Congress when it embarked on a massive nationwide program of infrastructure investment. Between 1992 and 2000, Japan implemented 10 separate spending stimulus packages in which public infrastructure investment was a major component.
…
Combined with increases in other government spending programs, Japan’s efforts to spend its way to prosperity led to substantial increases in government spending as a share of GDP. … Japan’s failed policies had severe negative consequences for its economy and citizens. …[M]easured in inflation-adjusted GDP growth, Japan went from being a high-growth country in the 1980s to a slow-growth country during the 1990s. … For the average Japanese citizen, the chief consequence of this economic underperformance has been both a relative and an absolute decline in the nation’s standard of living, defined by per capita GDP as measured by the World Bank and adjusted for differences in purchasing power parity (PPP)."
Learning from Japan’s Big Debt Spending Failure » The Foundry

 

[manu1959]

900,000 lost....but imagine how many would have been lost if th O-man had not saved us......


as for a double dip....anything is possible......

 

[The Rabbi]

Op ed in this AM"s Wall St Journal about how cutting the payroll tax at the start of Obama's administration would have cost the same but saved millions of jobs.
So the stimulus was a big waste of money, which many of us predicted at the time.

 

[eagleseven]

I'm using this downturn to get the education I need to break into one of the few industries still intact: healthcare. Easier said than done, of course.

 

[william the wie]

I'm using this downturn to get the education I need to break into one of the few industries still intact: healthcare. Easier said than done, of course.

My wife works for Mayo clinic Jax. Her advice to everyone: get any job at a decent hospital and use employee reimbursement to pay for the education needed to move up the ladder. What you hear from public and private schools is often off the wall to some degree. Ads for insurance coding training air all of the time but pay is so-so after continuing education costs and professional courtesy for treatments is often lacking. On the otherhand sonogram courses take less than a year, licensure and any degree qualifies you as an instructor and as the safest imaging technology it is growing by leaps and bounds. There may be even better deals out there but being a tenured junior college lab instructor for the medical field is purportedly as good as it gets for job satisfaction.

 

[pinqy]

However the kill date in the UE benefits extension act (01/01/10) could screw up UE reporting from all sources for upto a year.

How do you figure? The Unemployment Rate survey (the Current Population Survey) doesn't ask about UI benefits...Whether or not someone is eligible or receives UI benefits has never been part of UE rate calculations.

 

[william the wie]

However the kill date in the UE benefits extension act (01/01/10) could screw up UE reporting from all sources for upto a year.

How do you figure? The Unemployment Rate survey (the Current Population Survey) doesn't ask about UI benefits...Whether or not someone is eligible or receives UI benefits has never been part of UE rate calculations.

I was misinformed? I was told that those receiving UI who did not report interviews and apps to the UE office were dropped from the laborforce as discouraged workers but not necessarily from UE depending on skills and the local labor market, this is wrong? Because these people are listed separately from the unemployed but if dropped from UE while not reporting recent job searches the individual does not show up in the laborforce in any category so far as I can tell. Please show me how this is phrased in the 6 categories of unemployment published by the BLS?

 

[editec]

The banks are still open.

The stimulus has had that positive effect, I suppose.

If you think the current unemployment picture is bad, imagine what it might have looked like.

We'd have had 100% unemployment if the meltdown had been allowed to run its invisible hand of the market course.

I'm not a big fan of the stimulus as currently designed, but it sure as hell beats the outcome had Bush II and then Obama taken the "Let it Bleed" advise some of you know-nothigs think would have been the wiser course.

 

[william the wie]

The banks are still open.

The stimulus has had that positive effect, I suppose.

If you think the current unemployment picture is bad, imagine what it might have looked like.

We'd have had 100% unemployment if the meltdown had been allowed to run its invisible hand of the market course.

I'm not a big fan of the stimulus as currently designed, but it sure as hell beats the outcome had Bush II and then Obama taken the "Let it Bleed" advise some of you know-nothigs think would have been the wiser course.

point 1, most banks should be closed for structured bankruptcy as in 1933.
point 2, none of the stimulus packages has had any demostrable positive effects.
point 3, The unemployment would be behind us as with the 1920-1 depression caused by WWI real asset inflation. Instead Obama is following the errors of the 1926-48 response to the 1923-25/26 real estate bubble. (25/6 is given because it took longer for the information to spread back then. Long Island real estate didn't collapse until 1928 while small towns in the wheat and corn belts started collapsing in 1921.) Case-Schiller does sell subscriptions if you want to fact check but I don't give away anything but food and clothing to the poor unless I got it for free too.
Point 4, Even societies that are forced to resort to economic cannibalism like the Ukraine after WWII have never hit anything close to 100% unemployment. So how would someone demonstrating such ignorance and lack of mental wattage properly use the term know nothing? This inquiring mind wants to know.

 

[Zander]

 

[pinqy]

However the kill date in the UE benefits extension act (01/01/10) could screw up UE reporting from all sources for upto a year.

How do you figure? The Unemployment Rate survey (the Current Population Survey) doesn't ask about UI benefits...Whether or not someone is eligible or receives UI benefits has never been part of UE rate calculations.

I was misinformed? I was told that those receiving UI who did not report interviews and apps to the UE office were dropped from the laborforce as discouraged workers but not necessarily from UE depending on skills and the local labor market, this is wrong? Because these people are listed separately from the unemployed but if dropped from UE while not reporting recent job searches the individual does not show up in the laborforce in any category so far as I can tell. Please show me how this is phrased in the 6 categories of unemployment published by the BLS?

Yes, you were misinformed. For the Unemployment level and rate, there is no list of people. It's a survey of 60,000 households every month. Each person surveyed represents thousands of others. When interviewed, the individual is asked if they worked for at least one hour for pay, or at least 15 hours as undpaid family worker. If yes, they're employed. If no, they're asked if they had actively looked for work in the previous four weeks. If yes, they're unemployed, if no, they're not in the labor force.

Note that that has nothing to do with any Unemployment Insurance. It applies if one has never had a job, or is re-entering the labor force etc. For those not in the labor force, more questions are asked. Do you want a job? Are you available for work in the next 2 weeks? Have you looked for work in the last 12 months? If those are all yeses, then the person is "Marginally Attached to the Labor Force" (reflected in the U5 and U6). Everyone who says they want work is asked why they're not looking. If they're Marginally Attached AND the reason they're not looking is because they don't believe they would be successful then they are considered "Discouraged Workers" and are reflected in the U4.

All the individual responses from the household survey are extrapolated to represent the US as a whole. So if an individual gets dropped from UI because s/he no longer qualifies, that info is never reported to BLS, but instead reflected by similar individuals who are part of the household survey.

 

[Neubarth]

That was funny. I am convinced that Obama is a career politician without ethics or morals. He feels that what he is doing will benefit the Democratic in preference to the Republicans. Unfortunately for the Democrats and the country, he is dead wrong.

In California we threw out a governor who was worthless and replaced him with a movie star who does not speak good English. I favor a national Constitutional Amendment vote that would remove Obama and replace him with somebody who is not a career politician who can speak English.

Any recommendations for the job?

 

[Skull Pilot]

Kim Strassel: Help Wanted - WSJ.com

Wanted: National Jobs Czar

Employer: The Democratic Party

Job Type: Crisis Management/Complex Mathematics/Mental Health Professional

Start Date: Now. Like, Right Now.

Description: The Democratic Party seeks a wildly optimistic individual to oversee a national jobs-creation program. Jobs can be real, or not, so long as the public thinks the party is "doing something." The National Jobs Creator will have at his disposal Congress to pass new "jobs legislation" (aka The It-Is-Not-Another-Stimulus Act of 2009).

The NJC will oversee a dynamic team whose side responsibilities include selling this to the public and saving our behinds in next year's election. This is a potential career status position.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Masters Degree from an accredited program in communications/spin. Candidate must be able to explain to the public why "new jobs legislation" is necessary despite assurances the "old jobs legislation"—a $787 billion "stimulus"—is working. Applicant must demonstrate ability to explain why, despite a global recession, we continued socializing health care, and only just noticed that, wow, Houston, we have a problem. (Candidate might consider researching McDonnell, Bob, Gov.-elect of Virginia, who just kicked us in an election and did it talking about "jobs." That got us wondering.)

Candidate must explain the "new jobs legislation" to a wary public. Candidate must clarify how extending unemployment benefits will create jobs; how extending health insurance for the unemployed will create jobs; how taxing financial transactions to pay for this will create jobs. Candidate is responsible for immediately restoring party credibility on this issue, despite all past failed Keynesian spending and, let's be honest, some (holy moly!) embarrassing stimulus "job counting."

• Ph.D. in imaginary numbers: Candidate must demonstrate a better ability than those currently in charge to translate past stimulus pork into current countable jobs. Applicant must show working knowledge of fictitious congressional districts. (Example of interview question: Show how, using the white board and string theory, an $890 shoe order creates nine new jobs.) Candidate must be able to dismantle audits showing the White House's 640,000 "saved or created" jobs are as real as the Easter Bunny. These skills will also prove necessary in outlining the benefits of "new jobs legislation." Candidate must be able to explain, numerically and cosmically, why 10.2% unemployment is no different than the 8% ceiling we promised.

• Expert knowledge of "the deficit," a $1.4 trillion concept we like to describe as "investing in the future." When the White House says it will apply unused TARP money to pay down the deficit, and Congress says it will use unused TARP money to help fund a "new jobs program," candidate must make both true at the same time.

Candidate is required to conduct hourly meetings with Blue Dogs who, after that health-care vote, are so freaking out just because we are asking them to also charge a Medicare doctor fix, a highway bill, and possibly our "new jobs legislation" to the federal credit card. Candidate must explain to Blue Dogs they lost their reputation years ago.

• Significant understanding of the concept of "saved or created jobs." The party is aware no legitimate economics department recognizes this theory, so we do not require a degree. Candidate must explain to public that it is just not true that no part of the country has seen job creation. The federal government has hired at least 25,000 new employees since January.

• Profound people skills. Candidate must be able to walk into a circular firing squad and calm volatile personalities that range from panicked to uncorked to dazed.

Example 1: When a Wisconsin congressman (who wrote the stimulus bill) loses his cool because the administration came up with this "jobs saved or created" thingy and is now making said congressman look bad with its "job" counts, the candidate must say, "There, there; 40 years is longer than most people get to serve in the House."

Example 2: When a vice president pops off that the stimulus is working "better" than we "expected," candidate must pack No. 2 off to a golf course.

Example 3: When the White House director of "stimulus" communications becomes so frazzled by bogus job numbers that he responds to the press: "Who knows, man? Who really knows?" candidate must re-hire.

Disqualifications: Candidates with an interest in pro-growth policies, or a desire to provide certainty to investors, consumers or the business community. Candidates who believe the private sector creates jobs.

Salary: The balance of the "quick hit" $787 billion stimulus or the balance of last year's "temporary" TARP program—whichever is greater in 2050. Subject to approval by pay czar Ken Feinberg.

To Apply: Electronic submissions preferred (our phones are a bit busy). Résumé required. Letters of recommendation encouraged from Jimmy Carter, Paul Krugman, or the dude who oversaw Japan's "Lost Decade."

 

[California Girl]

Op ed in this AM"s Wall St Journal about how cutting the payroll tax at the start of Obama's administration would have cost the same but saved millions of jobs.
So the stimulus was a big waste of money, which many of us predicted at the time.

But, but, but.... this means that recovery.org is actually full of crap! All those 'shovel ready' projects being funded!!!

As a point of interest, if anyone is bored over the weekend, I would recommend digging around on recovery.org - just for pure entertainment value, assuming you are entertained by billions of taxpayers $$$s being wasted.

For example, I really like the 'shovel ready' project that was funded by $18 million to train unemployed 500 people to work in not-for-profit organizations. Who got the money - AAPR. That's excellent value for money.... not.

That's the same AARP that is so very supportive of the healthcare bill.... oh, I'm also wondering if they would be quite so supportive of the healthcare bill if they weren't in like for hundreds of millions of taxpayers money to provide additional insurances.