First off, we were promised the “grand plan on how the president was going to save the economy” at the end of last week or “at the very latest by the start of this week.” Being Wednesday at midnight I assume the plan is not being released anytime soon (although we are promised Thursday now). So since nothing is being said, job numbers are still in the toilet and to boot every single one of President Obama’s initiatives have failed to add real jobs to our economy. As I posted earlier, perhaps this time is different if you believe in unicorn farts saving your face from the effect of ageing and other weird stuff.
Photo source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-jobs-20110906,0,3610220.story?track=rss
As this photo shows, the president is not having an easy time of things. I will say one thing in defense of the president: there was nothing he could have done from the start to make our economy any better. The entire QE (which I discussed in an earlier post to death) episode has probably just prolonged the recession and possibly made it worse. The only purpose of QE ever is to stop a depression from starting and to “theoretically suffer a longer recession but avoid a depression.” That is just one of the things the president has tried to turn things around. And he has tried, but everything he has done has either had little effect or the opposite effect, and to boot instead of focusing on jobs which is what the people of this country care about, he has still maintained his other political agendas which actually as I showed take away from the job market. The reason for this is that the primary purpose of the president’s political agenda has nothing to do with creating jobs, his purpose is to simply achieve his political goals regardless of the cost.
In other news, some interesting tidbits have come out in the news about Krueger, who as a I mentioned is one who does not really see the big picture and goes into studies with a slant. inadvertently or on purpose, his studies all come to the same wrong conclusions. This is the problem in science of any type of “not being impartial.” Indeed, it is nearly impossible for anyone to be completely impartial, but this is a huge impediment for real scientific achievement.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/5/kruegers-economic-nightmare/
As this article shows, Krueger was one of the main planners of the failed “Cash for Clunkers” idea. Let me tell you from first-hand experience how this really worked. This was nothing but a hand-out and the amount of sheer bull that went into this and the best thing of all was that it probably had very little impact at all on anything. Just a giant hand-out that once again instead of benefiting the poor people, benefited mostly the rich. I can talk about this program more in detail later, but to stay on topic this is just one of many failed ideas this administration has striven for.
My objective with each of these posts is to illustrate how failed the economic policies of our president really are. As I showed previously, the plan which will be released “as we are told” by the end of this week now: is said to contain the following:
President Obama will roll out a jobs package on Thursday that strives to lift the
ailing economy through roughly $300 billion worth of tax credits, school
renovation projects, job training for the unemployed, and a program to prevent
layoffs of school teachers, according to a person familiar with the
administration’s plans.
from:http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-jobs-20110906,0,3610220.story?track=rss
In other words, we see 300 billion dollars (that we are not told where it is going to come from) is going to be spent on more of the same failed policies as before. Job training was part of the first stimulus and it’s results are rather dismal. Programs to prevent layoffs are nothing but more goodliglock of the first order. This is just ignoring the reality of the situation which is that you can not borrow money forever to pay for an “unbalanced budget.” Tax Credits are interesting in that they do help the economy, but will the tax credit be for small businesses (not the super-wealthly mind you) but for people in the upper middle class and beyond? This could signify a change, but I kind of wonder if it is really just another crony giveaway or another hand-out? We should know if this plan is ever released, but needless to say, I am sure it is going to be what I said before. If the president has not budged on his beliefs and his political agendas yet, I am fairly certain he never will.
And Just a thought here; but if the president is still allowing the EPA to bankrupt the coal industry and real production in the US as far as coal goes (to the tune of 500,000 jobs) then what is the point of anything the president is doing for jobs anywhere else? This point still sticks and this is why I still bring it up.
The Government for instance recently created 150 green jobs in MN at a cost of $2 million per job. So if the Government directly tries to create jobs, be very hesitant to agree with the plan. Every job created as in the case in MN will probably result in more than that number of jobs lost in the economy just due to the sheer waste of Government jobs. Most Companies can provide for employess even at a higher pay scale then those green companies for closer to 100k per job and that includes the benefits, etc.
But there is a way out like I mentioned before, and the news does have one good take on this:
http://www.stardem.com/article_df155aa7-0ecd-5d76-94d9-1a64119d8e74.html
While the Obama administration has made some helpful gestures in trimming back some regulation, its officials at the EPA, National Labor Relations Board, National Mediation Board (another labor relations agency) and other agencies have been particularly heavy-handed and anti-business.
Let’s hope Krueger will use his expertise to highlight these impediments to hiring and freeing up the labor market and not to simply affirm his new boss’ anti-growth leanings.
In other words, the only way the president can solve this issue and crisis is to become pragmatic, lose his political agenda and embrace reality instead of dreams of unicorns and pixie dust. Regulation is always a good thing to a certain extent, but over-regulation and pointless regulation simply increase the costs for everyone including the poorest people in this country. Like I said before, if he really wants to bankrupt the coal industry like he said, we will never get out of this recession until he leaves office. In fact, I would doubt we could escape a depression if that was to occur.
BenfromMO 