824,000 fewer workers on payrolls

Mercor

Mercor

By Chris Isidore, senior writerFebruary 4, 2010: 9:55 AM ET


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As bad as the government's jobs readings numbers have been during the Great Recession, we'll soon find out the real situation likely was worse.

Job losses during the recession may have been underestimated by close to a million jobs. So instead of employers cutting just over 7 million jobs from their payrolls since the economic downturn began in December 2007, it's expected that the Labor Department's new estimate will be a loss of 8 million jobs.

"It's an enormous understatement of the severity of the crisis," said Heidi Shierholz, labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a union-supported think tank. "It confirms that things were actually worse on the ground than what the reports suggested."

The new reading will come when the economists at the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics release their annual revision of U.S. payrolls from April 2008 through March of 2009 Friday, using data that wasn't available as the monthly readings were being estimated and reported..............more

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/news/economy/jobs_outlook/
 
Obama: “Every economist” says I saved or created 2 million jobs
FEBRUARY 4, 2010 BY ED MORRISSEY

Jake Tapper is a little confused, and so am I. The White House supposedly abandoned the “saved or created” jobs metric because of its fantasy elements and prefers now to count jobs “funded” through Porkulus, an order that came from one of the chief economists in the White House, Peter Orszag. So why did Obama claim to a Nashua, New Hampshire audience on Tuesday that he had “saved or created” two million jobs?

“Now, if you hear some of the critics, they’ll say, well, the Recovery Act, I don’t know if that’s really worked, because we still have high unemployment,” the president said. “But what they fail to understand is that every economist, from the left and the right, has said, because of the Recovery Act, what we’ve started to see is at least a couple of million jobs that have either been created or would have been lost. The problem is, 7 million jobs were lost during the course of this recession.”
More...

Every economist? A good rule of thumb to consider the truthfulness of any speaker is his use of the terms always, never, none, all, and every. Those terms usually provide a key for a lie or a gap in knowledge — and Tapper points out the truth:

At the end of November, Congressional Budget office Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote that because of the stimulus bill “in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States..”

But clearly other economists are much more skeptical, including Dan Mitchell at the libertarian Cato Institute, and J.D. Foster at The Heritage Foundation.

Some economists say the whole notion of counting “saved or created” jobs is impossible. Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz told ProPublica that trying to count how many jobs have been saved or created is “a silly exercise.”

And in fact, in December the Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag issued a directive scrapping the whole “saved or created” construct.
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Why is the “saved or created” meme “a silly exercise”? Economic policies will get judged on whether they promote growth in both production and jobs. On that metric, Obama flopped in his first year. Prior to the 2007 recession, the US started on the path of both production and job growth within 12 months of the start of the recession. Obama took office in the 13th month, three months after a financial collapse. Twelve months later, we’re still shedding jobs with no end in sight. That’s the real measure of economic policy, and so far, Obama’s failing.

The White House only documented 650,000 jobs supposedly saved or created — and that was when the construct collapsed. The counts included jobs that were never at risk in the first place, double-counted some jobs, counted jobs that had yet to be created, and so on. The most infamous of these claims involved a single lawnmower that supposedly saved or created 50 jobs. In the end, even the man in charge of the website that proclaimed these supposed victories admitted that he could not certify any of the data at Recovery.gov last November — which is why Orszag told his OMB staff to stop claiming jobs “saved or created.”

Apparently, that memo didn’t get to Obama, or more likely, Obama simply likes to make claims that are flat-out false, and the use of “every” is a the key to understanding that. “Every economist” doesn’t buy the 2 million saved or created claim; in fact, not every economist in his own administration would support that claim, because it isn’t true, and Obama knows it.
 
Lie and revise, lie and revise some more. They're trying to control a crash landing. Had the real numbers been posted throughout the past year it would have created more panic and more losses than we had.
Reality is coming boys and girls, and when it finally can no longer be hidden with all the smoke and mirrors, the shit will hit the fan. We ain't seen nothing yet.
 
Quote from CaptainObvious:

Lie and revise, lie and revise some more. They're trying to control a crash landing. Had the real numbers been posted throughout the past year it would have created more panic and more losses than we had.
Reality is coming boys and girls, and when it finally can no longer be hidden with all the smoke and mirrors, the shit will hit the fan. We ain't seen nothing yet.
More...
I fear you are correct, Cap.
 
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THE OBVIOUS DEFICIT-CLOSERS
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on February 5, 2010

"As he tells us he wants to reduce the dangerous budget deficit, President Obama brings to mind the hapless engineers at Toyota who find that their vehicles accelerate whether or not the driver wants them to. It appears that no matter how hard Obama jams on the brakes with his newfound commitment to deficit reduction (after almost doubling the deficit in one year), the level of red ink just seems inexorably to rise. The House voted yesterday to raise the federal debt limit another $1.9 trillion.

Obviously, more fundamental change in the budget's engineering is needed. But, unfortunately, it is easier to recall a car than a president.

Obama's announced intention to freeze 13 percent of the budget for three years is a relatively minor cut. It will trim the deficit by only 3 percent over the decade.

But if the president really wanted to get serious about reducing the deficit, he's got two easy steps to take:

1) Stop the remaining $500 billion of last year's $800 billion stimulus package.

2) Refund to the Treasury the $500 billion in TARP funds repaid by the banks.

Instead, he's merrily spending the remaining stimulus cash -- even though the first round failed to curb the recession, doing little more than protecting the jobs and pay of state and local government employees. The remaining money would do more of the same -- while also funding pork-barrel projects all over America.

But only $300 billion of the stimulus has been spent. Why not call back the remaining $500 billion? Because Obama is still committed to the expansion of government spending. His promise of a (minor) freeze next year brings to mind an overweight friend's talk of the diet he'll go on -- even as he starts another banana split.

Then there's the TARP funds. Most of the money laid out under President George W. Bush is being repaid by the banks that borrowed it -- but Obama is intent on intercepting the cash before it lands in the Treasury and sending it out the door again.

He wants these funds for his second stimulus, relabeled as a "jobs bill." Some $30 billion is to go to small businesses for job creation, $30 billion for consumer credit and yet another $100 billion for more state and local aid -- that is, more protection for government workers.

And none of that cash will ever come back -- even though it's TARP money that was initially appropriated for short-term lending, spending that the government would quickly recoup.

When will the president learn that deficit spending isn't the way to stimulate the economy? That by adding to the deficit, he is stopping business from borrowing to create jobs and blocking consumers from getting the capital they need to make purchases?

Treasury debt is up 41 percent over the last year, while commercial and consumer lending is down by more than 20 percent: The government is hogging the loan window. Doesn't the president realize that this is blocking, not catalyzing, job creation?"
 
Quote from Yannis:

THE OBVIOUS DEFICIT-CLOSERS
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on February 5, 2010

"As he tells us he wants to reduce the dangerous budget deficit, President Obama brings to mind the hapless engineers at Toyota who find that their vehicles accelerate whether or not the driver wants them to. It appears that no matter how hard Obama jams on the brakes with his newfound commitment to deficit reduction (after almost doubling the deficit in one year), the level of red ink just seems inexorably to rise. The House voted yesterday to raise the federal debt limit another $1.9 trillion.

Obviously, more fundamental change in the budget's engineering is needed. But, unfortunately, it is easier to recall a car than a president.

Obama's announced intention to freeze 13 percent of the budget for three years is a relatively minor cut. It will trim the deficit by only 3 percent over the decade.

But if the president really wanted to get serious about reducing the deficit, he's got two easy steps to take:

1) Stop the remaining $500 billion of last year's $800 billion stimulus package....
More...

False.
 
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