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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on September 02, 2011, 05:34:57 AM
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..JOBS REPORT DISASTER: ZERO NEW JOBS IN AUGUST
Joe Weisenthal | Sep. 2, 2011, 8:04 AM | 1,752 | 3
The number is out:
Disaster:
0K new jobs created in August.
A big fat goose-egg.
Private payrolls grew at an anemic 17K.
Manufacturing payrolls shrank by 3K.
Unemployment stayed at 9.1%.
Average hourly earnings sharnk by 0.1%.
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Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-august-non-farm-payrolls-report-2011-9#ixzz1WnX9RksY
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Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged
CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER | September 2, 2011 08:33 AM EST |
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WASHINGTON — Employers added no net workers last month and the unemployment rate was unchanged, a sign that many were nervous the U.S. economy is at risk of slipping into another recession.
The Labor Department says total payrolls were unchanged in August, the weakest report in almost a year. It's the first time since February 1945 that the government has reported a net job change of zero. The unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent.
A strike by 45,000 Verizon workers lowered the job totals. Those workers are back on the job.
Job gains in June and July were revised lower, to show 57,000 fewer jobs added. The downward revisions were all in government jobs. The average work week also declined and hourly earnings fell by 3 cents to $23.09.
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HOW THE FUCK DID THE RATE STAY THE SAME?
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Turns out we actually lost 87k jobs because they added in Birth Death Model jobs.
Not to mention the 135k a month we need just to stay at even keel.
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Employers add no net jobs in Aug.; rate unchanged
CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER | September 2, 2011 08:33 AM EST |
Compare other versions »
Compare 08:33 AM EST12:02 AM EST and 08:33 AM EST12:02 AM EST versions
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Job gains in June and July were revised lower, to show 57,000 fewer jobs added. The downward revisions were all in government jobs. The average work week also declined and hourly earnings fell by 3 cents to $23.09.
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HOW THE FUCK DID THE RATE STAY THE SAME?
Exactly.
This administration is lying to the American public with every jobs report. Every month you see revisions of LOWER jobs added to the prior monthly job report. YET, THE UE REMAINS UNCHANGED. That is NOT POSSIBLE. Even if they are not counting people that have stopped looking for work and now are receiving welfare, or people who have retired or have passed away, the UE can't be 9.1. It has to be higher than that. MUCH HIGHER.
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Again - anyone who can no naplin math can see obama and his marxist/communist aparatchiks are fudging the numbers.
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Again - anyone who can no naplin math can see obama and his marxist/communist aparatchiks are fudging the numbers.
Any second now there will be a post on this thread stating that Bush did the same thing.
EXCEPT, Obama ran on being the complete opposite of Bush. HOPE AND CHANGE!!! WHERE IS THE CHANGE BECAUSE HOPE HAS BEEN DEAD FOR 2 YEARS NOW!!!
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Any second now there will be a post on this thread stating that Bush did the same thing.
EXCEPT, Obama ran on being the complete opposite of Bush. HOPE AND CHANGE!!! WHERE IS THE CHANGE BECAUSE HOPE HAS BEEN DEAD FOR 2 YEARS NOW!!!
Bama also has spent TRILLIONS UPON TRILLIONS in three years for this lousy result.
Please Straw Man - Blackass Benny - Andre and the other douchebags - defend this.
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Unemployment & Payrolls Signal The Double-Dip Recession
24/7 Wall St. ^ | September 2, 2011 | JON C. OGG
The jobs recession is afoot, as if you did not already know that. The Labor Department reported a dismal figure of ZERO on the change in non-Farm payrolls for August. Furthermore, the unemployment rate was static at 9.1%. Bloomberg had consensus at 9.1% and the consensus for non-Farm Payrolls was 60,000. Keep in mind that Goldman Sachs just cut its estimates from 50,000 to 25,000 during yesterday’s trading session.
The government accounted for the zero factor, but the private sector only added 17,000 jobs. Again they are blaming Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) workers being some 45,000 of the figure, but this payrolls data is awful even if you try to pin a strike on the data.
That mystery gain from a month earlier was also corrected back closer to prior estimates. The figure for July was revised to 85,000 (from 117,000) in July and revised lower to 20,000 in June.
President Obama is set to unveil his jobs program next week, but at this point there is a simple question to ask: What difference does it make? That should have been done two years ago and it is obviously tied to the pre-election process.
The only good news here about calling a recession a double-dip recession is that it has actually been too long of a recovery to be considered a double-dip. Now the debate for the call of QE3 will increase.
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:o :o
I hope Andre and Mal will finally realize what this graph means in relation to the LFPR % which has collapsed.
If it wasnt for the BDI, we would have a rate far higher than today.
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As Obama said himself at a campaign/fundraising speech a month ago, "WE AREN'T THERE YET!" and "I'M ONLY HALF WAY DONE!"
If this is 50% done...... :-\ :-X :-[ :( >:(
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If zero jobs cained is a "DISASTER"...
What do you call a loss of 500k jobs a month?
You must have used a REALLLLLLLY strong word for it when it happened to Bush.
No, wait, you were too busy bashing Biden's hair plugs back then. Silly me.
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This is all so unnecessary. We could improve the situation tommorow:
1. Repeal Dodd Frank
2. Repeal Obamacare
3. Tell EPA to fuck off with the carbon rules
4. Re-open drilling in the gulf
5. Agree to the canadian pipeline
6. Disband the NLRB
7. Bring the wars to an end and use some of the $$$ to build up border fence and wall and put soldiers on the border
8. Amnesty for money held abroad
9. Tort reform as well as class action reform
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you used the word DISASTER to describe zero job growth.
What word did/would you use to describe a situation where 500k jobs are LOST in a month?
It's gotta be WAY worse than disaster. Unless you were just being dramatic?
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If zero jobs cained is a "DISASTER"...
What do you call a loss of 500k jobs a month?
You must have used a REALLLLLLLY strong word for it when it happened to Bush.
No, wait, you were too busy bashing Biden's hair plugs back then. Silly me.
LMFAO!
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you used the word DISASTER to describe zero job growth.
What word did/would you use to describe a situation where 500k jobs are LOST in a month?
It's gotta be WAY worse than disaster. Unless you were just being dramatic?
We actually lost 200k jobs fool. BDI added 87k phoney jobs and you need 125 on top of that to stay even.
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If zero jobs cained is a "DISASTER"...
What do you call a loss of 500k jobs a month?
You must have used a REALLLLLLLY strong word for it when it happened to Bush.
No, wait, you were too busy bashing Biden's hair plugs back then. Silly me.
11. When One Side Does Something Wrong, Always Point to Something Wrong on the Other Side
The best part about this one is that it doesn't even have to be remotely related to the thread.
Did your conservative anti-gay rights congressman just take it up the ass? Well, you better get in that thread and point out that Nancy Pelosi wants free airplane rides.
Did your President just rack up trillions of dollars of debt? Well, you know what to do...
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11. When One Side Does Something Wrong, Always Point to Something Wrong on the Other Side
The best part about this one is that it doesn't even have to be remotely related to the thread.
Did your conservative anti-gay rights congressman just take it up the ass? Well, you better get in that thread and point out that Nancy Pelosi wants free airplane rides.
Did your President just rack up trillions of dollars of debt? Well, you know what to do...
I'm not accusing bush of anything. I'm accusing YOU of selective dramatization.
I'm accusing YOU of using scary words like "disaster". Dude, 911 was a disaster. Tsunami in japan was a disaster. This is an economic fart.
So, it's not about Bush - cause obama had 500k loss months too. This is about YOU BEING A DRAMA QUEEN using words like 'disaster' for a month where the overall net was actually plus a few thousand jobs.
Disaster. So please, tell us what you call the japanese Tsunami. Remember, words like DISASTER are reserved for months with only 17k new jobs.
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So looking at recent months where we did add jobs. What do you call those?
If breaking even is a DISASTER.... what do you call the last SEVEN months where we added jobs?
Tragic? Gruesome? Horrendusly Tear-wrenching?
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I'm not accusing bush of anything. I'm accusing YOU of selective dramatization.
I'm accusing YOU of using scary words like "disaster". Dude, 911 was a disaster. Tsunami in japan was a disaster. This is an economic fart.
So, it's not about Bush - cause obama had 500k loss months too. This is about YOU BEING A DRAMA QUEEN using words like 'disaster' for a month where the overall net was actually plus a few thousand jobs.
Disaster. So please, tell us what you call the japanese Tsunami. Remember, words like DISASTER are reserved for months with only 17k new jobs.
LMAO - yeah - entering in to a second double dip while 15 million are jobless, things are collapsing everywhere is nothing but a fart.
Everything is fine.
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So looking at recent months where we did add jobs. What do you call those?
If breaking even is a DISASTER.... what do you call the last SEVEN months where we added jobs?
Tragic? Gruesome? Horrendusly Tear-wrenching?
We didnt add a damn thing. We lost jobs. We added phoney jobs that dont exist and more and more and more people are entering the workforce age without jobs and less people are even looking.
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We didnt add a damn thing. We lost jobs.
1) How many jobs did we lose last month, net?
2) How do you plan to break open the conspiracy that they're all lying
3) You still haven't answered - If this month is a DISASTER, what was September 2008 considered?
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1) How many jobs did we lose last month, net?
2) How do you plan to break open the conspiracy that they're all lying
3) You still haven't answered - If this month is a DISASTER, what was September 2008 considered?
It was a catastrophe. WTF is wrong with you? And by the way - your chart is nonsense that compares only a few months of bush to 3 years of obama
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It was a catastrophe. WTF is wrong with you? And by the way - your chart is nonsense that compares only a few months of bush to 3 years of obama
So.....
Disaster = zero jobs gained.
Catastrophe = 500k jobs lost.
___________ = Japan Tsunami (10k people dead and $300 billion in costs)?
???
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First time since 1945...
WASHINGTON — Employment growth ground to a halt in August, as sagging consumer confidence discouraged already skittish U.S. businesses from hiring, keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve to provide more monetary stimulus to aid the struggling economy.
Nonfarm payrolls were unchanged last month, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first times ince 1945 that the government has reported a net monthly job change of zero.The August payrolls report was the worst since September 2010, while nonfarm employment for June and July was revised to show 58,000 fewer jobs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44370462/ns/business/#.TmDxrGMxWHs
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First time since 1945...
WASHINGTON — Employment growth ground to a halt in August, as sagging consumer confidence discouraged already skittish U.S. businesses from hiring, keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve to provide more monetary stimulus to aid the struggling economy.
Nonfarm payrolls were unchanged last month, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first times ince 1945 that the government has reported a net monthly job change of zero.The August payrolls report was the worst since September 2010, while nonfarm employment for June and July was revised to show 58,000 fewer jobs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44370462/ns/business/#.TmDxrGMxWHs
I think that qualifies this month as a disaster. Don't you think?
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(http://www.godlikeproductions.com/sm/custom/d475d872ed.jpg)
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If zero jobs cained is a "DISASTER"...
What do you call a loss of 500k jobs a month?
You must have used a REALLLLLLLY strong word for it when it happened to Bush.
No, wait, you were too busy bashing Biden's hair plugs back then. Silly me.
What is a better average? 5.7% UE or 9.3% UE?
UE during Bush's terms, both of them, the average UE was 5.7%. Obama's is almost twice as high. Even the UE when Bush left was lower than it is now.
You focus on 1 month and disregard all the other 52 months of job growth during the Bush years. I will tell you what's a catastrophe. OBAMA'S ENTIRE PRESIDENCY IS A CATASTROPHE!!!
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
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Wow, that was totally unexpected. We were just coming out of a recession and now this!!
I am not worried though, I think the talent in the government will pull us out of this soon!
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If zero jobs cained is a "DISASTER"...
What do you call a loss of 500k jobs a month?
You must have used a REALLLLLLLY strong word for it when it happened to Bush.
No, wait, you were too busy bashing Biden's hair plugs back then. Silly me.
Oh shut up.
losing 500k is a total disaster.
ZERO job growth is also a total disasters given that it was proclaimed that the recession was over 2 years ago and that we have been told that we are and have been in a recovery, it's been a year since the "Summer of Recovery", remember? All the money that's been spent, printed and handed out, all the U.E. insurance, food stamps, debt, deficits, growth of govt, hackneyed CFC like plans and all of that...this is what this admin. has to show for it. We still have 400k+ people filling U.E claims per week, we have an historically low LFP rate, GDP is low and being revised downward and on and on . So yes, in this context it is a total and absolute disaster. When it was happening under Bush at least we knew that this was a huge economic meltdown and things were going to be very very bad and dire. With this we've been fed the "Summer of Recovery" line and the "Well, it's growing, just not fast enough" line for 2 years....and this is the outcome.
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I completely agree that obama is a lying failure. Can I be any clearer? You repubs run anyone not named palin, and I'll campaign for him/her.
My beef here is with 333386... having fun with his "OMGZERS, it's a disaster that we had zero growth last month!"
A disaster is a tsunami. This is a poor economic performance period. Shitty, but using words like disaster for everything from tusnamis to economic flatlines to christmas decorations really diminishes the imact of the word. Like when a 7th grade girl says the world is ending, because her 'date' is texting another girl. the world isn't really ending - she's just being a juvenile twaht.
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I completely agree that obama is a lying failure. Can I be any clearer? You repubs run anyone not named palin, and I'll campaign for him/her.
My beef here is with 333386... having fun with his "OMGZERS, it's a disaster that we had zero growth last month!"
A disaster is a tsunami. This is a poor economic performance period. Shitty, but using words like disaster for everything from tusnamis to economic flatlines to christmas decorations really diminishes the imact of the word. Like when a 7th grade girl says the world is ending, because her 'date' is texting another girl. the world isn't really ending - she's just being a juvenile twaht.
For the 15 million out of work, the millions of college grads w no job prospects, the small businesses making nothing and only paying bills, its not a 240 fart, but a fucking horrendous disaster.
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For the 15 million out of work, the millions of college grads w no job prospects, the small businesses making nothing and only paying bills, its not a 240 fart, but a fucking horrendous disaster.
in that case, call the entire obama economic performance a disaster.
don't call "a month of minimal growth" a disaster. See what I mean?
IMO, people are just so freakin dramatic that it undercuts their credibility in other things. And some things you bring are 100% important. But screaming about christmas decorations makes the effectiveness of your screaming about major issues less impactful. and i'd like to see your message get out more.
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Its all related.
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Its all related.
I might get hit by lighting today while golfing. I might lose a ball in the drink today while golfing.
Related? yes. Dually tragic? Nah.
just pulling your chain bro... i'm way more sober than I should be, makes me cranky.
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I might get hit by lighting today while golfing. I might lose a ball in the drink today while golfing.
Related? yes. Dually tragic? Nah.
just pulling your chain bro... i'm way more sober than I should be, makes me cranky.
You have commies in your admn putting Mao ornaments on the tree - you know there is a problem.
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You have commies in your admn putting Mao ornaments on the tree - you know there is a problem.
I have a problem alright... I burned this grilled cheese sandwich. What a disaster lunch has become.
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First time since 1945...
WASHINGTON — Employment growth ground to a halt in August, as sagging consumer confidence discouraged already skittish U.S. businesses from hiring, keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve to provide more monetary stimulus to aid the struggling economy.
Nonfarm payrolls were unchanged last month, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first times ince 1945 that the government has reported a net monthly job change of zero.The August payrolls report was the worst since September 2010, while nonfarm employment for June and July was revised to show 58,000 fewer jobs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44370462/ns/business/#.TmDxrGMxWHs
Wow.
Worse than Carter. :-\
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that shows how wrong the report is.
Our company added three new full time employees and the new IN and OUT burger restaurant just opened in August and they added 30+ staff.
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that shows how wrong the report is.
Our company added three new full time employees and the new IN and OUT burger restaurant just opened in August and they added 30+ staff.
I like you chadstallion, that's why I'm going to kill you last.
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I like you chadstallion, that's why I'm going to kill you last.
;)
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that shows how wrong the report is.
Our company added three new full time employees and the new IN and OUT burger restaurant just opened in August and they added 30+ staff.
LMFAO! ! ! !
No wonder you voted for ZERO
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LMFAO! ! ! !
No wonder you voted for ZERO
you're welcome.
you've been abused more than usual this week so I thought I'd put a smile on your face for a friday afternoon.
I could really put a smile on your face if you'd let me do somethin' else.....
and you wouldn't even have to get out of your chair; you could continue to post here while I do all the work... ;)
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you're welcome.
you've been abused more than usual this week so I thought I'd put a smile on your face for a friday afternoon.
I could really put a smile on your face if you'd let me do somethin' else.....
and you wouldn't even have to get out of your chair; you could continue to post here while I do all the work... ;)
Abused? ? ? ? i am on a fucking roll!
Who you kidding. Between F&F, Solyndra, Uncle Omar, Economy, that fat disgusting C%^ wife, etc, I have had more than my fair share of laughs kicking these two dirtbags while they are down.
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you used the word DISASTER to describe zero job growth.
What word did/would you use to describe a situation where 500k jobs are LOST in a month?
It's gotta be WAY worse than disaster. Unless you were just being dramatic?
You truly are one stupid fuck. You should go tell that to the people standing in the 1+ mile long line waiting to get into a career in Georgia. Fucking scumbag.
Thanks, President Downgrade. First time since 1945 that the economy added 0 net jobs. Awesome work. Stellar leadership! What an absolute failure. He needs to just go away.
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What he needs to do is resign and or announce he is not running.
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What he needs to do is resign and or announce he is not running.
He is far too arrogant, egotistical and immature to admit that he is a failure. Remember, nothing is his fault, everyone else is out to get him.
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Funny how 180 attacks me for the word disaster when that was the word used by the author of the first piece I posted from business insider. So he needs to take it up w joe wiesanthal.
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Funny how 180 attacks me for the word disaster when that was the word used by the author of the first piece I posted from business insider. So he needs to take it up w joe wiesanthal.
180 is a real piece of shit with his argument that this isn't a disaster. Tell that to the 10+ million Americans who don't have two nickels to rub together. Funny how the left couldn't give two fucks about these people. All about shoving their failed agenda down this country's throat.
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Im just going to hope for more despair. I know that doesnt sound patriotic of me but Americans are doing this to themselves. All of this is completely unnecessary. What pisses me off are the dumbfucks who say this is something that was "long in the making" and that "it will take us forever to get out of because it was long in the making". BULLSHIT. We had a recession that was made worse than it otherwise would have been because of the artificiality of the housing bubble that was indeed somewhat long in the making. But recessions HAPPEN. And you always come out of them within 2 or 3 years. The only time we dont come out of recessions in that time span is when the government interferes too much. And this administration have interfered more than any since FDR.
The independents need to get thier heads out of thier asses and quit doubling down on thier mistakes. The time for the rationalizing is over. They thought Bush was worse than he really was, and so they panicked and voted for someone that any thoughtful person should have known would be a lot worse. Obama is a disaster and they need to come to grips with it. They also need to come to grips with the fact that the Democrats are full of wackjob extremists. Im reading from some columns of these financial experts and thier political apathy stuns me. Thier non partisan criticisms at Washington are rediculous. They talk about how Washington needs "to act". BULLSHIT. Washington needs to get out of the way. It doesnt matter. Obama will be gone in 2013, the GOP will maintain control of the HOUSE and will get the Senate, if anythign because of the re-election cycle. Then this freakshow will be over for atleast 2-4 years. What Im concerned about is that the Democrats wont get as much longterm punishment as they deserve for this. If this country allows another Democrat in the White House within the next 12 years I will cry.
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This Bad Jobs Report Is Worse Than it Seems
September 2, 2011 9:59 A.M.
By Kevin A. Hassett
Job creation ground to a halt in August, and the U.S. is now clearly sputtering toward a recession. Downward revisions to prior months make this bad report worse than it seems.
It might be that this jobs report stimulates the Obama team to drop all the Keynesian nonsense, but I doubt it. Frankly, I expect Obama’s jobs speech to be the worst presidential speech in my lifetime. Their position throughout this recovery has been that the U.S. can have the highest corporate tax on earth, a big regulatory crackdown, and a vast expansion of labor-union power, and still expect a positive jobs story because of cash-for-clunkers and green jobs. This jobs report indicates how much damage that view has done.
— Kevin A. Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Zero. Nothing. Nilch.
SEP 2, 2011 09:00 EDT
inShare
EMPLOYMENT
The symbolism of today’s payrolls report — ZERO — would be bad enough even if it wasn’t coming out in advance of the Labor Day weekend. There’s a pattern here: no matter how bad Wall Street thinks the employment report is going to be, it always seems to be worse, these days. It’s like GE’s earnings circa Jack Welch, but in reverse.
It’s increasingly looking as though the government is utterly incapable of creating jobs, but is actually pretty effective at destroying them. It’s doing so in a direct, literal way — there were 17,000 fewer government employees in August than there were the previous month, and local government has lost more than half a million jobs since September 2008. And it’s also doing so in an indirect way — there can’t be much doubt that a significant part of the jobs weakness is a function of the anger and uncertainty caused by the utter dysfunction of the legislative branch of government.
Hiring and firing decisions, of course, happen slowly — and they often happen after the summer. The jobs situation, which is always cyclical, now seems to be in a downturn rather than an upturn, which raises the prospect of a negative payrolls figure in September and further gruesome news over most of the 2012 election year. President Obama can speechify all he wants on Thursday, but I can’t imagine that he’s going to be able to get anything substantive through the House — not when Eric Cantor is demanding that even emergency hurricane relief be paid for with spending cuts.
You can call this a double dip, if you like, or you can view it as a kind of aftershock of the financial crisis. Either way, the economy is clearly now below its stall speed, and we don’t have access to the mechanisms necessary to get it moving again. That is going to make for poisonous politics, Washington gridlock, and untold human misery among millions of new and long-term unemployed across the land. Happy Labor Day, people.
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Deja Vu All Over Again: Total US Debt Passes Debt Ceiling... In Under One Month Since Extension
Zero Hedge ^ | 09/02/11 | Tyler Durden
Posted on September 4, 2011 10:00:29 PM EDT by RobertClark
Remember when one month ago the US, to much pomp and circumstance, not to mention one downgrade, announced a grand bargain raising the debt ceiling from $14.294 trillion to something much higher, with a stop gap intermediate ceiling of $14.694 trillion, or $400 billion more. Well, as of today, or less than a month since the expansion, total US debt is at $14.697 trillion. Yep - the total debt is again over the ceiling, which means the US debt increased by $400 billion in one month. Score one for fiscal prudence. And while the total debt subject to the limit is still slightly less, at $14.652, one week of Treasury auctions and will be time for Moody's to justify again why the US is a quadruple A credit.
Suckers!
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Zero Jobs 101 — the Psychology of Alienating Employers
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On September 2, 2011 @ 12:01 pm In Uncategorized | 248 Comments
There Is No There There
Zero jobs last month — a net change of zero job growth? It was just announced that last month’s unemployment is still above 9% — despite the nearly five trillion dollars in Keynesian pump-priming, the near zero interest rates, the expanded unemployment and food stamp support, and the government takeovers and subsidies of businesses. There is a scary sort of deer-in-the-headlights look about Obama and Biden that is quite disturbing, as if they are thinking, “This was not supposed to happened to us. Geithner, Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, Summers assured us that all this borrowing would turn things around — but they are all gone or leaving, so now we are alone? What to do? Hmmm. More them/us class warfare rhetoric? Embrace more of the California/Illinois/New York blue-state model? More European Union emulation? A national high-speed rail jobs program? Bring back Van Jones and “millions of green jobs”? Borrow another $5 trillion? Maybe negative interest rates? Seventy-five million on food stamps? Four years of unemployment insurance? A new Department of Jobs? Call in Jimmy Carter for advice about 1979? $100 billion more in green subsidies to progressive caring companies? Take over Ford? Another speech from Buffett? Unleash the Congressional Black Caucus?”
Two Sorts of Depression
Job growth is as often driven by psychological impulses on the part of employers as actual facts on the ground, given the requirement of a business that it must plan for the unknown future better than do its rivals. While business people don’t read every economic report or follow every political psychodrama, they do watch for trends, know hourly the pulse of their businesses, and talk to colleagues and rivals to form general opinions about business climate and government attitudes and future policies. I’ve been speaking a lot lately to civic groups, a few firms, investors, large and small farmers and farm suppliers, and individual employers. And the following would fairly sum up their current state of mind.
The Great Sit-Down Strike
In the last 30 months, the Obama administration has created a psychological landscape that finally just seemed, whether fairly or not, too hostile to most employers to risk new hiring and buying. Each act, in and of itself, was irrelevant. Together they are proving catastrophic and doing the near impossible of turning a brief recovery into another recession.
Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like “Millions of Green Jobs” nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of “fat cat”, “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate jet owners,” etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways — all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.
Despite enormous opportunity for many cash-rich firms to take advantage of the down cycles (low interest, plentiful potential employees, discounted prices, etc.), they are taking a pass, almost as if to collectively sigh, “This bunch doesn’t like me much and I’m going to hunker down, hoard my cash, and sit out the next year and a half until they are gone.” And the administration’s efforts to counteract these symbols and impressions by courting a high-profile, hyper-capitalist Warren Buffett, or a GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt have proven even more ironic: the former calls for higher taxes that his firms seek to avoid, or targets his post-mortem wealth to (more efficient?) private foundations that rob the Treasury of billions in lost inheritance taxes, or knows higher taxes won’t much matter to his tens of billions in net worth; the latter’s firm paid no 2010 U.S. income taxes on many of its profits and outsourced jobs overseas. And when Obama is told by his base to “get tough,” “get angry,” and “double-down” on the EU-like statist policies and Chicago-organizing, get-in-their-face rhetoric that got him into this jobs stagnation mess, should we laugh or cry? Get furious and demand — what? Snarl and scream about the right to go “big” from $1.6 trillion to $2 trillion in annual borrowing?
Highly publicized visits to bankrupt subsidized green plants, blaming George Bush, new racially-driven invective from some congresspeople against the Tea Party, sermons about the sensitivities of illegal aliens, politically-correct tutorials about Islam — all that might rally the base or in isolation be understandable, but again fairly or not, such liberal rhetoric simply adds to the problem from yet another dimension: confirming perceptions that employers are about the last people in the world that this administration is worried about.
The Upper-Middle-Class Lament
I talked to a gentleman in the Central Valley the other day; he voiced a rarely heard lament. He was a private business person who thought he had saved enough for retirement but could not see any income anywhere: (1) his cash is getting almost no interest in a variety of savings accounts; (2) he can’t sell his house without a loss and can’t see any foreseeable increase in its equity; (3) his 401(K) is still down and never quite recovered from the post-2008 dive and is now simply too volatile for him to know what to do; (4) he assumes taxes will go up to pay for the subsidies of others for which he does not qualify for —yet; (5) he has no public pension and has less income than those who used to make far less but worked for the federal government, state, or city. I could only say that Obama would say, “Well, your’re better off than many in my base.”
Vandal Watch
Last week, I mentioned that my local community is struggling with council members calling each other names and alleging serial conflicts of interest, theft of the city’s manhole covers by public employees, and child pornography charges lodged against a policeman. This week? An epidemic of the theft of honorific bronze plaques from the walls of the city’s schools, civic centers, and public buildings — the sort of commemoration for good deeds that are the stuff of civilization. It reminds me of Procopius’s description of post-Roman Italy in the 6th-century AD, when lost Ostrogoth and Visigoth souls drifted amid the great cities of the Old Romans, cannibalizing the ancients’ marble, bronze, and lead clamps, and melting down monuments for lime. What scares me is that the gang bangers, who are prying these plaques off the walls and selling them, for pennies on their original dollars, for scrap, have no idea of the now dead who built and created these buildings and institutions, but so often in extremis will expect to use them. Did the man who built a school or the woman who founded a civic club ever expect that their commemorative citations would end up in a melt-down pile in the local wrecking yard?
Copper wire torn out from agricultural pumps? Manhole covers stolen by their very custodians? Commemorative plaques pried out? We are almost an entire generation of parasites that cannot create anything new and so feed on the capital and labor of the past. Sixth-century Rome to the core, or maybe Dark-Age Greece around 1000 BC where the illiterate and ignorant were wandering beneath the walls of Mycenae or Pylos looking for shelter that they could not build for themselves, and swearing superhuman “gods” must have erected such walls. Who knows, just as the most fertile period of Greek myth-making came out of the oral traditions of the Dark Ages as an impoverished and illiterate age tried to make sense of the monumental traces of a lost civilization, so too soon we may think our forgotten dam builders and water project architects of the last century were Apollo or the Cyclops, as we watch their legacies erode and crumble.
Book Watch
I will post a review of Dick Cheney’s memoir that I just finished this morning on the Hoover “Defining Ideas” website. I’m just finishing a book review of Eliot Cohen’s fascinating history of the French-British-American-Indian fighting down the northeastern seaboard in the late 18th-century. Tomorrow I leave for my annual visit to Hillsdale College to teach a military history intensive class for the next month during my vacation from the Hoover Institution, and look forward to the change of scenery. The End of the Sparta comes out at the end of the month; the first review from Publishers’ Weekly recently came out:
Leading classicist Hanson (The Father of Us All) focuses on the Theban defeat of the renowned Spartan army in 371 B.C.E. The hero of the tale is the Theban general Epaminondas, a devotee of Pythagoras and a warrior with unconventional attitudes about warfare, life, and death. His unexpected choices—not to mention the Spartan underestimation of the Theban “pigs”—allow the Thebans to fulfill the prophecies of Sparta’s downfall, many of which focus on the farmer Mêlon (meaning “apple”), whose journey from reluctant soldier to enthusiastic liberator gives the novel its emotional heart. Battle scenes are conveyed in exacting detail; a glossary of names and numerous line diagrams help readers differentiate characters and envisage the sites of central dramas. Told in a somewhat elevated style that simultaneously honors and updates the rhetorical heights of classic Greek histories, Hanson’s novel is both old-fashioned and lively. Given his notable body of work, it’s no wonder that his first fiction effort is rich in authentic detail and narrated with a confident authorial voice. His vigorous narrative not only offers insight into arms and armor, but also into the hearts of the men who bore them. (Oct.)
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Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/job-killing-101/
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Hey 240 - Straw - Mal - Blackass - andre - etc - do you still wonder why the economy is getting worse?