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Unemployment Rate Rises to 9.2 Percent in June as Hiring Stalls

There's basically no chance. A multitude of economic trends have been at work for the last thirty years. Jobs have been an ever increasing net loss, and the recession was the nail in the coffin.

What, LOL?

This isn't socialist France or communist China. There is every chance in the world for the free market to re-energize.

Sure, there will always be the 5 percent who insist on being on the government teet, or have legitimate reasons for not being part of the work force. And there will always be certain markets that suffer through tough times. But America is still the most fertile place to grow an idea on the planet.

The more government infringes and creeps in to daily life, the more risky the environment becomes for upstart ideas and growth.
 
I don't buy that mindset one bit. I don't believe you have to sacrafic what's good about this country just to rein in spending.
By settling for 'reduced deficits', you're committing yourself to more and more debt - and endless debt ceiling hikes.
In essence, you're kicking the can down the road - which is what got us here, and we're just about out of road.

And, really -- federal spending creates what is good in tis country? Really?

To that, the President is correct. We do need to face facts that we are going to have to raise taxes AND/OR eliminate some of the most expensive tax subsidies/tax loopholes in order to pay down the deficit...
You dont pay down a deficit, you reduce it. You pay down the debt, but only when you have a surplus.
As far as the "loopholes"... eliminating the accelerated depreciation on cortprate jets that The Obama signed into law 'costs' us $3B/yr.
To rest an argument ont this - $3B compared to a $1500B deficit - is a farce.

I'm just as concerned about our national debt as the next guy, but I don't think we can cut spending only in order to get it under control.
Given that the deficit is ~73% of available revenues, not matter how much you think you can raise taxes, you have to cut spending even more.
Entitlement spending, alone, exceeds available revenue by almost 10%.

We are a consumer nation. Just about everything we do is done with credit.
This isn't relevant to the discussion. Your credit card dosnt figure into the deficit.

I get that and it IS the responsible thing to do. However, we're also told that if you need to generate additional income (revenue) go out and get a 2nd job!
What we have today is the husband telling the wife to cutrail her shopping and the wife telling the husband to get another job so she can open another charge account.
To perpetuate this madness on a national scale, as you have under your current consideration, is asinine beyond the pale.
 
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What, LOL?

This isn't socialist France or communist China. There is every chance in the world for the free market to re-energize.

Sure, there will always be the 5 percent who insist on being on the government teet, or have legitimate reasons for not being part of the work force. And there will always be certain markets that suffer through tough times. But America is still the most fertile place to grow an idea on the planet.

The more government infringes and creeps in to daily life, the more risky the environment becomes for upstart ideas and growth.

Pretty much the opposite. Venture capitalism really isn't that big of an aspect of our economy even in the best of times. Most enterprises require subsidies from the government for lift off. The Internet being an example.

People only want to invest in winning hands, things that are already doing well. No one wants to spend money during a recession, not because of Obama, but because nobody wants to take the heavy risk of failure.

That's how it is in every recession; everybody sits on their money (from the poor to the super-wealthy) until the sure-winners come back.

Also why technological and economic Dark Ages can last for hundreds of years.
 
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By settling for 'reduced deficits', you're committing yourself to more and more debt - and endless debt ceiling hikes.
In essence, you're kicking the can down the road - which is what got us here, and we're just about out of road.

You dont pay down a deficit, you reduce it. You pay down the debt, but only when you have a surplus.

Alright, so it's "debt" reduction, not "deficit" reduction. But if that's the case, why then are Republicans putting so much emphasis on how large the deficit is? If it's debt that's the bigger problem, isn't that what they should be focused on? And what's the fastest way to pay down the debt? Spending cuts alone? Increased taxes alone that go toward the debt? Or a combination of both?
 
This news about the economy has made me come to a decision: I will vote for either Huntsman or Romney before voting for Obama again. I'm not going to vote for the Republican no matter who it is, but let's say at this point, I'm supporting Romney.
 
This news about the economy has made me come to a decision: I will vote for either Huntsman or Romney before voting for Obama again. I'm not going to vote for the Republican no matter who it is, but let's say at this point, I'm supporting Romney.

Time to jump ship eh....God Bless America......
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WHAT RECENT SPENDING CUTS caused these job losses?
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........thanks for playing......
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Virtually all of the net job losses in the last several months have been public sector jobs at the state and local levels as state and local governments have reduced payrolls in order to balance their budgets. The private sector has been hiring, albeit at an anemic pace.
 
This news about the economy has made me come to a decision: I will vote for either Huntsman or Romney before voting for Obama again. I'm not going to vote for the Republican no matter who it is, but let's say at this point, I'm supporting Romney.

wait, so u gonna vote, or u not gonna vote?
 
This news about the economy has made me come to a decision: I will vote for either Huntsman or Romney before voting for Obama again. I'm not going to vote for the Republican no matter who it is, but let's say at this point, I'm supporting Romney.

I said the exact same thing about McCain. And that's what I did.
 
sincerely, i think a guy like cuomo, for example, is trying to GROW his new york

he sure doesn't want to cut but he feels some craving need for some kinda economic credibility

he's trying to turn his state around, he perceives it as dying

i think vital signs are foremost on his mind, more so than the bottom line in albany

and, personally, i think he's doing a heck of a job

i can feel the change all the way across the country, it's very positive, it's hopeful

i think what's going on in some of the wisconsin school districts is enlightening---turning deficits into surpluses by mere (but meaningful) strokes of pens, primarily by asking teachers to pay in more to the their pensions and health care, as well as freeing districts to shop around for coverage

i think you're going to be hearing a great deal of talk about these STATE MIRACLES

you know, like the NEW YORK MIRACLE

or, if they can get their act together, something good outta minnesota

stay up, things are turning radically and for the better, starting from below
 
wait, so u gonna vote, or u not gonna vote?

I will be voting.

If I have to vote for Obama to save us from "President Bachmann" I will do so. I still prefer Obama over Pawlenty, Cain, and Bachmann.
Gingrich and Ron Paul would present me with a very difficult choice, they both have a great number of substantive negatives in their column.

I'm not Romney's biggest fan, but if he can turn the economy around, I'm all for it.
 
Time to jump ship eh....God Bless America......
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My support may not be something Romney wants. Neither party has nominated my first choice since 1996 (and I'd vote for Slick Willy again if I could given the performance of the economy under his leadership). Since then, my first choices have been McCain (in 2000. Before he started associating with Joe the Plumber), John Edwards (shudder), and Hilary Clinton.

So I may have just doomed Mitt....
 
Anymore, its as if both the hard core conservative Republicans / Tea Partiers and the hardcore liberal Dems are just all living in some alternate universe or something. Both sides totally divorced from reality.

First off, the fact is, this is not the Bush Recession or the Obama Recession, it is the Bush / Obama recession. To hear the Republicans talk, the economy was doing just fine until January, 2009 when Obama took office.

This is a graph of private sector job losses, the bars in Red represent job losses during the Bush Administration, the bars in Blue represent job losses during the Obama Administration:

110708_privatejobs.jpg


Notice something? Yeah, we had heavy job losses under Bush and under Obama's first year in office. When we look at quarter to quarter GDP, we see a very similar story:

gdp_large.gif


In fact, the Bush Administration is the only administration since Hoover that left office with a net loss of jobs. Even the Carter economy kicked the Bush economy's ass. The last really good economy we have enjoyed in this country was under Clinton. The revisionist Republicans just want everyone to forget that the last time they had control of the country, they ran the economy into the ground. In fact, the two worst economic downturns this country has gone through in the last 100 years both began under Republican Administrations.

That said, the economy today is Obama's and thus far, his administration has done a pretty crappy job of stewarding it. We wasted over a year on healthcare reform (as Bachmann would say, "he blew his wad on it"), all the while the economy was stalled at best. Now it looks like we are going to piss away this year arguing over deficits, when the problem is jobs. The quickest way to reduce the deficit is to get people back to work. Its not "socialism" that is killing us right now, its 3 wars and millions drawing unemployment benefits rather than working and paying taxes.

Unemployment Benefits Add to Deficit - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Sure, Medicare is going to be a big problem in the decades to come, but right now, the biggest driver behind our current deficits are the wars we are in (rampant defense outlays) and the unemployed (Unemployment benefits, Medicaid, SCHIP and so on). The biggest drag on hiring is not uncertainty about government policies, its uncertainty about demand. After all, federal taxes are the lowest they have been in 60 years.

By one measure, federal taxes lowest since 1950 - USATODAY.com

Moreover, if your not making money, your not paying corporate income or personal income taxes. The problem is that business have a huge demand uncertainty. Consumer spending has not rebounded and consumer confidence is down. The reason for that is the huge amount of personal debt many Americans have. When your house is worth less than you owe on it, and you have a mountain of student loan and other debts, your not so apt to go out and buy that second flat screen or the new car. Thus, businesses are not so apt to hire more people when they are not sure they will be selling more sh*t. I mean come on, this is not rocket science. In many ways the best thing that could happen to the economy right now would be to have higher inflation as that would deflate those debts. Which by the way is why the federal reserve was so concerned about deflation. Had we entered into a deflationary spiral, those overbearing debts would have only become that much more overbearing.

I don't know what the answer is at this point. I suspect we will just have to ride it out until finally the economy really starts to grow again. I will say that if things don't improve in a hurry, Obama will almost certainly be a one term president unless the Republican's seize defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating some nutter like Bachmann instead of Romney or Huntsman. I certainly won't vote for Obama in 2012 if unemployment is still over 9%.
 
Virtually all of the net job losses in the last several months have been public sector jobs at the state and local levels as state and local governments have reduced payrolls in order to balance their budgets.

I thought Obama's Stimulus saved all those jobs............

The private sector has been hiring, albeit at an anemic pace.

Which is what matters.......the Public sector is 100% dependent upon the Private Sector.......the health of the Host Organism has to become priority.
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I don't buy that mindset one bit. I don't believe you have to sacrafic what's good about this country just to rein in spending. I believe we can do both. To that, the President is correct. We do need to face facts that we are going to have to raise taxes AND/OR eliminate some of the most expensive tax subsidies/tax loopholes in order to pay down the deficit while also doing certain things to bring about job growth and creation. I'm just as concerned about our national debt as the next guy, but I don't think we can cut spending only in order to get it under control.

We are a consumer nation. Just about everything we do is done with credit. Yes, that does need to turn around; we need to become a nation of manufactorers again. To that, I think the President has it right. We do need to invest in new technologies, new industries that can create the jobs that stay here in the U.S. But we'll never get there if one side of the political divide is so resistent to raise revenue and insists that the only way to get from Point A to Point B and beyond is essentially to wait until our financial house is perfectly in order before we do anything else.

I understand that in most American households when one finds himself in debt that that's what should be done - create a realistic budget, live within it, plan for expenditures. I get that and it IS the responsible thing to do. However, we're also told that if you need to generate additional income (revenue) go out and get a 2nd job! For the U.S. Treasury, that "2nd job" is eliminating tax subsidies and a slight tax increase in those areas and/or on those individuals who can afford to pay alittle bit more. It's the only way to have the best of both worlds where our deficit and debt problems are concerned. The alternative is prolonged unemployment which seems to be what the GOP wants.


Well I can agree with much of what you are saying .. (and will get into trouble with other conservatives for it) I can agree to a modest tax increase.... I was all for letting the Bush tax cuts just expire as they were meant to do ..

However .. they didn't .. and the problem I have with allowing them to raise taxes is just based on back track records … I said this before .. when you can look back over the last 30 years .. and the best you can find.... is for the Clinton years .. where we “ONLY” increased our debt 1.5 trillion …. now take into consideration … defense spending was cut to bare bones … we had the largest tax hike in history … the dot com era was huge .. and made more millionaires faster then at any time in history, all this .. and we still went 1.5 trillion dollars in debt ..

I'll be all for modest tax increases when someone in government can seriously show me that they can cut spending and verify it Bush spending policies was terrible, in 2006 (last year of total republican control) our budget was 2.7 trillion with a 400 billion deficit, in 2011 the budget is 3.83 trillion with a deficit of 1.5 trillion. Now he stands up there and says he is going to cut spending by 400 billion a year for 10 years … well whoopie doo .. spending has increased by 1.1 trillion a year since 2006.

Wake up .. . basically he's saying .. hello .. we want to increase spending over the next 10 years by 700 billion dollars a year.. or a nice tidy 7 trillion dollars over 10 years…and this would be with a spending freeze, and no addition spending on any program over the next 10 years. ...anyone think that is really going to happen ??? What happens in 2014 when the full benefits of our health care bill kicks into gear ?? No increase in spending ??

When real cuts are made .. and verified as actual cuts and not just transferring money from one program to the other, then come back and ask for tax increases across the board …
 
Yes but that is what happens when you have a two party system where one party only knows how to say NO! and refuses to acknowledge their major role in creating the economic crisis in the first place. At least Obama stopped the bleeding of jobs of 500+k a month that Bush left him with... he has been gaining jobs for a long time now and this is despite the obstructionist GOP...

But then again there must have been a lot of high fives in the GOP when those numbers came out...


Oh, Good Lord, when does this ever become the Obama economy? You do realize that Bush had a net job gain in his 8 years in office and Obama has been in office 2 1/2 years and there are more unemployed today than when he took office and total unemployment is over 24 million(U-6). Now you can try and defend the Obama record and blame it on Bush but you are part of a declining minority that is doing that. This is the Obama record that will be on the ballot in 2012.

Obama record, 15.1 million officially unemployed TODAY 2 1/2 years later, 16.2% total unemployment or over 20 million TODAY, 4 trillion added to the debt as of the end of fiscal year 2011, and a rising misery index.
 
Well I can agree with much of what you are saying .. (and will get into trouble with other conservatives for it) I can agree to a modest tax increase.... I was all for letting the Bush tax cuts just expire as they were meant to do ..

However .. they didn't .. and the problem I have with allowing them to raise taxes is just based on back track records … I said this before .. when you can look back over the last 30 years .. and the best you can find.... is for the Clinton years .. where we “ONLY” increased our debt 1.5 trillion …. now take into consideration … defense spending was cut to bare bones … we had the largest tax hike in history … the dot com era was huge .. and made more millionaires faster then at any time in history, all this .. and we still went 1.5 trillion dollars in debt ..

I'll be all for modest tax increases when someone in government can seriously show me that they can cut spending and verify it Bush spending policies was terrible, in 2006 (last year of total republican control) our budget was 2.7 trillion with a 400 billion deficit, in 2011 the budget is 3.83 trillion with a deficit of 1.5 trillion. Now he stands up there and says he is going to cut spending by 400 billion a year for 10 years … well whoopie doo .. spending has increased by 1.1 trillion a year since 2006.

Wake up .. . basically he's saying .. hello .. we want to increase spending over the next 10 years by 700 billion dollars a year.. or a nice tidy 7 trillion dollars over 10 years…and this would be with a spending freeze, and no addition spending on any program over the next 10 years. ...anyone think that is really going to happen ??? What happens in 2014 when the full benefits of our health care bill kicks into gear ?? No increase in spending ??

When real cuts are made .. and verified as actual cuts and not just transferring money from one program to the other, then come back and ask for tax increases across the board …

Here is the tax revenue increase that I would support

Put 24 million unemployed Americans back to work in the private sector paying taxes. Collect some tax revenue from the 56 million income earning Americans that are paying zero in Federal Income Taxes. That is 80 million new taxpayers vs. the 1.4 million that the liberals want to tax more(the rich)

U-6 Unemployment=153 million civilian labor force X 16.2%
Income earners not paying any Federal Income Taxes=47% X 140 million jobs currently in this country
 
Anymore, its as if both the hard core conservative Republicans / Tea Partiers and the hardcore liberal Dems are just all living in some alternate universe or something. Both sides totally divorced from reality.

First off, the fact is, this is not the Bush Recession or the Obama Recession, it is the Bush / Obama recession. To hear the Republicans talk, the economy was doing just fine until January, 2009 when Obama took office.

This is a graph of private sector job losses, the bars in Red represent job losses during the Bush Administration, the bars in Blue represent job losses during the Obama Administration:

110708_privatejobs.jpg

I seem to recall that graphic from somewhere...?
 
I seem to recall that graphic from somewhere...?

Wonder why no liberal can explain why BLS doesn't show that information and instead shows a net job loss with more unemployment 2 1/2 after taking office, 2 years after the end of a recession than it was when he took office? Interesting that liberals ignore actual numbers and still spin the Obama rhetoric.
 
the historically slow recovery, usa today, may 20:

Nearly two years after the economic recovery officially began, job creation continues to stagger at the slowest post-recession rate since the Great Depression.

The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in December 2007. That is by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s.

In the past, the economy recovered lost jobs 13 months on average after a recession. If this were a typical recovery, nearly 10 million more people would be working today than when the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Job creation limps along after recession - USATODAY.com
 
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wsj's take on our historically slow recovery, this week:

Two years ago, officials said, the worst recession since the Great Depression ended. The stumbling recovery has also proven to be the worst since the economic disaster of the 1930s.

Across a wide range of measures—employment growth, unemployment levels, bank lending, economic output, income growth, home prices and household expectations for financial well-being—the economy's improvement since the recession's end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II.

Debt Overhang Slows U.S. Economic Recovery - WSJ.com

reuters presents the data graphically, tuesday: The US Jobs Gap | Reuters.com

spin, playas?

who's the hack?
 
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The reason for that is the huge amount of personal debt many Americans have. When your house is worth less than you owe on it, and you have a mountain of student loan and other debts, your not so apt to go out and buy that second flat screen or the new car. Thus, businesses are not so apt to hire more people when they are not sure they will be selling more sh*t. I mean come on, this is not rocket science. In many ways the best thing that could happen to the economy right now would be to have higher inflation as that would deflate those debts. Which by the way is why the federal reserve was so concerned about deflation. Had we entered into a deflationary spiral, those overbearing debts would have only become that much more overbearing.

The Federal Reserve is charged with the resonsibility to both monitor, prevent, and repair that. We keep hammering on presidents and business owners and corporate jets. I don't get it either.

- As you point out, households were in debt during the expansion, which means when the recession arrived, they had no store of savings to keep the fires burning.
- Most financial institutions by their very nature, are always in massive debt.
- And the cherry on top, we allowed the national debt to climb.

So we finally get another, inevitable, routine recession in the economy, and:
- public is in debt
- finance always in debt
- government in debt

Oops! Our pockets are empty. I think you're right, what else can you do but ride it out given this? More debt I suppose...

Are we correct in giving this responsibility primarily to the fed?

Federal Reserve System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Its duties today, according to official Federal Reserve documentation, are to conduct the nation's monetary policy, supervise and regulate banking institutions, maintain the stability of the financial system and provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions.[7]
 
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