Job Losses Under Bush and Obama

Below is a chart prepared by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office showing job losses under Bush and Obama since December of 2007. The point is obvious: Fewer jobs have been lost since Obama took office as compared to the final year of Bush's second term. Since both the media and Republicans are factually challenged, we are not sure how much play this will get, but we thought we should share it with our readers.

How the Feds are Blowing Through 7.8 Trillion Dollars

The New York Times has an article up on its website that is accompanied by the picture to the left. It shows how the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury are distributing up to 7.8 trillion dollars to the financial services industry.

Although they are plowing money into the system, this money won't help with the wave of foreclosures that are spreading across America. This paragraph from the article explains why:

But analysts said the program would do little to reduce the tidal wave of foreclosures. That is because most of the foreclosures are on subprime mortgages and other high-risk loans that were not bought or guaranteed by government-sponsored finance companies like Fannie Mae

What's interesting is the fact that while there was a lot of debate and public anguish over the 700 billion dollars in bailout funds approved by Congress, the amount of loans, according to the Times, is 1.7 trillion. So under what authority is this money being lent out? If the authority was already there, why did the Congress have to act? Under what terms and conditions is this money being lent out? Who is receiving it and how much are they receiving?

It would seem that those questions would interest someone in the media, let alone Congress, yet people don't seem to be asking them. Maybe everyone just assumes that the same geniuses who got us into this mess will get us out. If so, their faith may be sadly misplaced.

Look at Jobs Lost in 2008 and You See Why McCain Wants to Talk About Britney & Paris

The graph above shows the monthly job loss for 2008. The figures are from the Federal Government's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The job loss for June and July, which the graph shows at 51,000 for both months, is a projection.

Iraq War Cost Keeps Going Up and Up

There is a new report out by the Congressional Budget Office that shows that the cost of the Iraq War rose sharply in 2007. This is from the Reuters article:
War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.

The cost of this war is not being borne by Americans in the form of tax increases or cutbacks in government spending. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have ruled out tax increases. It is being financed by borrowing and passing the cost on to future generations of taxpayers. When George W. Bush took office, the country was running a surplus, now it is running a deficit projected this year to reach 250 billion dollars.

Meanswhile the Federal Debt has gone from around four trillion dollars to over 9 trillion dollars. A lot of this is owned by foreign entities which are controlled by foreign governments, like the Chinese.

None of this seems to worry "Bubble-Boy" and his Republican allies since they think that they won't pay any political price for supporting these idiotic policies. Let's try to disabuse them of this notion in November.

Economy Going into Recession While U.S. Spends Billions Helping Iraqis

With the unemployment rate edging up and housing starts going sharply down, it is dawning on the geniuses in the Bush Administration that the economy is heading into a recession. This is bad news for Republicans. One of the things that Republicans wanted to argue in the 2008 campaign is that Bubble-Boy's tax cuts helped the American economy. If unemployment starts going up, that argument goes out the window.

As an article in the Washington Post points out, though, the upturn in unemployment is not being spread evenly throughout the economy. The following is from the Post article:

While economic fallout from the housing sector has spread, there are significant parts of the economy that are adding jobs, which has created a bifurcated labor market. The professional and business services sector added 43,000 jobs and health care added 27,900.

"If you're an IT person in Washington, D.C., or an engineer in San Francisco, you have your choice of jobs," said Tig Gilliam, chief executive of the staffing firm Adecco Group North America. "If you do construction, you're doing to have a hard time finding a job you want."

The data released yesterday underscore that assertion. In the past year, the unemployment rate for professional occupations barely edged up, to 1.9 percent from 1.8 percent. In the construction sector, the jobless rate rose to 9.6 percent from 7 percent.

Now, of course, BB's reaction to all this is to call for more tax cuts, most likely directed at his rich friends with a few bucks thrown in for working class Americans. This was the way he got his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, you know, the ones that plunged the United States deeper in debt. Hopefully the Democratic Congress will resist that idea and, if tax cuts are indeed called for to stimulate the economy, will aim them at working class Americans.

While they are at it, they should start reminding Americans long and loud that the almost half a trillion dollars that BB and The Duck Hunter, (aka the Vice-President), spent in Iraq would have gone a long way to stimulate the construction industry. Think of the new schools that could have been built, new highways constructed, new mass transit systems produced, new high-speed wireless systems created. It boogles the mind. Instead we spent a lot of taxpayer money and priceless American lives trying to help Iraq. The Republican motto: Billions for Iraqis, nothing for working class Americans!

"Bush Economy" Heading for a Recession?

The economy is heading toward a recession. New home sales are down 8.5% since July. Prices of new homes have fallen 7.5% from a year ago. Credit is increasingly hard to get for consumers and businesses. All of these are signs that the economy is heading towards a recession.

Ever since Bush's reckless, radical tax cuts, we have heard from his supporters and apologists about how they have helped the economy. Actually, and this is something that presidents of both parties don't want to talk about, but the Federal Reserve Board has more control over the economy than any president. If the Fed makes more money available, it helps both consumers and businesses get loans. They use these loans to buy goods and services, thereby creating more jobs for Americans.

Under Greenspan the Fed basically allowed homeowners to turn their homes into ATM units. Americans borrowed on their equity to finance everything from home remodeling to a new vacation for the grandkids.

Naturally, since Greenspan is a Republican and since Bush is an idiotic Republican, no one thought about overseeing the financial institutions making these loans. As a result, we now have a wave of losses in the billions of dollars from risky loans. Consequently, we see financial institutions, who are apparently led by people who are not real bright given their past history, sharply cutting back on new loans.

If there is a recession, look for three things to happen. One is that Republicans like Bush will push for even more tax cuts under the rationale that we need to "pump" up the economy. Two, Democrats will do even better next year than anticipated. Three, illegal immigration will become even more potent as an issue because of economic insecurity among working class Americans.

Is the Era of Americans Using Their Home as a Cash Register Coming to an End?

A friend once remarked that over the last decade or so Americans had stopped thinking of their homes as a place to live and had started thinking of them as giant cash registers. A lot of Americans have second mortgages on their homes which they are using to finance the purchase of consumer goods, vacations, or college tuition. This trend has in turn pumped up the economy and helped George W. Bush get re-elected. This trend, however, may be coming to an abrupt end.

If you click on the link in this entry's title you can read an article from the Washington Post about how the credit crunch in America is spreading into global markets. Yesterday, August 9, 2007, the New York Stock Exchange suffered its second worst decline of the year as the cost of borrowing money for corporations continues to rise. Central banks in the U.S.and Europe pumped more than 150 billion dollars into global markets on Thursday, August 9, 2007. This is a quote from the article:

The first signs of trouble appeared in February after lenders reported record defaults in subprime mortgages, or loans sold to people with questionable credit histories. More recently, companies with poor credit have been denied loans. Now, even credit-worthy borrowers are struggling to obtain access to debt.

This tightening of credit markets will, in turn, affect consumer spending. This is how the article puts it:

The problems are also beginning to affect consumer spending, a key component of the economy. A report Thursday showed that July was a difficult month for retailers, a sign that a slumping housing market may have reined in spending, said Ken Perkins, president of the research firm Retail Metrics. Last month, 61 percent of retailers missed sales growth expectations for stores open at least a year. The norm is 42 percent.

The era of the American home as cash register is coming to an end. It will be interesting to see both the economic and political fall-out.

WaPo Article on Politics Turning Left Overlooks Key Point

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an interesting article from the July 26, 2007 edition of the Washington Post raising the issue of whether the electorate is turning "left." The article is interesting, but misses a key point. In pointing out how the word "liberal" has been demonized by the Republican right, the fails to distinguish between social liberalism and economic liberalism.

On issues involving civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, abortion, and crime, the right has been very successful in dividing Democrats along gender, racial, and sexual orientation lines. On issues that are economic, such as raising the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, and the environment, the right has not been nearly as successful in getting the public to adopt its positions or in dividing Democrats.

What's happening now is that economic issues are beginning to become more and more important because of the uncertainity in the economy, globalization, the collapse of America's health care system, and global warming. All of those issues raise anxiety among voters and they are looking for a government that can provide them some security. The right's total dependence on markets to cure everything isn't going to cut it in that kind of environment.

The Bush Economy: Great for those at the top

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an article about how Bush and Democrats look at the economy. To Republicans like Bush the economy is doing great. To Democrats like John Edwards, Jim Webb and Sherrod Brown, the economy is not doing well at all.

Why the difference? Because Bush looks at the economy from the perspective of a person born into the upper class in America. The stock market is doing well, unemployment seems to be going down, and new jobs are being created. Of course, millions have lost their jobs, house foreclosures are way up, millions don't have health insurance, the new jobs don't pay near what the lost jobs pay, but Bush doesn't see that because that is not his personal experience.

Edwards and Webb do see it. People like Sherrod Brown see it. This is because their personal experiences are different. They weren't born into the upper class. They have seen people struggle and know what it means to struggle financially. They can empathize with the working family that has seen its standard of living decline because of the loss of a good job, or a catastrophic illness not covered by insurance.

The problem with Republicans on economic issues is that they can't understand what they haven't experienced. Since a lot of them have never experienced economic difficulties, they just don't understand them. Democrats need to point this simple fact out to voters. When they do a lot of the media, whose executives also come from the upper class, won't like it. They will say that Democrats are practicing "class warfare." That's okay. Democrats should just keep on saying it. It doesn't matter what the media says, it matters what the voters say.