Barack Obama – Economy is better than you think

[babsbunny]

http://fwix.com/columbus/share/df91232376/barack_obama_economy_is_better_than_you_think?referrer=http%3A%2F%2Frawstory.com%2F

Submitted by Derek K on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 10:36am.

What a difference a few months make. Just two months ago President Obama announced Osama bin Laden was dead. Then just a few weeks later it was announced that Chrysler had repaid its bailout loans. It was proof that the stimulus worked. The automotive industry is healthier than ever and hundreds of thousands of jobs have been saved.

On Friday it was announced that job growth was smaller than expected. People began panicking. But if one looks at the numbers, the economy is doing much better than people are being led to believe.

On the same Friday the low job growth numbers were released, the Dow Jones finished at 12,657 points. For anyone who follows the stock market, until the beginning of this year, the Dow Jones has NEVER been over 12,000 points. In the last six months it has risen an astonishing 600 plus points. This number may fall somewhat, but it will be down from record highs.

[Tennessee Gal]

1. Nice. Positive aspects of the economy.

I like it!

"On Friday it was announced that the private sector added 57,000 jobs. Although the number is lower than what some people were hoping, it marks the 16th consecutive month of private sector job GROWTH. Again, that’s 16 straight months of private sector job GROWTH.

What brought this down was firing in the PUBLIC sector. Hello, John Kasich. Hello, Scott Walker.

The public sector lost 39,000 jobs. And almost all of the jobs lost were TEACHING jobs.

The increase in unemployment are the direct result of Republican's draconian budget cuts. JOHN KASICH and other Republicans are to blame for the spike in unemployment – not Barack Obama."

[BlueCaliDem]

11. And yet here, and outside DU, there are some Progressives acting

like REgressives, who would happily blame President Obama and deny him a second term just to "teach those disappointing Dems a lesson". I.O.W., they want a repeat of 2000 because Duh-bya, apparently, wasn't destructive and detrimental enough. Or they can't remember it.

Anyway, in that jobs growth number would be my son and his girlfriend who'd been unemployed for two months and a year, respectively. Now my 19-year-young daughter is set to be gainfully employed next week after a YEAR of being unemployed!

[daa]

22. BS 121,000 came out of the black box that overstates jobs by 60%

[postulater]

2. The stock market is not the economy.

[still_one]

5. That is even more true today then before. It is manipulated by so- called analyst who say one

Thing one day, and then completely reverse themselves the next. It all depends what the brokerage houses tell them to push

They are rarely if ever called on their mistakes. In fact when John Stewart slammed them, they united in trying to demonize him

[somone]

3. Reality distortion field remains strong

[alarimer]

4. No it isn't.

People are being laid off left and right, especially in public sector jobs. Those private sector jobs you are crowing about pay shit wages and have no benefits because they are largely in service jobs. Who gives a shit about the Dow when many of us are just trying to keep our heads above water.

Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining.

[rpannier]

6. I guess that depends on who you are nt

[BlueCaliDem]

7. This is wonderful news that breeds hope with most of us, but gets lost

in some people's need to see President Obama fail - even if that means getting another Repuke in the WH.

I choose the glass is half full rather than the alternative, but then again, I'm realistic in what can be successfully built in less than three years what took twelve to destroy.

[obxhead]

14. This is not news.

It is an opinion at best and more like propaganda based on things that are not actual indicators of the economy.

The economy continues in a downward spiral and we should pay attention to the facts, not the propaganda. A McJob is not an economy building quality job.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

17. Wall Street is not Main Street.

And Wall Street is hoarding cash and not hiring. This "wonderful news" does not help the 9.2% unemployed in this country.

[katnapped]

23. Hey come on now

That 9.2% could be dead right now! That glass half full thing, remember!

:sarcasm:

[peace frog]

28. But but but

Just go shopping !11! Take your family to Disney World!11! All is well, nothing to see here, move along,,, :eyes:

[BlueCaliDem]

30. Well, things will have to get worse before they get better. :-D

We have to start somewhere. The "wonderful" part of that news, is, at least we're not sliding backward, or bleeding 780,000 jobs per month anymore.

Like I've mentioned, I'm a glass is half full kind of person, but I do know Congress can do MUCH better.

[roomfullofmirrors]

8. the rich are getting richer. we know.

[Ruby the Liberal]

9. Um, the DOW was at 14,000 in October 2008

Dude doesn't know what he's talking about. Besides, the S&P 500 is a better measure of the overall economy, albeit a lagging indicator. The DOW is meaningless in that regard.

[kenny blankenship]

10. I was going to post same, but the dude covers himself by inserting a phrase about "this year"

Hey, the Bush stock market had risen 94% from the 2002 9-11 crash low to its all time closing high in Oct. 2007. Let's talk about how great George Bush was for the economy, too.
It's rather pathetic.

[kenny blankenship]

27. On second thought, you're right. He really does seem to think 12,000 is an alltime high.

[JoePhilly]

21. The S&P tracks the DOW almost exactly.

Go here ....

http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI

In the field "Compare:", enter "S&P 500".

Then, change the date range to "10y".

They track almost exactly over the last 10 years.

Also ... still looking at the same graph ... look for the last 2 times that the the DOW was at 12k. The first was early in 2007, on the way UP, the second was in the middle of 2008, on the way down.

Stare at the spike, and the dip.

Find the point (roughly) where the stimulus passes in Feb 2009.

The OP was wrong in claiming that the DOW was never higher than 12k. Of course the 14k number lasted for about 10 minutes before collapsing.

As for whether the DOW is an accurate indicator ... I do know this ... anytime it falls say 200 points ... parts of DU start screaming "double-dip".

Was true in the summer of 2009, last summer when the DOW was at 9800, and this summer when the DOW dropped to 11.7

The reality is that people do look to the DOW as one of the indicators of our economy.

edit:fixed url

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. Maybe HIS economy is better.

It certainly isn't for a lot of people.

And I believe that the stock market is a damn poor indicator of most people's well-being.

Goddamn it.

[hfojvt]

13. I said much the same thing half an hour ago

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1458072&mesg_id=1458242

but being positive is not popular here.

Progressives have to be quivering with anger about the poor and unemployed and shaking with fear about the future fascist takeover/economic collapse/Fukushima radioactivity poisoning.

[obxhead]

15. Fighting for the poor and unemployed is a Democratic value.

Cheering propaganda is a fascist value.

[hfojvt]

24. but what is the propaganda?

The propaganda that I am seeing from Crossroads GPS says "the Obama economy sucks, the stimulus failed, no more government spending" and then implies "elect a Republican President, cut taxes for businesses and rich people".

"The stimulus failed" seems to me to be the real propaganda, and you don't really do anything for the poor and unemployed by catapaulting it.

Is 900,000+ jobs in 2010 propaganda, or are those the facts?

Compare Obama's record with Bush's

What Bush inherited

1999 +3,145,000 jobs
2000 +1,936,000 jobs

what he did

2001 - -1,784,000 jobs (most of them lost after 9/11 which he allowed to happen on his watch)
2002 - -540,000
2003 - +87,000 yes, a whole 87,000 net jobs created in the whole year. If only 18,000 jobs are created each month for the rest of the year, Obama will still have +805,000 for the year.

But Rove and the Chamber of Commerce want you to see him as a failure, the economy as floundering, if not foundering.

And to forget what Obama inherited from Bush

-3.6 million jobs in 2008
another 3.5 million lost in the first six months of 2009 when Obama had been in office for a mere five months.

Mass pessimism doesn't help the unemployed or the poor, and neither does empowering Rove.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

16. Who the hell is Derek K?

LOL @ "This number may fall somewhat..." Tread lightly with this one, folks; he sounds like one of those "housing prices only go up" types who contributed to the collapse.

[Coyote_Bandit]

18. Wall Street Numbers

and the 30 multi-national stocks of the Dow have very little to do with the US economy.

Wall Street Numbers have very little to do with the Main Street US economy.

Derek and his ilk should consider using a stock index of US companies using US labor and resources and selling in US markets. Oh, that's right, the financial wizards haven't put that index together - probably because they don't want us to really know just how bad our economy sucks.

Unrec for market ignorance.

[xphile]

19. The stock market is not indicative of the greater economy.

The stock market goes up when the unemployment rate goes up. Do you think that the unemployment rate going up is a good thing?

This is ridiculous. People are unable to find jobs that they can live on but we're crowing about the goddamned stock market? We already know that the well off are doing fine.

This is NOT a bragging point.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

20. If you're a Tali-Banker. n/t

[Amerigo Vespucci]

25. Doesn't mean JACK SHIT if the people to the RIGHT of you and LEFT of you are SUFFERING...

...and you are, too.

So yes, let's all form a circle and hold hands and sing Kumbaya and then wonder where the fuck next month's rent is coming from.

Chrysler paying back its bailout loans doesn't put food on a working class family's table.

[DrDan]

26. Malarky. The DOW has surpassed 14,000.

and from the link

"The NASDAQ is also trading at new highs. On Friday it finished at 2,859 points"

NASDAQ has, in the past, closed over 5,000

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. Derek K is a graduate of the P.T. Barnum School of Economics and Snake Oil Production.

[unkachuck]

31. "...has risen an astonishing 600 plus points."

....thank you, I'll no longer be up nights losing sleep worrying that the rich aren't getting richer....

[Arkansas Granny]

32. Better for who? Most of the people I know are struggling to make ends

meet with prices going up and wages staying the same.