"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants" - Albert Camus

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Summer of Recovery Revisited on its Anniversary

I know I am late with this but six days ago marked the one year anniversary of the 'Summer of Recovery' touted by the village idiot we call our Vice-President. 

Biden, with great fanfare, announced on June 17, 2011 that more people were going to be put to work that summer.  Looking back, the actual numbers of new jobs created obviously disputed that claim's veracity:

June:           -192,000

July:              -49,000

August:         -59,000

September:   -29,000

Well, maybe the village idiot meant 'jobs saved'!

Looking at the following 12 months after that fateful statement, we now know why only 30% of the nation seems to be willing to vote these jokers back in for another term:

  • The country is still plagued by high unemployment (9.1%) and even higher underemployment (15.8%, BLS // 18.6%, Gallup)
  • May 2011: Unemployment increases for the second consecutive month
  • May 2011: Overall consumer spending drops for the first time in 11 months
  • May 2011: New-home construction rose to adjusted annual rate of 560,000 units per year---but still far below the 1.2 million new homes per year that Economists say is needed to sustain a healthy housing market
  • Applications for new weekly unemployment benefits have average 434,792 since last summer
  • Consumer prices for all goods have increased each month since June 2010
  • Cost of food for a family of four, on average, up 5% since last summer
  • 6.2 million Americans have been unemployed for 6 months or longer
  • Nearly 1 of every 3 people unemployed have been out of work for more than 1 year
  • About 25 of mortgage holders nationwide are now underwater -- owe more than their homes are worth
  • GDP revised down to a disappointing annual rate increase of 1.8% in the first quarter of 2011, (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  If adjusted for inventory build ups, the rate goes down to 0.6% growth.

Oh, by the way, if the economy keeps on adding jobs at the past 12 months' rate of 72,500 per month, it will take 8 years to just make up for the jobs lost since the beginning of the recession in 2007.  That of course does not even account for the population increase in the work force!

Of course, what is the response of Democrats to the wild success of the past Obama stimulus?  More stimulus
Did Einstein have today's Democrats in mind when he defined insanity as 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results' or what?





  

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