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Real Recovery Is Easy to Spell: J-O-B-S
The recession is over! The economy is growing! The Dow Jones is above 10,000! Bankers are pocketing profits and fat bonuses! Happy days are here again!
Unless, of course, you're just a regular working stiff struggling with falling income and rising unemployment - and sensing that your family's grip on middle-class life is steadily slipping away. Welcome to America's tinkle-down economy.
The latest job numbers mock the smiley-faced claims of economists and polticos that the Great Recession is over:
- 10.2 percent of America's workforce is officially unemployed - nearly 16 million people.
- Another 15 million people are either so discouraged by their fruitless job search that they've quit looking, or they've had to settle for part-time jobs when they want and need full-time employment. Add the discouraged and underemployed to the number of the officially unemployed, and the percentage of our people who can't find the work they need rises to 17.5 percent - one out of every six workers.
- More than a third of the officially unemployed have been jobless for more than half a year - a new record for long-term joblessness.
- Nearly 15 percent of the unemployed have college degrees, and many more of the college-educated are underemployed.
- October was the 22nd straight month that the U.S. economy lost jobs - the longest streak since 1939. About 7.3 million jobs have been eliminated since December 2007, when the recession began. In this same time span, 2.8 million new workers have come into the job market, meaning our economy is now 10.1 million jobs short of the number needed just to get back to even.
- While average wages have risen slightly in the past year, average weekly pay has stagnated because workers have had their hours cut.
So please excuse our country's workaday majority for not cheering the news that prosperity has returned to those at the tippy top of America's economic pyramid. And - please - do not continue to insult workers with the dismissive declaration that the economy is experiencing a "jobless recovery." Not only is that an oxymoron, it is moronic.
If most American's have not recovered, then neither has our economy.
(Imagine a situation in which working families were prospering, but corporate profits were down for 22 straight months - do you think economists and politicos could get away with labeling it a "profitless recovery"?)Especially galling is the fact that the talk of recovery is mostly based on the resurrection of Wall Street profits. Conveniently ignored by exultant bankers is the reality that they would have no profits (and no banks) except that Washington has propped them up with some $13 trillion in public bailout money.
The rationale for this unprecedented rescue of failed bankers was that they would reciprocate with a vigorous lending effort to businesses, which then could start hiring and rebuilding the grassroots economy that Wall Street greed crushed. But astonishingly, the giveaway to bankers came with no strings attached! So, instead of pouring capital into the American countryside, they've gone right back to casino-style speculation - while pocketing more than $100 billion in bonuses for themselves.
These people are thieves. They've stolen our public funds, our jobs and our middle-class aspirations. It's time to grab them by the short hairs, forcing them to make the loans that our real economy needs - or have their banks shut down and their capital turned over to community banks, credit unions and others who will invest in America's productive businesses and workers.
After the latest jobless numbers came out, President Obama said, "I will not rest until all Americans who want work can find work." Excuse me, but that's like a lawyer saying to his client, "I'll get you out of jail if it takes me the rest of your life."
America's workers and communities don't need presidential assurances, they need action, bold and immediate. As Obama said in last year's campaign, "We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle class, and we need to do it not five years from now, not next year, we need to do it right now."
Where did that guy go?
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Show All"Where did that guy go?" He went back into the world of corporate finance from which he came, as their sponsored resident of the White House. "Recovery" means that many of these corporations are doing well (making good profits) not by employing more but by employing fewer workers (rising worker productivity you know.) The real question is how does he get by with the fraud of claiming to be promoting jobs, jobs, jobs? Simple, it's in the detail of his promises to "create or save" millions of jobs. So you can be losing actual jobs (laying off workers) and actually saving jobs at the same time, if you don't lay off workers that you might have laid off, had it not been for the "improving" economy. If a worker even KEEPS his or her job, it counts as a job "saved." With millions of workers still employed, think of the endless possibilities to pronounce the success of your economic policies because of the jobs you have SAVED. If financial investment advisers used this kind of sleight of hand accounting they could (or should) be sent to jail. I guess there's a level of political power at which you're "too big to jail."
Read Obama's lips...JOBLESS RECOVERY, the oxymoron of the decade !
Obama's concept of a jobless recovery is as delusional as his enhancing the ability of the banks that are too big to fail to grow ever larger.
Excuse me, but if you think this is the first time we've heard the term "jobless recovery" you are sorely mistaken. We heard about it during Reagan's time, and how many people do we hear EVER having even mentioned that? NONE, that is how many.
This isn't Obama's fault, he is still working on cleaning up the mess left by 30 years of republican rule (and YES, I DO consider Clinton to be a republican. His policies certainly weren't democratic). If you think that it's easy to create jobs when you still have tax breaks for business that are set up specifically to destroy the middle class, you really haven't thought this through.
Until we put our own people ahead of corporate profits, we have and will have NOTHING. And no one person will ever be able to undo the damage caused by 30 years of ACTIVE sabotage, certainly not in less than a year.
Get realistic. If you think that changing the president will change everything else, especially the hearts and minds of those who did the damage in the first place. They have built up an awful lot of hate, and that won't be undone by less than a year of a new president. In case you haven't noticed, they are dong everything they can to make sure that nothing DOES change. Bitch to the righties, and ask THEM why THEY are standing in the way of this being a better country for ALL, not just THEMSELVES.
"he is still working on cleaning up the mess "
How exactly? You either reverse the things actually done in the past, or you do the things that weren't done. So how is Obama doing either?
Start by closing down those banks. Start with Bank of America, one of the slimiest organizations in an industry of slimy organizations. Nationalize the banks. It's OUR money, we shouldn't have to shell out so much of it for other's profits.
Repeal the tax laws that give industry breaks for moving our jobs overseas.
Heavily tax and tariff any goods they produce in other countries to sell to us. Every other country in the world has about a 25% tariff on OUR goods, and we have a 2% on most of theirs.
Bring back Glass-Steagall.
Repeal the Reagan tax cuts. Bring back responsibility to the rich. They have gotten away with our money and our resources for far too long.
How's that for a start? And the idiots in power seem to think it's difficult to know what to do. It's easy if you stop thinking that the insane profits for the few have to be protected above all. Hell, they have enough to live on for eternity, it's time that the rest of us get enough to live on for now.
When you look at the economy it’s easy to see millions of jobs that are not getting done. Take a trip through a “for profit” nursing home and look at how few “hands on” workers are seeing to the needs of the elderly and disabled. Most of the shifts in "for profit" nursing homes could have another 50% of hands on employees and there would still be plenty of work for everybody. Dittoes for the “for profit” hospitals, nursing staffs could be increased by a third.
Another area of health care that sees almost no attention is obesity. Obesity is a healthcare time bomb that is going to explode with massive increases in diabetes, heart disease, hip and knee problems and dozens of other health problems. A whole new health industry could be built around the treatment of obesity that the current health care system ignores.
In agriculture giant factory farms that raise livestock in deplorable conditions need to be replaced with small scale livestock farms that are far more environmentally friendly, farms where livestock is treated humanely, and farms that produce higher quality products than the CAFO’s of today.
In our public schools staffs could be increased substantially to reduce class size, increase curriculum choices, expand education in the arts, and redeveloped extra circular activities that have been slashed due to funding cuts.
In many cities in the Midwest where manufacturing jobs have been outsourced entire blue collar working class neighborhoods are becoming ghost towns with more than half the houses vacant and not even the slum lords are not willing to spend more than $12,000.00 for one of these houses. Some of these houses are beyond repair and they need to be demolished, others need only minor improvements to become livable again. Saving these neighborhoods would create lots of jobs in construction, one of the hardest hit sectors of the economy.
Toss in needed improvements to our infrastructure, environment and the fabric of society and there is more than enough work needed in our economy to put every American that needs a job to work…but none of this will happen until the economic elite is no longer in charge of our society because our politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.
Spending a trillion dollars a year on war, the military, and a thousand U.S. bases worldwide precludes implementing your logical and appropriate ideas. Too bad, nice try, but after all, this IS the U.S.A., land of the FEES and home of the DEPRAVED.
The obvious answer to permanent unemployment is to kill the unemployed. War is the answer and war is what you will get. World War III is nothing more that a larger example of the American Genocide against American Indians. If they are not Christians then it's all right to kill them. It's the necessary price for the shift to globalism, world government, and American hegemony. It's manifest destiny on steroids. It's God's will!
Ya, send them to die in a meaningless war, or dont give them health insurance, or poison their food and water, or allow them to carry guns anywhere, or make heating options unaffordable,tax them to death, or .......
let's rememner that before the massive layoffs and the unemployment rate going thru the roof the armed services couldn't find anyone to join and were taking the mentally ill and convicts......
now the army etc has NO PROBLEM meeting recruitment goals......
Why do so many assume that "a vigorous lending effort to businesses, which then could start hiring and rebuilding the grassroots economy" is a plan that has any possibility of working?
The majority of jobs - and careers - that have been lost have been lost forever. Vigorous lending ain't bringing back 10 million manufacturing jobs, and without that solid base, the rest is temporary band-aids and peanuts.
Do we really want to force banks to lend to businesses that have no reason to expand, or small businesses that have no chance of success? (On average, 500K small businesses open per year; 500K also fail per year. Net job creation: 0).
Capitalism in its present form is a Dead System Walking and we all know it. Our moneyGod has left the building. And we got no Plan B...
"Where did that guy go?" -- Jim Hightower
My question is, did that guy ever really exist, or was he simply a figment of the imagination, engendered by his rhetoric and by people who saw and heard what they wanted to see and hear, rather than the reality?
Many people who are working, whose jobs have been saved, have had their hours cut, and in turn, their salaries. Due to the fact that they are making less money, they are unable to meet their financial obligations. Now, these people are in danger of losing their homes, etc., through foreclosure and bankruptcy.
"With millions of workers still employed, think of the endless possibilities to pronounce the success of your economic policies because of the jobs you have SAVED. If financial investment advisers used this kind of sleight of hand accounting they could (or should) be sent to jail. I guess there's a level of political power at which you're "too big to jail." -- Jerry D. Rose
Well said!
This "guy" is sliding through on a banana peel, and he can't get away with arrogating success for much longer. Each month, it's wryly amusing to me that the so-called experts scratch their heads in complete bafflement when the higher unemployment numbers roll in, and consumer spending is down. Therefore, I have to seriously question their ability to solve any problems/issues that have come to light since the financial crisis hit "we the people" -- or, do the authorities even really care?
Kay Johnson, bingo ! I would say Obama was just doing his typical campaign talk. This same thing I remember happening in 2004 except that when the unemployment appeared to be going back down, it took a while for Kerry to talk about the quality of the jobs as you have described. Kerry lost anyway but the talk about the quality of the jobs that remain disappeared just like that even when it shouldn't have. Looking back at Obama's senate record, even though he finally voted against Bankruptcy Overhaul and CAFTA, he made no attempts to filibuster for all the popularity that was showered on him. Examining his pattern of boldness vs cowardice, it becomes apparent who he sides on. Not too long ago, banks cheer and credit the bailout for supposedly saving the employees their jobs and even giving them bonuses. I still doubt that employees working in those big banks are getting anything close to rosy treatment the corporate media talks about.
Overall, I think Obama learned from Kerry's mistakes how to give wishy washy a populist appeal and he didn't even need a Ross Perot to help him out. His getting on the tubes and bashing the anti-war protesters and lionizing Raygun and Clinton became more obvious year after year. Who knows what tricks he will pull for 2012 but I think his administration is about to crash really hard given his "no room for error" recklessness.
"I would say Obama was just doing his typical campaign talk." -- Jennifer
I agree -- he seems to be invested in perpetual campaign tactics, always ready to shift his position, to equivocate and posture, which is more of a management style than anything approaching leadership.
'extension of unemployment benefits' just another euphemism like that Clear Skies Act:
Employment Bill Called ‘Corporate Giveaway’
Bill Allocates Five Times More for Corporate Tax Perks Than Unemployment Insurance Benefits
http://washingtonindependent.com/67005/texas-dem-calls-latest-stimulus-corporate-giveaway
Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, an atheist who was hustling his grammar school classmates out of their lunch money claims he is doing God's work. These are the scum of the earth (Obama included) who determine what happens in the United States. J-O-B-S? LOL!
Atheist? I thought he was Jewish.
He is a Jew. But as much of one as Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Bugsy Netanyahu and that whole bunch of killers and thieves.
So if he IS a Jew, why did you lie and say he was an atheist?
Given the partly religious, partly ethnic nature of the word "Jew," in English, one can easily be both.
That guy never existed.
I heard on the bidness channel that corporations are getting about 43% of their profits from overseas, and that is expected to break 50% as the domestic economy doesn't recover in the recovery. One could say that our government is no longer domestic either; a quick look at today's CD headlines shows its preoccupation with financial ventures, including endless war, abroad.
It is hard to predict what those countries will do at any time. Their governments are not necessarily like the US government even though most of them are corrupt to and easily docile to those rotten MNCs doing the damage. Those corporations relying on exploiting the weaknesses of the working class policies of those nations will be prepared to move from country to country anytime. I realize that our US government has no shame rewarding such companies all the while persecuting companies that want to put local growth first and I'm not even talking about small businesses that are facing the worst of economic persecution. I say let's just give it our best go and tell our rotten pols "Hit us with your best shot !".
P.S.: Who was that lady who sang that song btw, anyone?
Jennifer: "that lady" would be Pat Benatar. Hey I never heard of her either, information is courtesy google.
Ah, thanks for the reminder on google. It sometimes eludes me.
By the way, I hear that song quite frequently on the Classic Hits stations in my area. I just wish the radio hosts would name the singer every time. That way, people would know and they would buy the music and "stimulate" the economy. :)
My, My, My ...
Hightower is finally getting the picture ... I guess Obama's betrayals have finally worn through that folksy populism.
Yes Jim ... It's about jobs and it is worse than you think.
They are lying through their teeth about the real unemployment rate ... Thanks to the adjustment of the business birth-death model in the Payroll Survey 86,000 jobs were magically added last month, over a million jobs this year, conjured from behind a desk.
A look at the Household Survey showed that job losses are once again taking off ... That survey showed 589,000 jobs lost last month alone!
The real unemployment rate is over 20% and that doesn't include the millions of high school and college grads looking for their first job ...
I guess when Jim cleaned his glasses he figured out he had the wrong end of the horse, and the horse wasn't clearing its' throat.
Hey, can't have everyone having a job because who then would join the all-volunteer military to go fight wars overseas?
I'll say it again - the wealthy are a bunch of freeloaders on the USA. They use more of the commons and pay a lower tax rate than the rest of us poor working schmucks.....
they hide their income in offshore banks, they use trade laws to vertically hide profits, they take out any governments that actually want to do anything for the average citizen(the honduras solution),
and they are now looking at China as the new governing solution for us here in the USA, an oligarchy based on economic rulers leading the government.
and the general population is more worried about dancing with the stars.....
reagan won and until June 5th is a feakin national holiday we are screwed.....
The reason the wealthy are able to ride our backs is because the international banking cartel, with Wall St. as its American face, and the FED as its ruling arm of the US government, calls the plays.
In David Korten's latest book Agenda For A New Economy, he presents the case that Wall St and their allies run the show, and that they are completely unnecessary. He also presents an alternative economy which would work for all, and closes with an outline for the largest citizen movement since the populists of yore.
Since most of our money is created by private bankers turning debt into money by loaning the monetized debt and charging the government interest, there is never enough money in the system to repay the loans, so the process must keep going - a pyramid scheme. That's why continual growth is necessary. If the government issued its own money, the savings in interest payments would eliminate the need for constant growth. See Ellen Brown's webofdebt.com for more details.
No president will change this situation until We The People kick Wall St out of our government. A daunting challenge, yes. But it sure beats the alternative, since the global elite are using the crisis to further consolidate their power. The difference is that this time they are doing it on taxpayer money and we know it. The growing anger accompanying the spreading awareness of who caused the crisis and the fact that they are building another bubble to suck off more of our money, etc creates an opening for change.
And all US has to do is start mass-producing electric cars (e.g., Zenn) and the roof-top solar film (e.g. Flisom) panel to power them and OUR HOMES, also solving our need for neocolonial wars AND global-warming in the process! But where's our #@%*& fearless leader? Baracking OFF in Iraqiranistan, instead!
Fine, but no jobs paying less than 15 dollars per hour.
Are you hiring?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I am looking for a personal assistant right now, but I don't hire trolls.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Everyone who hasn't done so should go to
http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2009/11/10
and listen to the primary interviews on Tuesday's show:
Segment 1) New York is considering allowing "gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale watershed, the source of drinking water for 15 million people, including nine million New Yorkers." This is one of the purest water sources in the world and natural gas drilling--where the drillers pump secret combinations of toxic chemicals into the shale to pressure out the natural gas--can permanently contaminate this watershed. This is part of the Bush/Cheney hog-wild deregulation of domestic oil and gas extraction.
Segment 2) Deals with global poverty: The failure of the Millennium Project to end global poverty; the contrived global economic crisis driven by US banks and how it is increasing and spreading poverty rates worldwide; how the IMF/World Bank debt-load on the global South is preventing progress in those regions while their repayment helps subsidize the corrupt, traditionally industrially exploitative economies of the global North; the "down-growth" idea (one I've talked about for over 15 years); ideas for how to end poverty by radically changing the current global economic paradigm.
Segment 3) Former Economic Hit-Man John Perkins lays out how the U.S. economic up-ending and its deleterious affects around the world and our continuing foreign policy are all unsustainable outgrowths of the economic hit-man policies practiced by the US for many decades.
Then under headlines notice the following segments:
1) "Survey Highlights Global Concerns over Free Market Capitalism":
"To mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the BBC released the results of an international poll yesterday that revealed widespread dissatisfaction with free market capitalism around the globe. Only 11 percent of people surveyed across twenty-seven countries thought free market capitalism is working well. Meanwhile, 23 percent of respondents across all nations said capitalism is fatally flawed and a new economic system is needed. About half of respondents said the problems with capitalism can be solved with more regulation and reform."
2) "EPA Attempts to Silence Agency Critics of Cap and Trade":
Censored EPA attorney Laurie Williams: “Cap and trade will not create confidence that clean energy will become profitable, and so it will not ignite the huge shift in investment needed to begin the clean energy revolution. Cap and trade for climate change has been tried in Europe. It produced harmful volatility in energy prices and few greenhouse gas reductions. It raised energy prices for consumers and made billions in windfall profits for utilities.”
3) "Maldives President Urges Developing Nations to Become Carbon Neutral":
"...Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the island nation of Maldives, has called on fellow developing countries to embrace a carbon neutral future."
Mohamed Nasheed: “We want to ask you to consider carbon neutrality yourselves. In my mind, a bloc of carbon neutral developing nations could change the outcome of Copenhagen. At the moment, every country arrives at the negotiations seeking to keep their own emissions as high as possible and never to make commitments unless someone else does first. This is the logic of a madhouse, a recipe for collective suicide.”
4) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Whistleblower: "Peak Oil Closer than IEA Forecasts Show"
"An anonymous whistleblower at the International Energy Agency has told The Guardian newspaper that the world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit. The whistleblower, described as a senior official at the agency, accused the United States of playing an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves. The whistleblower told The Guardian, "Many inside the organization believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible, but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further.”
5) China carries out executions of 9:
"It is believed that most, if not all, of the executed were Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that live in western China. In July, nearly 200 people were killed during unrest between ethnic Uyghurs and members of China’s Han majority in the regional capital, Urumqi. Human Rights Watch recently reported that at least forty-three Uyghur men had disappeared after being seized by the security forces since July. Exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer said, "The fact that Chinese authorities had the audacity to carry out these executions on the eve of President Barack Obama’s visit to China displays their utter disregard for international human rights standards.”
Every once in a while Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and the reporters working with her will pull off one show edition that is a masterpiece of journalism. The Tuesday program was one of those. If you were to compare the sheer volume, breadth, depth and importance of the news she aired on Tuesday with the McNews crap aired by every other TV network including the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer (which prides itself on sober, serious, even "Stately" news coverage) you will see how very rare, excellent and special Ms. Goodman and her team really are.
As an insightful snapshot of our now fully, overtly predatory nation (whose super-rich prey on American's domestically and as many other nations around the world as they can), and the global consequences of America's corporatist robber barony, this edition of Democracy Now is nearly as perfect as it can get in one daily hour long news show. The only thing that would have made it absolutely perfect would have been to tie in the IMF/World Bank regime and 3rd World debt-loads created by the economic hit-men hierarchy with the "free trade" regime and the WTO. This is all why jobs not only aren't being created in the US.--but why they cannot be created with decent wages in sufficient numbers because this necrotic, plutocratic whipped system is still locked in.