Smoke Rings
By David Glenn Cox
Groucho Marx once said, "This is so simple a six year old child could do it! Run out and find me a six year old because I can’t make heads or tail out of it." Groucho could have been explaining the economic experts in this country. The more they know the more they know nothing. First they rob you, then they berate you and then they insult your intelligence and get a funny look on their face when you begin to laugh at them.
Bloomberg- "The worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression ended in June 2009, the National Bureau of Economic Research said today, as a slowdown in economic growth raises the possibility of another slump."
Some glorious spring evening in 2009 somewhere between the plant layoff and the first foreclosure notice the expert’s claim the recession ended. Boy, aren’t you glad that’s all over? Unfortunately it’s not, now there is a new recession looming on the horizon. Robert Hall a Stanford University economics professor said, "It’s still too early to tote up the cost, given that we are still far from recovered from its effects. It’s definitely the worst apart from the Depression, which was far, far worse."
In my next life I’m going to be an economics professor because you can be wrong every day and still keep your job. These people are like Steven Hawking dreaming about the universe and black holes without ever leaving the comfort of a classroom. Let’s see your blackboard calculations on paying your mortgage with an unemployment check cue ball. Let’s see you go shopping for your kids school supplies with your last forty bucks Poindexter!
Their intent is to create a false reality to tear off and start fresh with a clean sheet of paper because the economy has sucked for several years now. It’s not getting better it’s getting worse and as the leaves fall off the trees the job market will cool like a Wisconsin autumn. So their idea is to say that recession is over but now we’re fighting off a new one. In the last quarter the US economy grew by an anemic 1.4 % but the major banks reported over $20 billion in profits. What was the growth rate without those bank profits?
The Federal Reserve is funneling money to the banks at an interest rate of .25 percent, which they in turn lend out at 29 percent or invest in Chinese stocks or Real Estate. These aren’t profits they are theft by deception the Federal Reserve is lending them money below cost to buoy the banks and billing the difference to the taxpayer. Meanwhile every other area of the economy and in every region of the country is withering.
The academics like to use percentages because it hides more than it shows. These numbers represent real people. These real people have families and children and dreams and desires. They were really forced from their homes and they really stand in line for charity to feed themselves this isn’t some academic exercise with a computer. These are Americans lost in a universe of struggle and woe drifting in the empty void of economic outer space.
Bloomberg- "Bruce Kasman is among economists projecting the world’s largest economy will not grow enough to lower joblessness, which has been hovering near 10 percent. "It’s a recovery that feels fragile, and still raises questions about the risks to its sustainability," Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, said in an interview. "We’re seeing job growth, but it hasn’t been robust. A year from now, we expect the unemployment rate will be pretty much where it is."
It not only feels fragile it feels non-existent this is much like Orwell’s 1984 declaring Oceania's victory over Eurasia just before announcing the new war in Eastasia. According to Bruce the millions of us without jobs should just write off another year of our lives as economic castaways. Is that acceptable to you?
President Obama cast aside the imperial purple for the simple garb of candidate yesterday and said, "For the millions of people who are jobless and struggling, "it's still very real for them," the president said. He added that people are frustrated because progress has been "slow and steady" instead of "the kind of quick fixes that I think a lot of people would like to see."
He noticed us! Sixty days from election day and he feels our pain and his answer is? "Progress has been "slow and steady" instead of "the kind of quick fixes that I think a lot of people would like to see." Well powder my ass and call me Honey because a quick fix sounds good to me I don’t like the idea of languishing another year without a job. At the current rate of employment it is estimated that it will take eighty-five months to create enough jobs for those unemployed now.
Progress has been invisible and imaginary, "A great many men have imagined states and princedoms such as nobody ever saw or knew in the real world, and there is such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn how to accomplish his own ruin, not his salvation." (Machiavelli)
What Machiavelli is saying is that listening to college economics professors and telling us you feel our pain won’t solve America’s problems and it won’t solve Obama’s problem. There was a time when not being George Bush was good enough but that time has passed. History has a Doppler effect moving forward in a slow and steady manner might look prudent in real time but as time passes and we see it in retrospect it will appear to be standing still and doing nothing.
So while the Bureau of Labor statistics can issue a report about job growth year over year. "Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia reported unemployment rate decreases from a year earlier, 20 states posted increases, and 3 states had no change. The national jobless rate was unchanged in July at 9.5 percent and little different from a year earlier (9.4 percent)."
The states that posted decreases, Kansas, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota, Indiana, Oklahoma and the District of Columbia.
The states that posted increases in unemployment, California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina and Georgia.
So while Michigan missed making the list by adding 27,000 new jobs in a year the Michigan unemployment rate is still 13.1%. North Dakota added 6,200 jobs but New York lost over 50,000 jobs. California which all ready had an unemployment rate of 12.3% lost year over year 104,000 jobs between July 2009 and July 2010. Would you rather have a quarter in your pocket or every worker in Kansas or a dime for every worker in California? Omitted from these government statistics are new workers because you can’t be counted as unemployed until you have a job to lose first.
The economists paint us a picture with smoke rings and the politician paints a picture with hope. But for the tens of millions of unemployed Americans that’s not good enough and that’s not acceptable that our cities are falling into ruins while the banks flush with newly printed money invest in Asia. Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it this way,
"Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources."
F.D.R. spoke those words not two years into his presidency but on his first day. He understood that an economic calamity isn’t about numbers its about people.
"We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it." (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
"The people of the United States have not failed." Their government has failed them and Roosevelt is clearly dealing with the real world while Obama is saying, trust me. Roosevelt was attacking the point of the spear while Obama is saying trust me. Roosevelt did more in one hundred days than Obama has done in seven hundred but Obama says, "trust me." Candidates for office can say trust me because they don’t have the job yet but Presidents must run on their record.