Twenty-eight months after Congress passed President Obama’s signature economic stimulus law, and nearly one year after he declared the summer of 2010 to be “Recovery Summer,” 1.9 million fewer people are employed.
In February 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that 141.7 million people were employed. By the end of May 2011 – the last month for which data are available – that number had fallen to 139.8 million, a difference of 1.9 million.
While the number of people with jobs has increased slightly from its low point during the recession – 137.9 million in December 2009 – those 1.9 million jobs have been lost despite $800 billion in stimulus spending.
This does not mean that the economy is not creating jobs, but rather that it is not creating jobs fast enough to keep up with a combination of layoffs and people entering the job market for the first time.
In a Washington Post op-ed, former White House chief economist Larry Summers noted that the percentage of the population that has a job has not improved, even though the economy is technically in recovery.
“From the first quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2011, the U.S. economy’s growth rate averaged less than 1 percent a year,” Summers wrote. “The fraction of the population working remains almost exactly at its recession trough, and recent reports suggest that growth is slowing.”
OTC Derivatives
Then there are the so-called over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, otherwise known as structured notes, counterparty derivatives, or designer derivatives. These often take the form of contracts which are kept secret by the counterparties, and which are often not included on the balance sheets of banks and other institutions which enter into these contracts. This type of derivative is currently not reportable to any regulatory agency. This secrecy is a result of the successful effort by Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan to block the modest proposal of Brooksley Born of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to bring the OTC derivatives into the sunlight during the second Clinton administration. Since these derivatives are not reportable at the present time, we must guess at their amount, and the best guess is that OTC derivatives make up almost $1 quadrillion of ultra-toxic speculation.
The fraction of the population with a job has in fact fallen in the 28 months since Congress passed the stimulus – down from 60.3 percent in February 2009 to 58.4 percent in May 2011.
The economy cannot create jobs fast enough to keep pace with layoffs and recent high school and college graduates seeking employment. If the trend continues, as Summers notes may happen, the economy will suffer further in the future as college graduates delay entry into the labor force, reducing their lifetime productivity.
“Beyond the lack of jobs and incomes, an economy producing below its potential for a prolonged interval sacrifices its future,” argued Summers. “Huge numbers of new college graduates are moving back in with their parents this month because they have no job or means of support.”
As both Summers and the BLS data make clear, the economy is not creating new jobs fast enough to make up for layoffs and new graduates, calling into question Obama’s oft-repeated claim that the economy is recovering and creating jobs.
In fact, by citing figures from the first quarter of 2006, Summers is understating the economy’s poor performance. According to BLS data, the number of people with jobs peaked at 146.6 million in November 2007, meaning that over the entire recession – which officially began in December 2007 – the number of people employed has fallen by 6.8 million.
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- Your Loved Ones Are Dying For Rothschild’s Libya ‘Fraudulent Derivative Debt’ ~ The Kissinger T-Bill DEAL……
- Obama Dumps $110 Billion Newly Printed Dollars Into The Commodities Market Each And Every Month! Month! Month! Month! Month!
“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”
-Thomas Jefferson
- Paul Ryan Helps Americans Cut Back On Their Medicare, Medicaid, & Other Necessities, That We Fought & Died For: All In Order To Pay For The International Banking Bailout ~ Which Was Orchestrated By Fraudulent Mortgage Credit Derivatives That Caused The Housing Bubble!
- Petition ~ Concerned Women Of America: Google Supporting Multi-Million Dollar Homosexual Ad Campaign ~ Target Group Fourth Graders!
- Obama Cuts Food Stamps By $2.2 Billion: Cuts Education Assistance By $100 Billion, & Cuts Energy Assistance By $3.3 Billion. Unemployment & Foreclosures Soar!
Horrible Leftist & EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Lashes Out at Utility Companies For Spilling the Beans on Obama’s Job-Killing Policies
Let’s face it.
Obama doesn’t give a damn about creating jobs. He only cares about fundamentally changing America and destroying its wealth.
(WFB)
American Electric Power announced this week that the latest Obama EPA regulations will cost the company at least 600 jobs and over $6 billion which will be pushed on consumers.
Today, Barack Obama’s horrible EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson lashed out at utility companies for revealing the economic destruction of her department’s policies. She then claimed her administration’s policies will prevent premature deaths… What garbage.
The Hill reported:
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson struck back Wednesday at American Electric Power, the powerful utility that recently claimed looming EPA rules will prompt a wave of coal plant closures and cost scores of jobs.
“Misleading at best, scare tactics at worst,” Jackson told reporters Wednesday after testifying at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Clean Air Act rules.
AEP — a major coal-burning utility — last week said that EPA rules for air toxics, ozone-forming pollutants and other regulations will prompt closure of five coal-fired power plants and require costly changes at others, create a direct loss of 600 jobs and significantly boost power costs for businesses.
The utility is urging a delay in the compliance periods for the rules.
But Jackson, in her testimony to the committee, cited major benefits from implementation of Clean Air Act rules. She has accused industry lobbyists of peddling in inaccurate “doomsday” scenarios.
She noted, for instance, that new standards for power plant emissions of mercury and other air toxics proposed in March will prevent an estimated 17,000 premature deaths, 120,000 cases of childhood asthma and 850,000 days of missed work due to illness.
These radical leftists are shameless.
Political Vel Craft 