Continuing claims haven’t dropped, but at least the astronomical growth has leveled off. Continuing claims haven’t increased significantly for weeks now (chart after the break).
Okay, the economy isn’t fixed. Nobody said it was going to be quick or easy. But it’s improving by many measures, and even lagging indicators like unemployment are getting ready to hit bottom and rebound — as long as we don’t give up on Federal stimulus efforts too early.
Thanks for the post Jeff. Unfortunately the claims leveling off has more to do with the timing of some automotive layoffs not in the data. Sorry for the bad news.
“Nobody said it was going to be quick or easy”
Perhaps not in those words but you must recall the numbers the administration used to sell us on their stimulus plan.
http://theaffordablemortgagedepression.com/2009/05/22/the-stimulus-spending-fraud — cbo-unemployment-predictions-versus-administration-assertions.aspx?ref=rss
A promise of unemployment peaking at under 8% by the q3 of this year then starting it’s descent before the new year sure made it sound like a quick and easy fix. Now the same economists are saying they misread the economy and have revised the forcasts to a peak of 10-11% unemployment pushing out to q2-3 next year.
I hope and pray that the new predictions are at least correct and I surely hope your optimism is born out, but I wonder if these are the same economists that are telling us how much money we will save with a “public option” health plan or how little more people will need to pay for goods and services under cap and trade. So far their track record for reading the economy has been pretty freakin horrible so forgive me if I don’t rush to believe them now.
Most key indicators show a slowing of the economic downturn. Gladly, Obama’s plan seems to be pulling us out of the ditch Bush put us in.
In fairness a lot of this stuff isn’t Obama’s fault (demographics specifically). However, I do fault him for letting the Democrats in Congress write - what is now mostly agreed as - a boondoggle of a “stimulus” bill. In an effort to stay on good terms with the Congressional Democrats, I’m afraid she signed a pretty bad bill.
I would consider Obama the greatest president to have ever taken office if he diverted any unspent stimulus to a payroll tax holiday and promised to hold off on cap and trade and healthcare until unemployment goes back below 7%. Economic activity would explode with a renewed confidence in the market, e would be viewed as the bridge builder he promised he was, he would cut the legs from under every republican that was still walking and there would be a permanent Dem majority for another 50 years. I would gladly call myself an Obama Democrat too.
hold off on cap and trade…until unemployment goes back below 7%
We’ll all be fried, but business will be great!
We’re all unemployed and homeless, but the weather is the proper seasonal norm of 32 below!!!
Or will we get state housing and fuel assistance in your idea of a cap trade insured climate?
You make the charge, now support it.
We’re past waiting on combating global warming. It is now the number 1 priority, even ahead of health care. I know, that’s not Obama’s position. But it’s the position of all those who are qualified to make this claim (i.e. the scientific community, whom you and your ilk regard with disdain).
I have my own ilk? Really, do they know me?
You’re a friendly one aren’t you Pete? I suppose you think you will win a lot of people over with this sort of charm? I haven’t seen you advance a single logical argument to anything - unless it’s been somehow buried in your contentious snark and appeals to higher authority. This kind of Rebel With a Cause attitude probably plays well with the hippy high school girls but among adults it’s seen as pretty childish. I imagine it is age appropriate behaviour for you so I’ll accept it for what it is, but it does grate on one’s nerves to have one’s ankles bitten by little fleas like you.
But to try to rescue you from bumper sticker slogans serving as your thought, if it isn’t mine or Obama’s position, wouldn’t I then be of Obama’s ilk in my disdain for science? Would that then make you part of the scientific community who are qualified to make this claim?
Now some how I doubt this is what you meant but it is what you said which should prove a good lesson for you in the future which would be to think before you speak.
Wow, you’re a sensitive one, Lloyd. Little words like “ilk” really upset you, don’t they? Maybe if you look them up in the dictionary, they won’t be so scary.
So, according to your post, since Obama doesn’t put combating global warming at the top of his priority list, that means he hates science and has disdain for all scientists and worships Fox News.
Anybody who doubts the seriousness of global warming is living in a fucking dream world.
While you’re at it, you should look up “Straw Man”.
Healthcare….
Tell me this: If we spend twice as much as we should today for healthcare in American, as Democrats claim, should it really be costing anything at all for healthcare reform?
Seems to me with all this money in the system, the price tag should be a net negative.
Enlighten me.
Health care reform will put the insurance companies out of business unless they have the wisdom to pick up the bill processing and check writing functions through a contracted arrangement with the government. This displacement of workers, if it happens will cost some money to correct. It will take some time for some physicians to adjust to the fact that they will have to produce results and not just perform billable procedures. There will be a period of negotiations between the government and the private suppliers of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment before those costs decline. We are fat and lazy as a society and it will take some time to correct that. Electronic medical records systems carry some initial up front expenditures but the payoffs in transparency and outcomes management will be tremendous. You have to spend money to make money. That is an axiom of conservativism.
Because magic ponies don’t exist. Iraq is costing billions per day, but it would take many extra hundreds of billions in funds to withdraw.
You are, however, unenlightenable.
Based on the premise you all have used for healthcare reform, that we spend twice as much as other civilized nations on our healthcare, it would seem that anything but a net cost saving for all Americans on healthcare should be considered as a failure.
Would you all be able to commit to that? To the presumption that it takes money to make money?
Perhaps the year 1 health reform cost will be $1 billion. Perhaps for year 2 as well. But shouldn’t we have enough confidence in this solution that for year 3, the cost can be budgeted at no cost. And for year 4, if this all is as good as people say it will be, shouldn’t we be able to budget the cost at a net savings, or a cost of -$1 billion?
You’re making the case that we need healthcare reform based on the fact we pay too much. Then you’re saying we have to spend $1 billion a year more.
Brilliant point DTM. I also question, if insurance compny greed is the culprit in our current predicament, why we would want to include them in thix process as well. Wouldnt they be just an added layer of people whose labor and benefits would have to be paid for? Of course if you do it without the existing companies you will have to create all the infrastructure that every single insurance company that exists today had to buiild but you would have to do it in a much shorter time. Obviously the people that get laid off from the UHG’s and Blue Crosses could go to work for the government but how many of the current blue cross or UHG employees are in public employee unions and are eligible for pensions. Has any analysis been done on the cost of employing a government worker versus a private worker that does the exact same job?
In theory, if all the dominoes fell in the right places at the right time and everyone was willing to voluntarily do what is necessary to make this work, in 10 to 20 years healthcare would cost less, but by that time healthcare will likely mean something completely different and some supplemental private program will be authorised to to pay for everything universal care does not. Social Security was designed to be a self sustaining program that would ensure a smooth road to retirement but it’s been bailed out several times and scheduled to be bankrupt again. Programs like the 401k had to be developed just to supplement the income paid into it. Medicare has how many parts now? And medicaid? All these programs have noble goals and a certain level of success as safety nets but they haven’t ever lived up to the expectations that were set for them.
I say, if you want to try it, try it in hennepin county or new york or something smaller than the entire country. If it works there others will demand it in their area to and everyone wins. Considering how divided the country is on this issue, wouldn’t that be a fair compromise?
And yet I get an email from my congressman today (Kline) entitled, “Where are the jobs?”
The the job loss rate is slowing doesn’t mean we’re decreasing the unmployment rate. We’re just not increasing the rate as quickly.
For as many billion of our dollars that have been pumped in to the economy, we have every right to ask where the jobs are. After writing a check for almost a trillion dollars from the taxpayer, we should have high expectations and be ready to criticize it (and its authors) if it doesn’t work.
But we’re talking two months, and unrealistically high expectations. Of course, we’re talking Kline.
We’re talking nearly 6 months. And $800 billion taxpayer dollars.
Okay, so six months into a two year plan.
DTM,
DTM,
The time line for economic recovery from a financial collapse of the magnitude we have experienced is years. I agree that any rosy predictions that the Obama administration may have made were ill conceived but likely intended to affect the hearts and minds crowd. You walk a fine line between maintaining confidence and projecting reality. There are leading and lagging indicators. The lagging indicators will persist with only marginal improvement for a couple of years. I think you realize that we would be in much worse shape had nothing been done. In a perfect world, the stimulus package could have been more immediately targeted but I would also be concerned that the perception that things are improving rapidly when the reality is that they can’t is equally damaging. The bad news is that Obama is releasing the money cautiously but the good news is that Obama is releasing the money cautiously. Shouldn’t we give it a reasonable amount of time before passing judgement?
“I think you realize that we would be in much worse shape had nothing been done.”
That is debatable. Two things were done, TARP and the Stimulus. By all accounts, and by listening to Warren Buffett whom I place alot of faith in, TARP probably did save us from an abyss. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fast and it worked.
Stimulus on the other hand is highly debatable and thankful for Obama we’ll never know the answer. Did we need it? Did it need to be $800 billion instead of $100 billion or $250 billion? When the economy recovers, will it have really been because of Stimulus?
“Shouldn’t we give it a reasonable amount of time before passing judgement?”
Obviously now, since we have a democratic president, and democratic majorities in both houses of congress, reasonableness is not required of republicans.
“I agree that any rosy predictions that the Obama administration may have made were ill conceived but likely intended to affect the hearts and minds crowd.”
This reminds me of the Minutemen song title, “Do you want New Wave, or do you want the truth?”
Your statement begs the question of what other things Obama promised that were simply intended to affect the hearts and minds of the crowd and whether he would have been elected if he had been honest about his plans.
At the time McCain said “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” the fundamentals actually were strong. That is to say, there was ample amount of certainty in capital, labor, optimism and opportunity to pull up from our 6.5% unemployment rate. After the banking collapse capital was challenged but still existed. All the money that was made during the housing bubble was still out there but with the collapse of the credit market few were willing to lend it out. By the time Christina Romer said it the labor was still there but credit was frozen solid and the government’s bipartisan hamfisted “fix” and subsequent “I’m the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks” stance introduced uncertainty of what rules any opportunities could be approached with.
So now we actually have the economy that Obama ran against and he has to try to talk us out of the nose dive that party statist, or more precisely corporatist, politics put us in. You can’t expect the people who’ve lost their jobs (or seen half their company laid off), are behind in their mortgages (or expect to be with after the next round of layoffs) to not make a judgement on whether the promises the authors of the bailouts and stimulus plans made. We need certainty, capital, opportunity and optimism. Hope only gives us one of those and change while creating its own opportunities seems to be taking the capital and certainty away.
We wont see the economy recover until all the changes that the administration wants to make to it our known - but this is something that people should have seen with every uptick in his pre-election approval numbers.
Lloyd,
You wonder whether Obama would have been elected “if he had been honest about his plans”.
Obama was elected because he is honest and in spite of the brutally dishonest smears that were directed at him.
Don’t mince words. You are implying deception, so call him a liar. See where that gets you.
I was quoting you Ron. Agreeing with your assertion that “any rosy predictions that the Obama administration may have made were ill conceived but likely intended to affect the hearts and minds crowd.”
I take that as an admission of dishonesty and I whole heartedly agree. The truth is there he had no idea what direction the market would take because he had no idea how it would respond to his proposals or even what his proposals would ultimately look like. I’m not calling him a liar but I am agreeing that his predictions were made precisely for the reasons you said.
Obama is a politician so don’t be shocked at the suggestion that he was less than forthright during the campaign - especially after suggesting it yourself in a less forthright way.
I wish there was an edit button because to be fair, he didn’t start misleading people on how successful the stimulus plan would be until after the election. I just think it should call into question all the promises he made before he got the job too.
Rosy predictions are not lies. They are optimistic projections. Lies are taking known facts and misrepresenting them for personal gain. You cited The republican suggestion during the campaign that the fundamentals of the economy were sound. Those statements were based of existing conditions and historical data and they were patently false. Same with the weapons of mass destruction claims.
Huh? Ok, then we can agree that lies are known facts misrepresented for personal gain. We can also agree that Rosy predictions are optimistic projections of unknown facts made for personal gain.
I don’t recall claiming that anything Obama said was a lie and if I did, lets ammend it to say he used extremely rosy predictions in selling his stimulus. We can then also agree, using those same criteria, that McCain was using Rosy predictions too.