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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT: GOP Obstructionism Keeps Economy In A Rut
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/04/opinion/the-economy-is-stuck-in-place.html?_r=1Stuck in Place
Published: August 3, 2012
With 163,000 new jobs created, Julys employment growth topped both analysts expectations and the meager job gains in May and June. While that growth was not enough to reduce the jobless rate now 8.3 percent it was enough to boost the stock market. For investors, the job tally was just high enough to be a pleasant surprise and low enough to give them hope that the Federal Reserve would soon intervene to juice the economy.
The markets reaction aside, the report actually shows how bad things are and highlights what needs to be done to improve conditions.
snip//
Politics, however, has gotten in the way of even basic moves to push the economy upward.
Responding to the latest employment report, the White House noted correctly that major areas of job weakness including positions in construction and teaching are precisely those that would have been the subject of the jobs bill proposed in 2011 by President Obama. That legislation was blocked by Congressional Republicans.
Mitt Romney responded to the July report by saying that the numbers reflect the failure of Mr. Obamas policies when, in reality, they reflect the success of the Republican obstructionism.
That leaves the Federal Reserve to try to boost the economy. But whats needed is direct intervention in the form of more federal spending on education, infrastructure, clean energy, basic research and job training. Until then, were stuck.
peterpalms
(1 post)The socioeconomic monetary paradigm is dependent upon consumption which industrialization is eliminating because it is eliminating labor in manufacturing and housing , which consequently is eliminating the ability to consume because it is eliminating wages. The socioeconomic monetary paradigm is self destructive because it keeps printing money to support consumption thereby causing inflation . The socioeconomic monetary paradigm wastes natural resources by manufacturing planned obsolescence, creating vast garbage dumps of valuable metals and minerals. We will run out of natural resources if we do not change to a resource based economy which will provide for all the people
Did you know that a smaller percentage of Americans are working today than when the last recession supposedly ended? But you won't hear about this on the mainstream news. Instead, the mainstream media obsesses over the highly politicized and highly manipulated "unemployment rate". The media is buzzing about how "163,000 new jobs" were added in July but the unemployment rate went up to "8.254%". Sadly, those numbers are quite misleading. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in June 142,415,000 people had jobs in the United States. In July, that number declined to 142,220,000. That means that 195,000 fewer Americans were working in July than in June. But somehow that works out to "163,000 new jobs" in July. Personally, I find that the "employment rate" gives a much clearer picture of what is actually going on in the economy. The employment to population ratio is a measure of the percentage of working age Americans that actually have jobs. When it goes up that is good. When it goes down, that is bad. In July, the employment to population ratio dropped from 58.6 percent to 58.4 percent. Overall, the percentage of working age Americans that have jobs has now been under 59 percent for 35 months in a row.
If you look at a chart of the employment to population ratio in the United States over the past 10 years....
it indicates the percentage of working age Americans with a job dropped sharply from nearly 63 percent at the start of 2008 to a little above 59 percent when the recession ended.But the "employment rate" kept on dropping even further.
It finally bottomed out at 58.2 percent in December of 2009.Since that time, it has stayed very steady. It has not fallen below 58 percent and it has not risen back above 59 percent.This is very odd, because after ever other recession since World War II this number has always bounced back strongly.But this has not happened this time.
In essence, it is starting to look like 4 percent of the working age population of the United States has been removed from the workforce permanently. The export of jobs to countries with lower wages is on reason for this.
The U.S. economy is rapidly heading for another recession. What no one mentions are the millions of Americans that have been unemployed for so long that they don't even "count" in the official unemployment numbers anymore.
But those people actually exist and they are really hurting. Many of them are starting to lose their unemployment benefits and they really do not know what they are going to do.
The real cause of the inflation that leaves people with no retirement resources is thatthe Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the United States had a constitutional money system of gold and silver. Since then, the Federal Reserve created paper money as debt. This brought about creating money out of thin air. How is this money created?When the U.S. government wants to spend another billion dollars that it doesn't have, the U.S. Treasury creates U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and exchanges them with the newly created Federal Reserve note out of thin air.The question is, why doesn't the U.S. government create the money itself, as the Constitution directs?One of the many reasons why our modern money system is structured this way is so wealthy people will get wealthier by lending money to the U.S. government and to other national governments with interest.Last year, the U.S. government spent $454 billion just on interest payments alone. Today we borrow money we don't have, and now our national debt is $202 trillion and growing.
Thomas Jefferson once said if he could add another amendment to the Constitution, it would be a ban on all government borrowing.
Money should be created by Congress, not by private bankers called the Federal Reserve, which is not federal but belongs to a private banking cartel that owns its stock.U.S. Constitution says in Article 1, Section 8, that the U.S. Congress is supposed to have the sole authority to create money interest-free.If Congress would go back and obey the Constitution, the U.S. government would not have to borrow a single penny from anyone and should never go into debt. Congress, however, has given away this authority of creating money to the private bankers, who have been robbing American citizens of trillions of dollars ever since.
Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)Word. For. Word.
http://www.kjonline.com/opinion/congress-has-ceded-power-to-create-money-to-fed_2012-07-21.html
Plagiarism is beyond sleazy.
Fozzledick
(3,860 posts)Four paragraph excerpt for copyrighted material and always include a link to the source.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=copyright
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)bluedigger
(17,086 posts)uponit7771
(90,304 posts)ananda
(28,837 posts)Real news...