I've written oftentimes that the United States and every nation are undergoing what can only be called "a great shaking." Everything that can be shaken is being shaken to its very foundation, and this is having its affect on everyone, and everything. The very foundations of everything is being shaken, as the new unemployment figures have just come in today at 10.2 per cent. This puts the number of unemployed Americans - those filing for the first time, and those currently collecting unemployment benefits, at a staggering total of over 36 million unemployed; more than the combined population of every nation in the Caribbean Basin. That is a lot of people out of work.
Although the public is being told that the United States is in the very beginnings of a recovery, and the stock market appears temporarily high, the unemployment figures, and consumer confidence belie the reports. We are not in a recovery, and the same pundits who are making these claims know it. With the exception of what they are claiming now, they have stated several times in the last eight months that we will not be in a recovery until at the very least late 2011. So why the deception? It has to do with political and ideological loyalties. During the early months of Ronald Reagan's first term, when similar unemployment figures were exhibited, the news media went to town with them excoriating Reagan's policies, bemoaning the state of the economy, and how bad it was. Today, we're being told that similar figures - actually worst - are a sign that the economy is :"turning around," though the evidence is quite to the contrary. The United States is in a deep Recession, and some believe has broken into a Depression.
Add to the rising unemployment figures, the fact that when one factors in the under-employed, that is those people who are holding two or more jobs to earn what they used to earn a year ago, or those who are just getting by on half or a quarter of the previous earnings, and those who used to hold full time positions, but are now working part-time because they cannot find full-time work; the actual figure stands at 17.5 per cent. This would put the number of unemployed and underemployed Americans at an even more staggering 65 million! This of course is not counting those who are no longer collecting unemployment benefits because they have exhausted all of their extensions and are no longer used by the Department of Labor in their statistics. The true unemployment figures are not being reported, because the great majority of unemployed Americans have exhausted all of their unemployment benefits, and are no longer counted by the Department of Labor. They do not exist, they've fallen off of the Labor Department's radar. They are no longer even a statistic. This is not being reported, but it is having a devastating effect on consumer confidence, and that is another gauge by which we can know the true direction of the economy besides those of the unemployment figures.
But the signs of a depression are all around US. Where once there thrived numerous small businesses, now stand vacant lots. Some have been vacant since 2007, and have become abandoned commercial real estate. Thousands of car dealerships either went out of business, or were forced by the Obama Administration to go out of business and give their clientele list to businesses pre-chosen by the White House and the labor unions. Some thriving businesses were forced to close because of this. And though the dollar has never been weaker (due to the Fed's 24x7x365 printing to meet liquidity demands), small businesses have had to cut prices to the bone in order to keep sales up and remain in business. Large companies like Dell, Apple, and others have had to cut prices and think up all sorts of gimmicks to get consumers to buy their products, but few are falling for the bait. These are not the signs of a recovery, not by a long shot.
And while some business sectors have reported a slight uptick this past quarter, it is not because of true growth in R&D, procurement, investment, and job creation, but because they have scaled back R&D, reduced or eliminated procurement altogether, frozen hiring, and cut back to the bone their existing labor force. That translates into job losses and the unemployment figures confirm it. Of course any revenue minus the reduced overhead will be positive, and thus the "positive" numbers. The only sector that has seen expansion in the labor market has been government, and it is largely due to Obama's expansion of the federal government. This is not a recovery, and the American people know it.
The politicians and Wall Street think they don't, but they're wrong, because consumer confidence one of many gauges used in following and recording how people feel about the economy in general also paint a grim picture. Consumer confidence continued to drop in the month of October, just as it did the previous months. Again the slight uptick in the previous quarter had been due to the highly touted "Cash for Clunkers," which proved to be temporary, but at a cost of $21,000 per clunker to the tax payer for cars worth only hundreds of dollars; it proved like all other federal meddling in the private sector, a dismal failure, and total waste of tax payer dollars. As people continue to lose more jobs and remain unemployed without available work in the private sector, consumer confidence will continue to be weak and sluggish. If you're out of work and unable to find work, you're not going to spend whatever little money you have. This translates into less spending. This impacts businesses in reduced sales, and forces them to continue to cut their labor in order to stay in business. This is no recovery, it is a slow death. This is why the public continues to express worry about where the economy is going, and the economic viability of our country. The gubernatorial elections in New Jersey (a dark blue state for years), and Virginia which hadn't seen a Republican governor in decades, were indicators of the public's discontent with the direction the nation has been in these past several months. They want the government to stop spending and taxing, and the best way they have to show it is at the ballot box with the vote, and they have.
Another gauge that is used as a valuable indicator of where this economy is really going is the rate of bank failures and the level in which banks are lending to small businesses, where most of the jobs come from. Even with the massive bailouts given to them by the federal government - first under President Bush late last year, and now under Obama (Stimulus One, Omnibus One, , the banks have continued to fail at an incredible rate, and the ones that are solvent, are not lending, but hoarding and investing the TARP money overseas. What's more, the federal government is borrowing at an incredible rate to meet its responsibilities. This is crowding out small business, and others who have to compete with the government for scarce capital, and since the small business cannot borrow, it is not hiring, and it is not investing, and it is not growing, expanding, because it just holding on.
The Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats, and their allies in the news media like to tout the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) also known as Stimulus One, as having been successful in creating new jobs and preserving old ones, even while faced with growing unemployment figures, yet what they do not tell the public is that the jobs created have been exclusively federal bureaucracy jobs, not private sector jobs. So while the public sector is growing as the federal bureaucracy continues to expand under Obama, the private sector - the true harbinger of real economic growth, continues to contract. Although Obama had promised that his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would create three million new jobs, the opposite is what occurred, over three million jobs have been lost since they passed the ARRA, with more than 7.3 million (some say more than 8 million) jobs have been lost since the Great Recession/Depression of 2009 began in December of 2007.
Add to this congress' irresponsible passing of HR 1105, the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill which according to Freedom Works (http://www.freedomworks.org/publications/key-vote-no-hr-1105-2009-omnibus-appropriations-bi) would do the following, and has done the following:
"Far from the new fiscal responsibility taxpayers were recently promised at President Obama’s Economic Summit, this bill is a whopping 80 percent spending increase packed with earmarks and sweeping policy changes.
Rather than considering each appropriations bill individually, allowing time for Congress and the public to scrutinize, view, and debate the merits of these funding levels, this massive bill leaves gaping holes in accountability. This has resulted in over 9,000 earmarks for Congressional pork projects totaling approximately $5 billion in new spending. In addition to the thousands of earmarks, a lack of oversight has provided funds to agencies and programs that already received money through the earlier Economic Stimulus plan, in essence letting many “double-dip” from taxpayer funds.
The Omnibus Appropriations bill also hides many significant policy changes that should be considered on their own. These include: terminating the very successful D.C. School Voucher program – a program that has provided students of all backgrounds the opportunity to attend the school of their choice that suits their individual needs; funding for a new House Office building; and $245 million for “Housing Counseling” to be administered through HUD. Previously these funds ended up in the hands of ACORN, an activist group convicted of vote fraud and spearheading a campaign to trespass on, and take over, foreclosed properties.
Altogether the omnibus increases government spending at more than double the rate of inflation and almost triple the rate of median growth in household incomes. This is a country deep in recession that just tripled the deficit with earlier spending packages; Congress should not be expanding government or increasing spending anywhere. The bill for this spending will come due and when it does, it will have to be paid for with more taxes, hurting families and businesses already burdened from the loss of savings, jobs, and growing inflation.
Instead of looking for ways to spend more of the taxpayers’ hard earned money, Congress should simply pass a continuing resolution, freezing spending for government programs at the current levels."
Congress, which likes to vote itself its won pay raise, voted to bypass the procedural oversight of specific bills, and include in one large bill, all of its favorite spending programs for their political machineries back home in their districts at tax payer's expense. Fiscal responsibility went out the window with this bill, and so it has been since. Far from stimulating the economy, and stimulating the private sector, it has only enriched "connected" recipients back home where most the congressmen will face reelection in 2012.
Change has indeed come to America, but not the change that those who voted for Obama and gave the Democrats additional seats in congress and the senate anticipated and hoped for. This only serves to illustrate that ignorance is not bliss. Oh no, not by a long shot. Ignorance is dangerous. Especially when it is exercised at the polls as it was in the elections of 2008. And as far as a recovery is concerned, the only recovery we are seeing exists only in the minds of the partisans who report to US how great things are as they sit behind their desks and collect their six figures while the rest of US are squeezed and told to love it because it is for our good.
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