January 14, 2012

Get ready to bash Obama

Not over yet.
There's a long history of  blame, misdirection and undeserved credit-taking from the Obama administration when it has come to the unemployment rate over the course of the Obama administration. Starting from the opening days of the administration when the president said their stimulus plan had to be passed or the unemployment rate would go above 8% (before it passed and then went up to 10.1%) things were either misunderstood or just full of obfuscation.  Later, the push was to use a made up metric of "jobs saved", something that could not be measured and therefore their statements of saving millions of jobs could not be contested. The problem there was that not contestable also meant unbelievable - especially since the numbers they claimed to 'save' were outrageously high. Next came the story line that this was much worse than they were led to believe and it was going to take much longer to get back out of the problem than they first though - that dovetailed well with the 'blame Bush' mantra and also the idea that the president still needs another four years to shepherd turning the country around.  After a couple of failed 'recovery summers' the latest spin is that since the economy has 'recovered' from a 10.1% unemployment rate down to 8.5%, the president's plan must finally be working.  Yeah, right.

The reason for revisiting this story line is because it is a perfect set up for taking the most recent talking points (we're recovering now) and weaving the Democrats story line into a tale of ultimate failure.  That's something that will help the Republicans to defeat Obama in November, since they are going to be hit hard with the supposed blame, and the tags of being crazy radicals come the fall.



The story is about to change.According to a Bloomberg news item yesterday.
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said the drop in the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent may be partially reversed in coming months.

“I’m a little concerned that the most recent improvement is going to be transitory and it might move up above 8.5 percent,” Evans said in response to audience questions after a speech today in Carmel, Indiana. Evans said he forecasts that “at the end of the year, we’re not going to be very different from 8.5 percent unemployment.”
Either the Obama recovery has stalled at a ridiculously high unemployment rate - 8.5% is really, really bad - or it may actually reverse between now and the year end.  In other words, the president, who threw a bunch of money at liberal pet projects as a 'stimulus' accomplished nothing except a ridiculous debt level for America, can't take credit for a recovery if things are heading in reverse or going nowhere.  

It's not just Charles Evans who thinks there's a stall coming either. There's a lot of belief that it's coming, and with the downgrades of credit ratings in Europe and a potential for big problems in China, as well as domestic hesitancy, it's pretty much inevitable that things are not going to continue in the right direction.  The Obama administration has been out hard in taking credit the last few positive months.   They've tied themselves to a progression that just isn't going to happen the way they need it to do.

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