Misery Index: The Obama Depression - "Private sector doing just Fine"

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North Portland Sealy mattress factory layoffs to begin in March
The Oregonian ^ | 1/4/12 | By Elliot Njus
Posted on January 5, 2013 12:48:58 AM EST by Be Careful

Sealy Inc., which in November announced plans to permanently close its North Portland mattress factory, will begin laying off workers there in March.

The North Carolina company said then it planned to move work from the factory at 13635 N. Lombard St. to Lacey, Wash., to cut costs.

In a notice to the state Friday, Sealy said 106 workers will be laid off starting March 4. In November, the company said the factory employed 128.

(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...

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ROSENBERG: 6 Key Economic Indicators Show That The US Isn't In Great Shape
 


Mamta Badkar|58 minutes ago|297|
 



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By the end of 2012, once it was clear that the fiscal cliff would be avoided, the consensus was that the U.S. economy wrapped up the year in "some sort of accelerating trend", according to Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg.
 
But Rosenberg says there are telling signs everywhere that this isn't actually the case.
 
"Mortgage applications have fallen off a cliff of their own of late... What I am asking is that calendar quirks aside why on earth would railway car loadings, coal production, auto assemblies, raw steel output and port activity be contracting on a year-over-year basis if the economy is humming along as the consensus would have you believe?"
 
Here are the charts


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/rosenberg-6-charts-us-economy-2013-1#ixzz2HPb6bwxY

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Charlie Gasparino Says There's Going To Be A Blood Bath At Morgan Stanley On Monday
Linette Lopez|36 minutes ago|1,906|5
 


Charlie Gasparino reports that Morgan Stanley is in for some deep cuts on Monday.
 
Bloomberg is also reporting 1600 job cuts next week as well.
 
Morgan Stanley's CEO James Gorman has always made it clear that Wall Street had to downsize and that he wasn't afraid to have his own employees feel the pain.
 
That goes for compensation (down 9% since last year) and layoffs. The truly ugly year was 2011, when the firm was running layoff scenarios in the several thousands. At the beginning of last year, Gasparino (again) was reporting that by June 5,000 more people would be gone.
 
The news from Gasparino's Twitter feed:


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/gasparino-warns-of-morgan-stanley-cuts-2013-1#ixzz2HUbePg4v

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Morgan Stanley Plans To Lay Off 1,600 Employees
 Value Walk ^ | January 9, 2013 | Marie Cabural

Posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2013 1:20:14 PM by 2ndDivisionVet

Morgan Stanley will cut its workforce by 1,600 in the coming weeks. The job cuts will affect all levels of employees in its investment banking and trading unit in both its United States and international divisions, according to a source.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), one of the leading banks in the United States plans to cut the number of its employees within its investment banking and trading division by 6 percent or 1,600 in the next few weeks, according to report from Bloomberg, citing an unidentified source familiar with the issue.

According to the source, 50 percent of the workforce reduction will come from the United States and 50 percent will come from the company’s international offices. The job cuts will affect all levels of employees.

The person who revealed the information requested his name not to be identified because the Morgan Stanley’s decision regarding the layoffs was not yet announced to the public.

The source said, the company is planning on sending notices to all the employees affected by the job cuts today and over the coming weeks...


(Excerpt) Read more at valuewalk.com ...

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http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/09/new-data-show-1-in-4-children-on-food-stamps-in-fy-2011


Hope and change.

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http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/10/investing/american-express-jobs/index.html?cnn=yes

5400 more jobs down the toilet 

[GigantorX]

The Philly Fed report from a week or so ago, the one that "Surprised" to the upside was revised downward to a contraction.

And the weekly U.E. claims were up for the 4th week in a row.

Not good.

[333386]

The Philly Fed report from a week or so ago, the one that "Surprised" to the upside was revised downward to a contraction.

And the weekly U.E. claims were up for the 4th week in a row.

Not good.

Still W's fault. 

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Time Inc. Will Lay Off 700 After 5% Advertising Decline
Jill Goldsmith, Variety|23 minutes ago|3|


Time Magazine

Time Warner's Time Inc. will lay off up to 700 staffers out of just under 8,000 total as the publisher's new chief struggles to transform famous titles and massive market share into a digital profit center.
 
The staff cuts will come sometime in the first quarter, said a person familiar with the company's plans, and will be across the board -- not just focused on editorial, where staffing has already been hard hit.
 
A Time Warner spokesman declined comment.
 
Time Inc. revenue fell 6% for the nine months ended in September to $2.5 billion. Profit dropped 14% to $220 million. During that period, it dominated 21.5% of overall domestic magazine advertising.
 
Time's stable of 21 U.S. magazines and 25 websites includes Time, In Style, Fortune, People, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated and Real Simple. It has over 100 titles worldwide.
 
For the third quarter, subscription revenue dipped 6% and advertising revenue eased 5%, echoing trends across the traditional publishing world as consumers digest information in new ways. Digital advertising and expanding readership on tablets and other mobile devices hasn't made up for losses elsewhere.
 
Given the new face of publishing, Time Warner settled in late 2011 on Laura Lang, CEO of digital marketing agency Digitas, to run the business. She started just over a year ago.
 
Time Warner will report fourth-quarter and full-year financial results on Feb. 6.
 
Click here for more television news on Variety.com.
 



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/time-inc-will-lay-off-700-after-5-advertising-decline-2013-1#ixzz2HfqkdSq0

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-11/us-airways-spurs-job-rush-as-16-500-vie-for-450-vacancies.html


16,500 apply for 450 sitty jobs. 

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Riot Breaks Out At Housing Assistance Event In Metro Detroit
 CBS Detroit ^ | Jan 12, 2013

Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2013 7:03:25 PM by Iron Munro

An event designed to help assist Michigan families with housing expenses turned into a chaotic scene after there was a mad rush to collect Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers.

The incident happened Saturday morning at the Wayne County Family Health Services Center on Eureka Road, between Beech Daly and Inkster roads in Taylor — where thousands of people were waiting to get housing vouchers, many who had been waiting outside in the cold since the night before.

Reports say the amount of people who showed up looking for assistance heavily outweighed the number of vouchers to be distributed. As the night was fading away and the sun started to shine, the crowd continued to grow as more and more people arrived. According to reports, only 1,000 vouchers were available for distribution. An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people were in attendance.

When it came time for the vouchers to be distributed, police said there was a mad rush for the door, with people jockeying for position to be the first inside the building. Officers tried to control the crowd, but couldn’t. Fearing the situation was more than they could handle, event organizers shut the entire thing down and turned off the lights inside the building. Witnesses say that’s when things really got ugly.

Star Lee, of Romulus, described the scene as complete chaos.

“People just don’t have order to themselves, you know what I mean? People were fighting and throwing chairs, and that’s just not necessary. We were asked to just come and line up and, you know, make things simple. They shut it down before it even got started and it’s just sad because some people really needed this help, this assistance,” she said.

Candice Wacasey, of Taylor, said she was frightened. Garbage litters the ground at a human services building in Taylor where thousands of people rioted when a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher distribution event was cancelled. (WWJ Photo/Beth Fisher)

Garbage litters the ground at a human services building in Taylor where thousands of people rioted when a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher distribution event was cancelled. (WWJ Photo/Beth Fisher)

“When the lights went out, it went horrible. People started trampling over people, there was a disabled lady that was in a wheelchair and they was trying to knock her over to get in front of her. I mean, just crazy,” she said.

Lenny Syer, of Melvindale, said some people lost all inhibitions, even muscling small children out-of-the-way.

“There was people who was physically putting their hands on people’s childs (sic) and moving them. It was unbelievable,” he said.

Additional help was called in from Michigan State Police, who helped Taylor police control the melee and disperse the crowd. Four people were arrested, but police say no one was injured.

Police say the event will be rescheduled, although specific details still need to be worked out.

“Due to the high demand of the Section 8 vouchers, we will meet with HUD Representatives to discuss the series of events, re-evaluate the distribution method and implement a process that ensures a greater level of efficiency and safety,” Mary Radamacher, Director of the Taylor Housing Commission, said in a statement.

Some of those in attendance Saturday said they hope organizers will be extra cautious and bring in additional security to insure things go differently next time.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program is the federal government’s major program for assisting very low-income families, the elderly and the disabled to afford decent, safe and sanitary housing in the private market. A housing subsidy is paid to the landlord directly by the government on behalf of the participating family, which then pays the difference between the actual rent charged by the landlord and the amount subsidized by the program.

The maximum housing assistance is generally the lesser of the payment standard minus 30 percent of the family’s monthly adjusted income, or the gross rent for the unit minus 30 percent of monthly adjusted income, according to HUD.

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The number of Americans receiving money directly from the federal government has grown from 94 million in the year 2000 to over 128 million today. A shocking new research paper by Patrick Tyrrell and William W. Beach contains that statistic and a whole bunch of other very revealing numbers. According to their research, the federal government hands out money to 41.3 percent of the entire population of the United States each month. Overall, more than 70 percent of all federal spending goes to what they call "dependence-creating programs". It is the most massive wealth redistribution scheme in the history of the world, and it continues to grow at a very rapid pace with each passing month. But can we really afford this? Of course we never want to see a single person go without food to eat or a roof to sleep under, but can the federal government really afford to support 128 million Americans every month? If millions more Americans keep jumping on to the "safety net" each year, how long will it be before it breaks and it is not there for anyone? The federal government is already drowning in debt. This year the U.S. national debt will easily blow past the 17 trillion dollar mark and we are rapidly heading toward financial oblivion. We are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day with no end in sight. If we don't get our finances in order as a nation, what will the end result be?

According to Tyrrell and Beach, federal spending on entitlement programs has been rising more than 6 times as fast as population growth has in recent years...

Between 1988 and 2011, spending on dependence-creating federal government programs has increased 180 percent versus “only” a 62 percent increase in the number of people who are enrolled in federal government programs, and a 27 percent increase in the population. Not only are more people enrolled in government programs than ever before, but more US taxpayer dollars are being spent on each recipient every year.

But even though the numbers that Tyrrell and Beach present in their paper are incredibly shocking, the truth is that they have probably underestimated the true scope of government dependence in America today. Just consider the following numbers...

Food Stamps

Back in the year 2000, there were about 17 million Americans on food stamps. That number has exploded to more than 47 million today.

Medicaid

If you can believe it, today more than 70 million Americans are on Medicaid, and it is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

Social Security

Right now, there are more than 53 million Americans on Social Security, and that number is projected to absolutely explode as huge waves of Baby Boomers retire in the coming years.

Medicare

As I wrote about in a previous article, the number of Americans on Medicare is expected to grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.

And those are only four examples of government programs that have seen their numbers explode in recent years. There are so many more that could be mentioned. Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different "means-tested welfare programs", and almost all of them are experiencing explosive growth.

So is the "128 million" figure that Tyrrell and Beach have come up with actually too low? I believe that it is. But in any event, nobody can deny that the "welfare state" in the U.S. has absolutely mushroomed in size since the turn of the century.

According to one recent poll, 55 percent of all Americans say that they have received money from a safety net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives. We are a nation that has become very comfortable leaning on Uncle Sam for help.

And poor people from all around the globe see how good things are here and they are eager to get a seat at the table. In a previous article, I talked about a federal government website ("WelcomeToUSA.gov") that actually teaches new immigrants how to apply for welfare once they are able to get into the United States.

Will we all eventually becoming dependent on the government? If that happens will we still be free men and women?

Once someone is dependent on the government, they become forced to do what the government tells them to do in order to survive. If we all eventually become dependent on the federal government, how much power will that give them over us?

That is something to think about.

Another thing to ponder is how the U.S. middle class is rapidly disappearing.

There will always be poor people, and we should always take care of them, but what we should be truly alarmed about is how the middle class in America has been dramatically shrinking in recent years.

One of the biggest reasons why so many Americans are applying for government assistance these days is because there simply aren't enough jobs for everyone. Politicians from both political parties have fully embraced the one world "free trade" economic agenda of the global elite, and as a result millions of our jobs are being shipped out of the country. Big corporations can either choose to pay U.S. workers a living wage with benefits, or they can choose to set up shop on the other side of the globe where it is legal to pay workers slave labor wages with no benefits. Plus there are much fewer taxes and regulations to deal with typically on the other side of the globe.

As long as this nation pursues this "one world economic agenda", there will never be enough jobs in the United States ever again. Chronic unemployment will become the new normal. Our formerly great manufacturing cities will continue to degenerate into gang-infested war zones.

Apologists for the current system continue to insist that the answer is "more education", but the truth is that government dependence is even exploding among those with advanced degrees. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article on The Chronicle Of Higher Education...

People who don't finish college are more likely to receive food stamps than are those who go to graduate school. The rolls of people on public assistance are dominated by people with less education. Nevertheless, the percentage of graduate-degree holders who receive food stamps or some other aid more than doubled between 2007 and 2010.

During that three-year period, the number of people with master's degrees who received food stamps and other aid climbed from 101,682 to 293,029, and the number of people with Ph.D.'s who received assistance rose from 9,776 to 33,655, according to tabulations of microdata done by Austin Nichols, a senior researcher with the Urban Institute. He drew on figures from the 2008 and 2011 Current Population Surveys done by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

After reading that, does anyone still believe that "more education" is the answer to our problems?

What we need is more jobs, and lots of them. Unfortunately, our politicians continue to pursue policies that absolutely kill American jobs.

So the number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for assistance will continue to grow, as will our national debt.

Sadly, most Americans still don't realize what is happening. Most of them are still listening to those in the mainstream media that are insisting that everything is going to be just fine.

For example, the most famous economic journalist in the country, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, recently wrote that the deficit crisis has been "solved"...

True, there are projected problems further down the road, mainly because of the continuing effects of an aging population. But it still comes as something of a shock to realize that at this point reasonable projections do not, repeat do not, show anything resembling the runaway deficit crisis that is a staple of almost everything you hear, including supposedly objective news reporting.

So you heard it here first: while you weren’t looking, and the deficit scolds were doing their scolding, the deficit problem (such as it was) was being mostly solved.

Oh really?

I don't know how in the world Paul Krugman can get paid to write such nonsense, but the truth is that our government debt problems are only just beginning.

In a previous article, I explained that the unfunded liabilities of the federal government are growing so rapidly that we could not cover them even if we raised the highest tax rate to 100%...

According to Chris Cox and Bill Archer, two men who served on Bill Clinton's Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, there is no way in the world that we could raise taxes high enough to pay for all of the obligations that we are currently taking on. They say that even if we taxed all corporations and all individuals at a 100% tax rate on all income over $66,193, "it wouldn't be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities."

Yes, Paul Krugman, we do have a spending problem. Even if Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the federal government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days. We simply cannot go on spending money like this.

If anyone out there believes Paul Krugman and is convinced that the federal government is no longer facing a massive debt problem, please read this article: "55 Facts About The Debt And U.S. Government Finances That Every American Voter Should Know".

But if we can't afford to do all of this spending, then why are we doing it?

Well, it is because there are a whole lot of people out there that are really hurting. Poverty in the U.S. is absolutely exploding, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor has grown to unprecedented heights.

According to a recent article posted on Economy In Crisis, the bottom 60 percent of all Americans only own 2.3 percent of all the financial wealth in the nation combined.

That is astounding.

If you live in a wealthy area of the country, you may look around and things may look really good to you. But in many other areas of the country things are worse than they have ever been in the post-World War II era. For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

Can you imagine that? We have over a million kids that are attending our public schools that do not have a home to go back to at night.

Our economy desperately needs more jobs, but we just continue to lose more of them. On Thursday, it was announced that American Express is eliminating 5,400 more jobs. More announcements like this come out just about every day now. 65 percent of all Americans expect 2013 to be a year of "economic difficulty", and there aren't a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic about things at this point.

When you lose your job, it can feel like your entire life is falling apart. The competition for jobs is absolutely fierce, and a lot of workers have fallen through the cracks. In this rough economic environment, there are millions of Americans that have never been able to put the pieces of their lives back together. A recent CNN article profiled a 42-year-old woman up in Oregon named Lynette who has had her life totally turned upside down by unemployment...

I'm a single mom with a son in high school.

Three years ago, I was laid off from a job working at a propane company. I had just gotten back on my feet after battling breast cancer, then cervical cancer, but the economy tanked, and I was the first to go.

I am now 42, and the cancer is gone. But it appears my employability is also gone.

She used to work in a position that helped others find government assistance, but now she is the one who has been forced to seek it...

Before I was diagnosed with cancer, I worked for the state of Oregon and was the number one service manager for the Department of Human Services. My job was to help low income families find work and get food stamps and insurance. Now, I cannot even get a job at McDonalds, and I'm the one living on social assistance.

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http://www.koat.com/news/Thousands-apply-for-200-Target-jobs/-/9154100/18109042/-/r6xuwm/-/index.html?absolute=true


HOPE & CHANGE!

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-17/us-mint-out-silver-coins-suspends-sales


LOL!!!

Sign of real confidence in the dollar right there! 

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First Term: Americans “Not in Labor Force” Increased 8,332,000
Cybercast News Service ^ | January 20, 2013 | Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted on January 20, 2013, 4:24:50 PM EST by Olog-hai

The number of Americans age 16 or older who decided not to work or even to seek a job increased by 8,332,000 to a record 88,839,000 in President Barack Obama’s first term, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, the number of retired workers collecting Social Security increased by only 4,234,480.

The increase in Americans opting out of the labor force during Obama’s first term resulted in a decrease in the labor force participation rate from 65.7 percent in January 2009, the month Obama was first inaugurated, to 63.6 percent in December 2012, the latest month reported. Before Obama took office, the labor force participation rate had not been as low as 63.6 percent since 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan took over from President Jimmy Carter. …

When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, there were 80,507,000 American civilians age 16 or older who did not have a job or seek one. In December 2012, there were 88,839,000—thus, the increase of 8,332,000. … In the comparable period of George W. Bush’s second term, the number of Americans choosing not to participate in the labor force went from 76,808,000 in January 2005 to 80,380,000 in December 2012—an increase of 3,572,000. …

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

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Blockbuster Is Closing 300 Stores And Laying Off 3,000 Workers
 


Kim Bhasin|39 minutes ago|112|1
 



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yapsnaps at www.flickr.com
 



DISHJan 22 11:25AM

 

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See Also
 




How Home Depot Uses Your Credit Card Number To Send You Emails
 



Macy's Shoe Salesman Says E-Commerce Is Taking Thousands Off Of His Paycheck
 



The 3 Big Things Retailers Want From Washington This Year
 
Blockbuster has announced that it's closing around 300 stores in the U.S. over the next few weeks.
 
That's around 35 percent of its total brick-and-mortar presence of 850 stores.
 
Around 3,000 employees will be laid off as a result of the closings, according to a spokesperson from parent company Dish Network.
 
"We continue to see value in the Blockbuster brand and we will continue to analyze store level profitability and — as we have in the past — close unprofitable stores," the spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times.
 
Dish acquired Blockbuster back in a 2011 bankruptcy sale. At that point, the chain operated around 1,700 stores.
 
The company had planned to leverage Blockbuster's brand name to push its streaming service to compete with Netflix and Redbox.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/blockbuster-closures-layoffs-2013-1#ixzz2IiqGSAdc

[tu_holmes]

Truly you can't possibly believe that the blockbuster closing is a sign of the economy?

It's just a sign of the digital times.

[GigantorX]

Truly you can't possibly believe that the blockbuster closing is a sign of the economy?

It's just a sign of the digital times.

Yep. They were one step behind in pushing out a digital distribution service. Never had themselves a mediabox for home use and such, it's a shame.

As a kid I used to love going to the Blockbuster and just walking around looking for movies (always the 3 movies for X amount of dollars) and then the wonderment of marching through the Nintendo rentals praying the game I wanted was actually there and if it was you hoped that it didn't suck. My dad had some patience to just sit in the car and wait.

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It's Official: Worst. Recovery. EVER
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/24/2013 09:22 -0500

Ben BernankeGross Domestic ProductMichael CembalestrecoveryRussell 2000St Louis Fed


If there was any debate whether the Fed's policies have helped the economy or just the market (and specifically the Bernanke-targeted Russell 2000), the following two charts will end any and all debate. As the following chart from the St Louis Fed shows, as of the just completed quarter, US GDP "growth" since the "recovery" is now the worst in US history, having just dipped below the heretofore lowest on record.



A slightly prettier version of the same chart created by JPM's Michael Cembalest, is presented below:



 

But fear not: it is only the worst recovery ever for anyone unlucky enough to still rely on such Old Normal concepts as the "economy" to feed, clothe and provide shelter for themselves.

For those lucky 1% of the US population whose entire wealth is in financial assets (and who once again managed to avoid a tax hike on carried interest or any actual financial assets), times have almost never been so good.



Well, it's not the biggest surge in the market since the economic trough in history, but it is close. Which as Bernanke admitted some time ago (when discussing the level of the Russell 2000), is the only thing that actually matters to the Fed.

Yet oddly enough, the trickle down from the trillions in excess wealth created for those who hold financial assets, as a result of daily POMOs pumping some $85 billion, and soon more, into the stock market each month, has yet to materialize.

Oh well: just keep on doing more of what you are doing Uncle Ben, and if possible destroy the US economy even more than you already have - at this point, at least on a relative basis, you can't destroy it more.

Average:
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Your rating: None Average: 5 (16 votes)

www.zerohedge.com

[tu_holmes]

I do agree that the recovery could not possibly be slower... This is definitely something to note.

Will it eventually collapse or is it a sign that the recovery will last and be stable is the long term question. I do not have an answer at all.

[GigantorX]

I do agree that the recovery could not possibly be slower... This is definitely something to note.

Will it eventually collapse or is it a sign that the recovery will last and be stable is the long term question. I do not have an answer at all.

It isn't a recovery at all for "us" but it sure is one hell of a recovery for "them."

i.e., "The Elite"

[tu_holmes]

It isn't a recovery at all for "us" but it sure is one hell of a recovery for "them."

i.e., "The Elite"

No lie about that... The rich are getting richer for sure.

[333386]

37 Statistics Which Show How Four Years Of Obama Have Wrecked The U.S. Economy
TEC ^ | 01/25/2013 | Michael Snyder
Posted on January 27, 2013 9:12:43 AM EST by SeekAndFind

The mainstream media covered the inauguration of Barack Obama with breathless anticipation on Monday, but should we really be celebrating another four years of Obama? The truth is that the first four years of Obama were an absolute train wreck for the U.S. economy. Over the past four years, the percentage of working age Americans with a job has fallen, median household income has declined by more than $4000, poverty in the U.S. has absolutely exploded and our national debt has ballooned to ridiculous proportions. Of course all of the blame for the nightmarish performance of the economy should not go to Obama alone. Certainly much of what we are experiencing today is the direct result of decades of very foolish decisions by Congress and previous presidential administrations. And of course the Federal Reserve has more influence over the economy than anyone else does. But Barack Obama steadfastly refuses to criticize anything that the Federal Reserve has done and he even nominated Ben Bernanke for another term as Fed Chairman despite his horrific track record of failure, so at a minimum Barack Obama must be considered to be complicit in the Fed's very foolish policies. Despite what the Obama administration tells us, the U.S. economy has been in decline for a very long time, and that decline has accelerated in many ways over the past four years. Just consider the statistics that I have compiled below. The following are 37 statistics which show how four years of Obama have wrecked the U.S. economy...

1. During Obama's first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.

2. At the beginning of the Obama era, 32 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps.

3. According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of "Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming."

4. The number of Americans receiving money directly from the federal government each month has grown from 94 million in the year 2000 to more than 128 million today.

5. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either "poor" or "low income" at this point.

6. The unemployment rate in the United States is exactly where it was (7.8 percent) when Barack Obama first entered the White House in January 2009.

7. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

8. During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" soared by an astounding 8,332,000. That far exceeds any previous four year total.

9. During Obama's first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance rose by more than 18 percent.

10. The Obama years have been absolutely devastating for small businesses in America. According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration...

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

11. Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

12. The economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for the hordes of young people now entering the workforce. Approximately 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011.

13. According to a report from the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of the jobs that have been created since the end of the recession have been low paying jobs.

14. Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among "the working poor". Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.

15. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all of the jobs in the United States are "good jobs" at this point.

16. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

17. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

18. The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

19. According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001. That number declined steadily over the course of the next decade and was only at 21.6 percent in 2011.

20. The United States actually has plenty of oil and we should not have to import oil from the Middle East. We need to drill for more oil, but Obama has been very hesitant to do that. Under Bill Clinton, the number of drilling permits approved rose by 58 percent. Under George W. Bush, the number of drilling permits approved rose by 116 percent. Under Barack Obama, the number of drilling permits approved actually decreased by 36 percent.

21. When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.84. Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is $3.26.

22. Under Barack Obama, the United States has lost more than 300,000 education jobs.

23. For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

24. Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 now have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

25. More than three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as were sold in 2012.

26. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

27. Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president.

28. Today, 77 percent of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

29. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

30. The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.

31. The Obama administration has been spending money on some of the most insane things imaginable. For example, in 2011 the Obama administration spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.

32. U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the royal family.

33. The U.S. government has run a budget deficit of well over a trillion dollars every single year under Barack Obama.

34. When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is up to 103 percent.

35. During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.

36. As I wrote about yesterday, when you break it down the amount of new debt accumulated by the U.S. government during Obama's first term comes to approximately $50,521 for every single household in the United States. Are you ready to contribute your share?

37. If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.

But despite all of these numbers, the mainstream media and the left just continue to shower Barack Obama with worship and praise. Newsweek recently heralded Obama's second term as "The Second Coming", and at Obama's pre-inauguration church service Reverand Ronald Braxton openly compared Obama to Moses...

At Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Braxton reportedly crafted his speech around Obama’s personal political slogan: “Forward!”

Obama, said Braxton, was just like Moses facing the Red Sea: “forward is the only option … The people couldn’t turn around. The only thing that they could do was to go forward.” Obama, said Braxton, would have to overcome all obstacles – like opposition from Republicans, presumably, or the bounds of the Constitution. Braxton continued, “Mr. President, stand on the rock,” citing to Moses standing on Mount Horeb as his people camped outside the land of Israel.

But it wasn’t enough to compare Obama with the founder of Judaism and the prophet of the Bible. Braxton added that Obama’s opponents were like the Biblical enemies of Moses, and that Obama would have to enter the battle because “sometimes enemies insist on doing it the hard way.”

[Cold]

I don't give a fuck.

I sleep all day, wake up go lift weight, go home shower and go to the bar and kick it with the honeys. Obama gives me free money to buy protein and that's all I care about.

[AbrahamG]

I don't give a fuck.

I sleep all day, wake up go lift weight, go home shower and go to the bar and kick it with the honeys. Obama gives me free money to buy protein and that's all I care about.

stupid fuck