Daily Archives: 2012/05/04

As we learn that there is a new proposal from Trans-Canada which will promote routing any oil pipeline around “environmentally sensitive” areas, I thought it was interesting that the latest jobs numbers are now showing the overall weakness of this Administration’s economic policies, and how they relate to real job growth.

Now I think we can all agree that 115,000 jobs created in the month of April is as sickly a number as we could have anticipated. However what’s truly frightening and deserves the attention of both parties, are the numbers within the numbers. It seems that when all the jobless applications are counted, the actual benchmark number drops by just 1/10 of 1% to 8.1. Moreover, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is charged with keeping such records for the federal government, reports that when the number of employable adults who have simply stopped looking for work are added to the benchmark, the jobless number in America rises to a staggering 14.5%, even higher than I have speculated in the past. As you can imagine, the ripple effect has hit the stock market today and the POTUS is in full-out damage control mode.

I would add that the data today reflects the dangerous and apathetic approach to our economic difficulty demonstrated by the Obama WH. And for all my “fans” who are content to pin my analysis on what they believe is my simple dislike of President Obama himself,  I would only say that to ignore these numbers today, as evidence of an economy poised to retreat the (short distance) back to recession, is akin to a game of chicken with a Greyhound Bus while driving a “smart” car.

Unfortunately, this is no longer a game of party name calling. The threat is real and looming closer with every passing indicator announcement. Our economy is saddled with crushing national debt and hindered by skittish businesses that see bad times ahead. Corporate profits are indeed up, but those profits are the “paper tiger” in the room with declining orders for durable goods, weakening consumer spending, inflation, disproportionate trade deficits, and a shrinking workforce. Real people are really hurting, and our President leads by way of what separates us rather than what binds us. We are a shadow of our former self as a nation, and the means necessary to correct are growing far more complicated and difficult while we fight over ideological differences and manufactured campaign hype. The Summer of 2012 will be one for the history books, and I will be praying for all those who are caught in the backwash of a Presidential Election slated to burn through hundreds of millions of dollars before it’s over.