So much for the "stimulus worked" claims from a few weeks ago..

[inthebrain]

More layoffs and folks applying for US benies. Thus far very little action from the fed gov to provide relief.

US jobless claims rise, job openings decline
By Barry Grey
11 December 2009
Initial US jobless claims in the week ending December 5 rose 17,000 from the previous week, confounding economists who had predicted a decline. The increase in the number of workers filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits brought the total of such claims for the week to a seasonally adjusted 474,000.


In releasing the figures Thursday, the Labor Department reported that the total number of people claiming jobless benefits, both regular state benefits and extended state and federal benefits, topped 10 million.


The report gives the lie to attempts to portray last Friday’s unemployment report for November as a harbinger of a rapid recovery from the worst jobs crisis in the US since the Great Depression. The report issued December 4 said the official jobless rate had declined to 10 percent from 10.2 percent in October, and payroll losses for November had declined sharply to 11,000.


The lower net loss of jobs was likely due in large part to temporary hiring for the holiday season. The basic economic tendencies all point to months, if not years, of double-digit unemployment.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/usec-d11.shtml

[tabatha]

1. There was never any claim of rapid recovery.

Obama himself said it may be a double-dip recovery.

[inthebrain]

2. Any recovery will be jobless

that's already been made clear by Geithner and many economists.

There's no "double dip" here for the working class. It's just dip.

[Dr.Phool]

49. Without jobs, it's not a recovery.

A jobless recovery was a Bush era feel good invention.

[natrat]

63. he's a grand strategist he is, kind of like a master chess player

[asdjrocky]

3. It didn't work because President Obama

and Congress capitulated to the right and made over 30% of it tax cuts, and that did nothing for the economy.

It's black and white, why don't people see it?

[liberalmuse]

4. Oh. My. God.

DU has turned into a goddamned whinery tonight. The guy has been President for 11 MONTHS. 11. FUCKING. MONTHS. And yet, everyone expects ONE MAN to have 8 years of W. Bush's crap fest all tidied up, including the wars. You have to wonder about the character of people who don't hesitate to stab someone in the back. God help Obama for not having all the answers and being everyone's liberal fairy godmother. He needs our support and help, not our incessant criticisms. :eyes:

[tabatha]

5. +1000

Can I borrow that text?

[inthebrain]

6. This is supposed to be a democracy

That's the way it works. It's called the will of the people.

Obama is not a monarch.

People in general are disgusted with the right wing economic policies and foreign policies of BOTH parties. Even going around talking to conservatives EVEN THEY want FDR right now and fully admit they their leaders are nuts. Obama's economic policies to bail out this recession was completely wrong headed. Instead of the stimulous some of these bankers should have gone to jail. They stole 1.7 trillion dollars out of the economy.

The layoffs are not a result of an economic downturn. They corporations are using it as an opportunity to assault the working class by any means possible. Lots of these companies canning people are profitable companies. This has been nothing but an all out assault on labor and unions (union leadership being to close to management are complicit and no longer reliable for workers to turn to).

Washington has COMPLETELY ignored this problem and have done absolutely nothing. The latest proposal is to give tax breaks for hiring people. In other words we, the tax payers, are giving socialism to the fat cats and capitalism to the workers. Even the fat cats aren't stupid enough to believe that capitalism is a system that actually works. If that were the case they'd live under the same system themselves.

[truedelphi]

8. A time table is irrelevant.

If the firefighters show up at a blazing building, and instead of pouring water on the fire, start pouring gas on the fire, an observer does not need to wait around till the building is totally cinders to know the fire fighters took the wrong steps.

Geithner and Bernanke are like Greenspan and Paulson before them. They are all about an investor class recovery. With joblessness, homlessness and hunger for the rest of us.

Sad to say, the same derivative mess that collapsed the economy the first time around will collapse it the second time. (This supposed financial oversight committee that is being bally hooed around DU as part of the financial reform bill passed today in the House is of little consequence, because it mandates that Treasury Secratary Geithner be in charge!)

Now when the next full out colapse of our economy occurs, since the Main Street money has already been taken away, there will not be the ability to Bailout these Brankster frauds again. And heaven help us should some more Dubai financial style non payment proclamations come about! (Or a major tragedy here - like a Bay Area or LA earthquake.)

Those in the know have suggested again and again that we follow the same steps that we took after the S & L crisis, and instead of giving the money away to the Bank-Fraudster crowd on Wall Street, give it to regional state chartered banks, with stipulations on how the money is to be loaned out to small businesses. (Small businesses have traditionally been responsible for something like 60% of all job creation, except during unusual business cycles as occurred during WWII when the government had to build the armaments.)

[DontTreadOnMe]

11. The honeymoon is over.

Stop playing the "it's only been so little time" excuse. No one is buying it anymore.

[stevenleser]

55. Speak for yourself

Plenty of us are patient.

[bhikkhu]

59. If you bothered to listen a year ago you wouldn't be surprised

Unemployment was supposed to top out around now in a best case scenario, according to Obama's economic team.



It took a long time to screw things up, and no secret was made about how bad things would get or how long it would take. Its worse by a couple of points than expected, but I rather think that's the work of a National Republican Monkeywrench gang than our president.

[NYC_SKP]

13. + 1 n/t

[FreakinDJ]

15. Don't worry - the Article is PURE BULL SHIT

Every thig I've seen from that website has been disproven

[Pirate Smile]

19. +1

[NJmaverick]

21. But the faux news of newspapers said bad things!

[Zynx]

25. Not to mention that this analysis is terrible and did not examine the entirety of data released.

Also, even without getting into individual data points, I would go with CBO over a socialist rag any day.

[paulk]

31. actually , what he needs, or perhaps needed, was a stimulus

package that helped out main street.

Pointing out that his economic program is not working as expected is not whining.

Incessant cheerleading does not equal "support" when policy needs to be changed or modified.

[Zynx]

41. List for me what you believe was in the stimulus bill without looking it up.

I'm curious what you think was in there.

[paulk]

45. the stimulus bill was too heavily weighted toward the supply

side -

It was not large enough, too heavy on the tax breaks, not enough money going directly into job creation, a misunderstanding of of how high and how large a problem unemployment would be.

[Zynx]

47. That's a load.

There was a single, flat dollar tax break that was progressive in nature as it proportionately effected lower income earners more than upper income earners. How any of that portion was supply-side is beyond me. As far as tax cuts go, that was pretty damn progressive. There was also an expansion of the EITC (not exactly supply-side). There was an expansion of the child tax credit and the college credit. The vast bulk of the tax cuts were geared toward lower income people.

There were a couple of business tax measures to encourage capital investment, which is a damn good thing to do in the midst of a business spending collapse. The amount of direct infrastructure spending, close to $100 billion depending on how you count it, dwarfs that portion of the bill ($100 billion versus $20 billion). Explicitly infrastructure is $81 billion, but if you add up other housing and energy projects that are effectively infrastructure, you can easily top $100 billion.

Are you familiar with the huge amounts (around $91 billion) given to state and local education programs? Are you familiar with the $150 billion given in medical assistance? Are you familiar with the tens of billions going into housing and energy programs?

I can go on and on. I've worked in the state government on stimulus oversight. There is far more going on here than people try to say around here.

[paulk]

48. whatever

I took you off "ignore" to reply.

Back you go.

[Zynx]

50. I challenge anyone who thinks the stimulus package was "supply-side" to prove it.

It simply cannot be done.

[stevenleser]

57. Yes, a bizarre contention. First of all, tax breaks were only 1/3rd of the stimulus

Second, many those tax breaks were for progressive reasons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009#Tax_cuts

Tax cuts
Total: $288 billion (Out of &787 Billion total Stimulus)

Tax cuts for individuals
Total: $237 billion

$116 billion: New payroll tax credit of $400 per worker and $800 per couple in 2009 and 2010. Phaseout begins at $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for joint filers.<27>
$70 billion: Alternative minimum tax: a one year increase in AMT floor to $70,950 for joint filers for 2009.<27>
$15 billion: Expansion of child tax credit: A $1,000 credit to more families (even those that do not make enough money to pay income taxes).
$14 billion: Expanded college credit to provide a $2,500 expanded tax credit for college tuition and related expenses for 2009 and 2010. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $160,000.
$6.6 billion: Homebuyer credit: $8,000 refundable credit for all homes bought between 1/1/2009 and 12/1/2009 and repayment provision repealed for homes purchased in 2009 and held more than three years. This only applies to first-time homebuyers.<39>
$4.7 billion: Excluding from taxation the first $2,400 a person receives in unemployment compensation benefits in 2009.
$4.7 billion: Expanded earned income tax credit to increase the earned income tax credit — which provides money to low income workers — for families with at least three children.
$4.3 billion: Home energy credit to provide an expanded credit to homeowners who make their homes more energy-efficient in 2009 and 2010. Homeowners could recoup 30 percent of the cost up to $1,500 of numerous projects, such as installing energy-efficient windows, doors, furnaces and air conditioners.
$1.7 billion: for deduction of sales tax from car purchases, not interest payments phased out for incomes above $250,000.
Of note is that there is no planned congressional revision of U.S. tax tables to run concurrent with the payroll tax credit, meaning that, regardless of the initial amount of employer withholding, the majority of taxpayers will still owe the same amount in total taxes to the IRS upon filing at the end of the year. This discrepancy has been reported in the media by representatives from H&R Block and has been labeled by such as "potentially problematic." Some critics have begun referring to this provision as "a cash advance masquerading as a tax cut."

Tax cuts for companies
Total: $51 billion

$15 billion: Allowing companies to use current losses to offset profits made in the previous five years, instead of two, making them eligible for tax refunds.
$13 billion: to extend tax credits for renewable energy production (until 2014).
$11 billion: Government contractors: Repeal a law that takes effect in 2012, requiring government agencies to withhold three percent of payments to contractors to help ensure they pay their tax bills. Repealing the law would cost $11 billion over 10 years, in part because the government could not earn interest by holding the money throughout the year.
$7 billion: Repeal bank credit: Repeal a Treasury provision that allowed firms that buy money-losing banks to use more of the losses as tax credits to offset the profits of the merged banks for tax purposes. The change would increase taxes on the merged banks by $7 billion over 10 years.
$5 billion: Bonus depreciation which extends a provision allowing businesses buying equipment such as computers to speed up its depreciation through 2009.

[Yavin4]

42. Our Culture And Attitude Has Been Changed By The Service Sector Economy

We want demand positive results like we order our pizza, 30 minutes or less.

[treestar]

51. Amen. Stabbing in the back describes is perfectly

These people never wanted any success - look how they rub their hands together with glee at the slightest indication of things not becoming perfect. It's like they can't wait to post the slightest bad news and interpret it in the most outrageous way as a failure.

[FreakinDJ]

7. That Socialist Web site is PURE PROPAGANDA

and ONLY a FOOL would beleive any thing written there

Yes the NEW Jobless claims rose last week. But they were WAY LOWER then expected from the week before. Over All (and this concept may be difficult for the mental midget of a propaganda artist who wrote that tripe to wrap his pea sized brain around) are DOWN, as in LESS THEN EXPECTED, as in PROOF we are indeed starting to RECOVER

ATTN: All Jack Asses - This is a DEMOCRATIC Website so Do Not Post That FUCKING DISINFORMATION Pure ANTI-AMERICAN Shit 4 Brains Bull Shit here Any more. Because I will call you out for the Disinformation AssHole you are

[Stargazer99]

12. I get the strong smell of conserative here

[FreakinDJ]

14. Every article I've seen from them has been "DEBUNKED"

Like I said Only a Fool

[Ikonoklast]

54. Google 'David North/ David Green'

Anti-labor, anti-union fake socialist millionaire Trotskyite with a bunch of fanbois here on DU.

[boppers]

16. Whoa there, tiger.

Yes, it's a bunch of dishonest claptrap, masquerading as honest information.

Not worth getting upset over, though.

[FreakinDJ]

17. How many times does that "Claptrap's Tripe need to be Debunked"

before people start to "get it"

[boppers]

18. The people on the far left who are our fanatical socialists won't "get it", ever.

We have a big tent, and as part of that tent, people who actually believe in that kind of ideology post here.

[inthebrain]

37. Yeah, and those same people called this bust of an economy we have now

more than 10 years ago.

Those people are batshit. No need to listen to them.

[JTFrog]

26. No shit. So much for reliable sources.

I can't believe DU is getting plastered with this shit daily.

:shrug:

[inthebrain]

39. We used to talk to about this stuff here DAILY years ago

That was before this board took a hard right swing. Not to mention before the cons who defected from the Republican Party took over the place to make this Freeper Lite. Funny to see that just like in the Bush Economy folks here, now that Obama is in charge, are using Holiday hirings to prop up this turkey of an economy.

Hered's a little secret that the wealthy know that folks around here seem to be having a hard time with; Capitalism is a real shitty system to hang your hat on. That's why those guys live off the government tit and everyone else is left to fend for themselves.

Enjoy the restructuring!!!!

[FreakinDJ]

44. Economy is going to suck until we dump WTO and Oil

Sorry that is just the facts

But you aren't going to get any sympathy out of the RATpubliCONs who have been busy ushering in the Free Trade and the WTO for decades, (second only to thier quest to deregulate).

[inthebrain]

65. Clinton ushered in "Free Trade"

Economic Nationalism is not the answer to this mess either. Been tryed and done many times over. Especially with the autoworkers unions in the 80's.

[bluestateguy]

9. The WSWS: rooting for failure and misery (just like Republicans)

Why don't they all just go away off to their Hugo Chavez paradise in Venezuela and leave us all alone.

[NJmaverick]

20. It's a owned by FAUX news and works for the Republicans

shame that people now feel comfortable posted this sort of garbage right wing crap here at what used to be the Democratic Underground.

[brentspeak]

30. FOX News owns and operates the World Socialist Web Site?

Er, when did this happen?

[Pirate Smile]

22. That is what seems so bizarre. The RW & Republicans are joined by a group on the left side

who also seem to be rooting for failure. All good news is discounted. All bad news is trumpeted to the extreme.

[msongs]

10. fear not, goldman sachs is doing just fine nt

[winyanstaz]

23. K & R....

and I believe it is past time to call this what it is.
Depression...It's here....face up to it.

[Zynx]

24. Worst. Economic. Analysis. Ever.

You take two isolated data points and draw a conclusion. How about the fact that jobless claims are down over 100,000 in three months and 200,000 from the peak? How about the fact that retail sales are positive on a year over year basis for the first time since mid 2008? How about the fact that industrial production has risen four months in a row? Honestly, this was lousy analysis and you should be ashamed of yourself.

[inthebrain]

34. The isolated data point would the November jobless claims

It's the outlier and doesn't follow the trend.

Furthermore, the job losses that folks proclaim are easing up is more like a pitcher of water. Once you reach the point that the pitcher is empty there's really no more that can be emptied out.

Either or, a lot of the stuff I'm reading on here about the economy from the so called "lefty Democrats" here is the same flawed data and analysis used to justify Bush's bomb of an eight year economy. While things are getting worse just misrepresent the data to claim they are getting better.

And as one poster has pointed out, there are also plenty of layoffs already planned for January. Here in Boston I know of six companies planning massive lay offs. Enjoy the great restructuring!!!!

[Zynx]

40. Considering you can't separate the jobless claims reports from the monthly employment reports, I

I think I have proven my point that you don't know what you're talking about. Weekly jobless claims have been on a steady downward trend for six months. This data point is an outlier. The trend in job losses in the monthly employment reports is clearly toward zero. Nearly every month has seen fewer job losses and the job losses that are there are in fewer and fewer sectors. Several sectors have begun to hire again.

Learn at least what the data series are before you start posting about them. The job openings survey also contains misleading data. You could draw the conclusion from that series that gross job separations are at a multi-year low and that therefore businesses aren't firing that many people. Of course this would be bad analysis, but you could do it if you don't know the data series worth a crap. You have similarly analyzed these data very poorly.

I'll trust CBO's assessment of the stimulus long before I'll trust anybody who can't even tell the difference between data sets.

[EndElectoral]

27. Wait until the layoffs after Christmas

[CTyankee]

28. Big picture: unemployment #s are lagging indicators; consumer spending & consumer debt are not.

The latter two are interesting. Consumer spending is up and consumer (revolving) debt is down. I'm no economist but in trying to read the tea leaves I am seeing some brighter spots.

Please, folks, show the big picture before you start hurling epithets at other folks. This thread is not helpful...I won't Unrec because I don't use that function. So this is my "Unrec" and the reasons for it...

[inthebrain]

35. I really don't care if someone hits the unrec

I notice that real job creation, ya know, the ones that you can live in, don't fit your criteria for a so called "healthy recovery".

Yeah, there are jobs coming.

McJobs.

[CTyankee]

46. I didn't use the term "healthy recovery" and I wouldn't because I think that's going to be a long

time coming, and then only with some super, new technological industry. I don't know when that will shake out and don't pretend to know. I was talking about what "is" right now. And I will say that an uptick in consumer spending and in consumers reducing debt is not a bad thing.

P.S. I did not hit the Unrec button. I don't Unrec, except through posting a response, not using the anonymity of a click...

[onenote]

29. the only "lie" i see is the one in the op article that claims anyone has argued that there would be

a "rapid recovery."

Crap OP article with crap analysis.

[branders seine]

32. The jobs are GONE.

Thanks to Obama's Goldman Sachs-Citicorp team and their predecessors, there is zero investment in any kind of sustainable economic infrastructure in this country.

If you are not in the military or you are not a capitalist financial speculator, you will be fighting for fewer and fewer burger-slinging and coffee-making "jobs" for the next couple of generations.

[treestar]

52. And of course no new jobs can ever be created

that has never happened before :sarcasm:

And of course it is all Obama's fault! LOL! the last 8 years never happened, or Obama was secretly President during them!

[DavidDvorkin]

33. Initial jobless claims can rise even while employment rises

That 474,000 is not a number representing net job creation/loss. Even in good times, there are layoffs in some areas and hiring in others. It's the net number that counts, not either one of those numbers in isolation.

[inthebrain]

36. Yeah, we have to include christmas hiring as real job gains for the economy

Heck.

This isn't even original.

For eight years the Republicans pulled this same trick. Even so, it's not even new. You can go back to the Great Depression and find tons of newspaper clippings of recoveries that were no where near evident. We are seeing the same thing here.

[DavidDvorkin]

38. That's a separate issue

You can question the accuracy of all the numbers -- what's included, how well the estimates are calculated, whether there's deliberate biasing, and so on -- but the original post misunderstood or ignored the importance of considering NET job creation/loss.

[SoFlaJet]

43. Why don't all you anti Obama people

just go ahead and NOT vote for the democratic candidates next year, oh yea and then you can all waste your 'principled' votes by writing in either Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul's name for president in 2012. I dare ya, just see what kind of country we end up with then....A drunken John Boehner mumbling and crying on the house floor as he finishes the job that Bush/Cheney started in almost ruining this country. Fuck. You. All.

[SpartanDem]

53. Paul Krugman and many others disagree

Krugman empathcailly believe that stimius has improved the economu,but that it needs to be bigger


The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that’s also the bad news — because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes drastically, we’re looking at many years of high unemployment.

And the really bad news is that “centrists” in Congress aren’t able or willing to draw the obvious conclusion, which is that we need a lot more federal spending on job creation.

About that good news: not that long ago the U.S. economy was in free fall. Without the recovery act, the free fall would probably have continued, as unemployed workers slashed their spending, cash-strapped state and local governments engaged in mass layoffs, and more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=2


The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act can’t seem to catch a break. When the economy contracted at a 0.7% rate in the quarter after it was first enacted, critics argued that the contraction was evidence that the recovery act didn’t (or even couldn’t) have any effect at all. Never mind that there was wide agreement among economists that, without it the contraction would’ve been three or four times worse.

Now that it has been reported that the economy expanded at a 3.5% rate in the third quarter of this year, some experts quoted by CNN and the New York Times (among others) are suggesting that precisely because the recovery act was responsible for the lion’s share of growth, it somehow had failed to repair the economy’s deep (usually unspecified) underlying structural problems. In short, the recovery-package-led growth in the third quarter was somehow “artificial.”

In a way, this is progress. At least there’s agreement now that the government’s money is as good as anybody else’s when it comes to spurring economic activity and creating and preserving jobs. Still there is an oddity here. The new Recovery Act skeptics want to argue something like, “without the public spending provided by the Recovery Act, the economy would just crumble. So we should stop this public spending.”


http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/recovery_act_spurs_genuine_growth/

[mkultra]

56. factually twisted

the 11,000 number was down from 150,000 the month before which was down itself from 250,000 in october. This number is true unemployment(yes, it does count people that are off benefits). The assumption that lower net is due to holiday hiring is very flawed.

[bhikkhu]

58. This is just stupid. Here's the projection from January 09:

http://blog.jparsons.net/2009/01/unemployment-rate-projections.html

I don't know how short people's memories are, but it was well known and well publicized that the US was sinking deep into a recession during 2008. Remember those mid-08 stimulus checks everybody got? The main idea was to stimulate the economy and limit job losses. As Bush's days were ending, it was very apparent things were still getting

Before Obama was even elected the jobless figures were projected to peak close to 10% heading into 2010 before anything would be looking better. Not that it makes it any easier for someone out of work, but everybody who took the time to read knew this was how it was going to be, even in a best case scenario. The RW loves you for pushing their whole "its all Obama" talking point.

[harkadog]

60. So unemployment was supposed to peak at 8% with the "Recovery Plan"?

I guess that chart is out of date.

[bhikkhu]

61. Yes, and at the time most people thought it was too optimistic

...and more mainstream economists expected that we were more likely to go over 10% realistically, and drag out a little longer. Which is just to say that the mess we're in was not expected to get better by now by anyone really.

As Obama was being sworn in this was the expected mess, and the RW was happy to hang it around his neck, even if it was the product of their own rotten governance.

[inthebrain]

66. LOL

Well, ya know all that money is supposed to "trickle down".

Nothin like the bunk science of trickle down economics; Giving money away to wealthy people is the same as putting money in your pocket.

[Zavulon]

62. But it created or saved eight billion jobs!

The so-called stimulus was full of unnecessary spending when we could least afford it, and it was set to trickle in slowly so that any improvement would be most evident right around Election Day next year. In short, the so-called stimulus was nothing more than an exorbitantly expensive crock which has made it a lot harder than before to debate fiscal responsibility with the Republicans I know.

[natrat]

64. ye but all the economists upthread say things are starting to boom,what dicks

[Zavulon]

67. Sure they are, that's why unemployment claims are rising...

...and mine was one of them a couple of weeks ago.