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I am amused by the desperate efforts of this administration to spin this recession and their idiotic notions and efforts about how to get things back on track.
While spending this nation into a multi-trillion dollar hole (I am saying multi because that is what it will be when the REAL numbers are in as revenue is in a free fall), they also want to claim that their efforts actually created almost a million jobs, while we actually lost over 2.5 million since they got into office.
Remember the Bush years? Yes folks, the Libruls desperately attempted to argue that 4.5% unemployment was NOT good enough. What a difference a year has made; now they are telling us that 10% isn't THAT bad and that things could get worse while telling us how successful their efforts have been and that things MAY have been much worse.
Good lord, it takes a LOT of kool-aid to believe that kind of logic. This article pretty much sums up my feelings on this laughable debate from an administration that has failed at everything it has set out to do and thanks to the criminally irresponsible spending binge it has gone through forcing taxpayers to pay for this corrupt logic for generations.
Stimulus and the Jobless Recovery
Jobs 'created or saved' is meaningless. What matters is net job gain or loss, and that means the unemployment rate.
With the news that GDP grew at 3.5% in the third quarter, it seems apparent that economic recovery is underway. How much of this was a result of government programs? To evaluate this, it is important to understand what constitutes a recovery. There are three developments needed to restore the economy to its prior vibrancy.
The first development, bank stabilization, began in late autumn of last year. The source of the recession was financial-sector turmoil that commenced in August 2007 and peaked in early autumn 2008. Although we did not know it at the time, by the end of 2008 the financial crisis had passed. Financial markets were far from normal, but the panics and major collapses that characterized September 2008 were behind us, and no others arose. This financial-sector stabilization created the environment that is allowing our economy to heal.
........................
After reporting GDP, the government released new numbers claiming that the stimulus programs have "created or saved" over a million jobs. These data were collected from responses by government agencies that received federal funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Agencies were required to report "an estimate of the number of jobs created and the number of jobs retained by the project or activity." This report is required of all recipients (generally private contractors) of agency funds.
Unfortunately, these data are not reliable indicators of job creation nor of the even vaguer notion of job retention. There are two major problems. The first and most obvious is reporting bias. Recipients have strong incentives to inflate their reported numbers. In a race for federal dollars, contractors may assume that the programs that show the most job creation may be favored by the government when it allocates additional stimulus funds.
.......................
Net labor market figures do exist. Administrations have always been held to the time-tested and well-understood monthly job numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports the unemployment rate and the net job gain or loss for the economy as a whole. It is important to use reliable, accurate and well-understood numbers to determine the true causes of recovery. The unemployment rate, now at 9.8%, has continued to rise, and job losses have remained at high levels throughout the stimulus period. Few will be comforted by the good-news-only claim that the stimulus "created or saved" over one million jobs.
Mr. Lazear, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-2009, is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and a Hoover Institution fellow.
Edward Lazear: Stimulus and the Jobless Recovery - WSJ.com
While spending this nation into a multi-trillion dollar hole (I am saying multi because that is what it will be when the REAL numbers are in as revenue is in a free fall), they also want to claim that their efforts actually created almost a million jobs, while we actually lost over 2.5 million since they got into office.
Remember the Bush years? Yes folks, the Libruls desperately attempted to argue that 4.5% unemployment was NOT good enough. What a difference a year has made; now they are telling us that 10% isn't THAT bad and that things could get worse while telling us how successful their efforts have been and that things MAY have been much worse.
Good lord, it takes a LOT of kool-aid to believe that kind of logic. This article pretty much sums up my feelings on this laughable debate from an administration that has failed at everything it has set out to do and thanks to the criminally irresponsible spending binge it has gone through forcing taxpayers to pay for this corrupt logic for generations.
Stimulus and the Jobless Recovery
Jobs 'created or saved' is meaningless. What matters is net job gain or loss, and that means the unemployment rate.
With the news that GDP grew at 3.5% in the third quarter, it seems apparent that economic recovery is underway. How much of this was a result of government programs? To evaluate this, it is important to understand what constitutes a recovery. There are three developments needed to restore the economy to its prior vibrancy.
The first development, bank stabilization, began in late autumn of last year. The source of the recession was financial-sector turmoil that commenced in August 2007 and peaked in early autumn 2008. Although we did not know it at the time, by the end of 2008 the financial crisis had passed. Financial markets were far from normal, but the panics and major collapses that characterized September 2008 were behind us, and no others arose. This financial-sector stabilization created the environment that is allowing our economy to heal.
........................
After reporting GDP, the government released new numbers claiming that the stimulus programs have "created or saved" over a million jobs. These data were collected from responses by government agencies that received federal funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Agencies were required to report "an estimate of the number of jobs created and the number of jobs retained by the project or activity." This report is required of all recipients (generally private contractors) of agency funds.
Unfortunately, these data are not reliable indicators of job creation nor of the even vaguer notion of job retention. There are two major problems. The first and most obvious is reporting bias. Recipients have strong incentives to inflate their reported numbers. In a race for federal dollars, contractors may assume that the programs that show the most job creation may be favored by the government when it allocates additional stimulus funds.
.......................
Net labor market figures do exist. Administrations have always been held to the time-tested and well-understood monthly job numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports the unemployment rate and the net job gain or loss for the economy as a whole. It is important to use reliable, accurate and well-understood numbers to determine the true causes of recovery. The unemployment rate, now at 9.8%, has continued to rise, and job losses have remained at high levels throughout the stimulus period. Few will be comforted by the good-news-only claim that the stimulus "created or saved" over one million jobs.
Mr. Lazear, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-2009, is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and a Hoover Institution fellow.
Edward Lazear: Stimulus and the Jobless Recovery - WSJ.com
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