United Liberty
created or saved jobs
Flak over the jobs speech
Tue, 09/06/2011 - 11:15am | posted by Tom Knighton
Apparently, President Obama is a little pissed right now. After all, his partisanship was trumped by Speaker of the House John Boehner’s partisanship. For those who missed it, President Obama wanted to speak to a joint session of Congress. Per usual, the President asked the Speaker of the House if that was all cool. Boehner said no. That’s the Reader’s Digest version anyways.
Obama’s timing of his speech coincided with a debate between GOP candidates, a move many considered to have been strategic in nature rather than coincidence. I’m inclined to agree. Boehner, a Republican after all, said, “Nah. How about the next day?” The White House agreed.
However, all doesn’t seem to be puppies and daisies in the nation’s capital. Politico has learned from a White House source that apparently the President and his staff are more than a little upset.
“It is a big deal that the House said ‘no’ to the president from our end,” a White House source with intimate knowledge of what took place between the House and the president told me Thursday. “This confirms what we all know: They will do anything in the House to muck us up.”
Indeed. After all, a 24 hour delay will kill the whole deal, right? I mean, everything in his proposals was calculated to the exact position of the moon and the stars in relation to Jupiter or something, right? The source went on to comment about the debate conflict.
Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle. “With all due respect, the POLITICO-MSNBC debate was one that was going on a cable station,” the White House source said. “It was not sacrosanct. We knew they would push it back and then there would be a GOP debate totally trashing the president. So it wasn’t all an upside for us.”
Zero jobs created in August
Fri, 09/02/2011 - 7:52am | posted by Jason Pye
The jobs report for the month of August was released just a few minutes ago by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The news isn’t encouraging:
The US economy created no jobs and the unemployment rate held steadily higher at 9.1 percent in August, fueling concerns that the US is heading for another recession.
It was the first time since World War II that the economy had a net zero jobs created for a month.
Economists had been expecting the report to show a net of 75,000 jobs created, an unusually low number considering the US is technically more than two years removed from the end of the last crisis.
Keep in mind that the employers need to produce around 130,000 jobs just to keep up with population growth, so even the estimates for this month were anemic. The silver lining is, as noted, the unemployment rate didn’t go up.
The report puts even more pressure on President Barack Obama to deliver a strong proposal to Congress to encourage job creation, especially after his stunt of trying to upstage the GOP presidential debate. Odd are, however, that he’ll resort to the same policies that have held the economy back.
WHOA! I agree with White House on something!
Mon, 08/08/2011 - 12:01pm | posted by Tom Knighton
I don’t believe it! I agree with something that the White House said about the economy. Ordinarily, I might feel a little dirty at that, but since it’s a position that I’ve long held, I’ll just accept that the White House is coming around to reality. What is that reality? Well, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week that “the White House doesn’t create jobs.” Who knew?
Oh yeah, I know I did. I wasn’t alone on that either. The White House only creates jobs in the government and nowhere else.
After a month devoted to raising the debt limit, on Tuesday Obama announced a new focus on boosting employment — at least his seventh such announcement in his presidency.
Facing tough questions from reporters on what Obama is doing to create jobs today, Carney responded that Obama was meeting with senior advisors to plot a way forward on the issue.
Carney listed legislative priorities the president believes will create jobs, including an infrastructure bank, the passage of free trade agreements, and tax cuts. But he would not say what was being done to further those goals while Congress takes a month-long vacation.
“The White House doesn’t create jobs,” Carney said, adding “the government, together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation.”
[Emphasis added]
Of course, there’s also the flip side, that the government, together – White House, Congress – create policies that stifle greater job creation. I’m not surprised that Carney didn’t mention that one.
Unemployment at 9.1% in July
Fri, 08/05/2011 - 10:10am | posted by Jason Pye
With yesterday’s bad day on Wall Street, where the Dow dropped 512 points (or 4% of its value) in one day; the largest single day loss since 2008 and the most consecutive sessions of losses since the Carter Administration. The losses were attributed to concerns over the debt crisis in Europe and issues with our own economy.
Stocks were given a boost this morning, though they’re back down now, when a better than expected jobs report was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Hiring picked up slightly in July and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent. The modest improvement may quiet fears of another recession a day after Wall Street posted its worst losses in nearly three years.
Employers added 117,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That’s better than the past two months, which were also revised higher.
The report “should lessen fears that the recovery is truly faltering,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global.
Still, the economy needs twice as many net jobs per month to rapidly reduce unemployment. The rate has topped 9 percent in every month except two since the recession officially ended in June 2009.
“These numbers are not great,” said Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency Economics, in a note to clients. “But they are a long way from recession territory.”
