deficit terrorism - they're serious - pix

by: fairleft

Wed May 26, 2010 at 19:16:38 PM EDT

They can't be serious, but they are. Somehow the financiers and 'the market' have taken control of our politicians and the mainstream media, and are going to practice anti-deficit terrorism against their populations, here and in Europe, already hit by deep recession and mass unemployment. Taking Keynes and common sense and doing the opposite, where does it lead? Why do we have to find out?

Dean Baker:

. . . Even though the US and many eurozone countries are projected to be flirting with double-digit unemployment for years to come, their governments will be focused on cutting deficits rather than boosting the economy and creating jobs.

The outcome of this story is not pretty. [fairleft: You could've put that a little stronger, Dean] Cutting deficits means raising taxes and/or cutting spending. In either case, it means pulling money out of the economy at a time when it is already well below full employment. This can lower deficits, but it also means lower GDP and higher unemployment.

This might be OK if we could show some benefit from lower deficits, but this is a case of pain with no gain. . . .

Mark Weisbrot:

Unfortunately the European authorities . . . are . . . committed to punishing the weaker economies by having them cut spending even if it causes or deepens recession and mass unemployment (over 20% in Spain). . . .

'Germany to boost spending €10 billion yearly, 2011-2016' ; - >

by: fairleft

Mon May 24, 2010 at 15:34:57 PM EDT

Monday, May 24, 2010 - 03:42
Germany to boost spending €10 billion yearly, 2011-2016

PARIS (MNI) - The German government will embark on a fiscal prosperity program, increasing the federal budget €10 billion a year from 2011 to 2016 (or the return of full employment), the Financial Times reported Monday, citing unnamed government officials.

The measures, which will include spending increases, increased subsidies to states, and lower taxes, are intended to comply with Germany's new constitutional law requiring that annual public deficits be no less than 0.35% of GDP during recessions. It is also meant to serve as an example to other Eurozone countries that Germany has repeatedly exhorted to boost deficits in order to outpace the EU's 3%-of-GDP deficit requirement during periods of high unemployment.

Germany expects to run a deficit exceeding 5% of GDP this year, and hopes to increase it steadily afterward. The country is expected this year to have a record-high net borrowing requirement of €80 billion, which it also wants to increase beginning next year, unless unemployment declines significantly.

The magnitude of Germany's planned increases are likely to be greeted warmly by fellow EMU members, who hoped that Germany would stimulate demand to provide breathing room for countries mired in recessions much deeper than Germany's that cannot undertake economic growth efforts as robust as Germany can.

Who 'they' are; where they're taking us

by: fairleft

Wed Apr 28, 2010 at 19:33:54 PM EDT

Thanks to the Daily Howler for pointing out the perfect portrait of the U.S. media/political elite, i.e., the 'they' that is the enemy of the rest of us:

NYT's Mark Leibovich: On a recent Friday night, a couple hundred influentials gathered for a Mardi Gras-themed birthday party for Betsy Fischer, the executive producer of "Meet the Press." Held at the Washington home of the lobbyist Jack Quinn, the party was a classic Suck-Up City affair in which everyone seemed to be congratulating one another on some recent story, book deal, show or haircut (and, by the way, your boss is doing a swell job, and maybe we could do an interview).

McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, arrived after the former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie left. Fox News's Greta Van Susteren had David Axelrod pinned into a corner near a tower of cupcakes. In the basement, a very white, bipartisan Soul Train was getting down to hip-hop. David Gregory, the "Meet the Press" host, and Newsweek's Jon Meacham gave speeches about Fischer. Over by the jambalaya, Alan Greenspan picked up some Mardi Gras beads and placed them around the neck of his wife, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, who bristled and quickly removed them. . . .

Yes, that was former Fed Chief Alan Greespan, Ayn Randian most responsible for the deregulated crap storm we're doomed to experience forever (i.e., until us average working people overthrow the neoliberal corporate-globalized market fundamentalists). And his wife, insider neo-journalist Andrea Mitchell.

And what are 'they' in an uproar about right now? No, not 10% official (near 17% unofficial) unemployment in the U.S. Nope, deficits; government deficits during a very deep recession when we desperately need economic stimulus have got elite knickers all in a twist:

Poverty and Unemployment Is Still A Pre-Existing Condition

by: Jack's Smirking Revenge

Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 13:21:08 PM EDT

It's not over yet since the Senate still has to vote on it for it to be finalized.

Here are the final touches to the bill that were passed as well.

Does it matter though?

Payrolls and Full-Time Employment Shrink Again

by: Jacob Freeze

Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 16:22:48 PM EST

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics...

Nonfarm payroll employment was little changed (-36,000) in February, and the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent.

The number of persons working part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased from 8.3 to 8.8 million in February, partially offsetting a large decrease in the prior month. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

There was a little more bad news on the BLS summary table of unemployment, which showed an increase of 139,000 in the number of "discouraged workers" who have given up looking for work, between January 2010 and February 2010.

Along with the increase of 500,000 "involuntarily part-time" workers from 8.3 to 8.8 million, there was plenty of bad news, although most of the corporate media described it as "not as bad as expected," and so on.

Some economic cheerleaders also tried to blame the bad numbers on bad weather, although the BLS had taken the trouble to shoot down this excuse before it got off the ground.

In order for severe weather conditions to reduce the estimate of payroll employment, employees have to be off work for an entire pay period and not be paid for the time missed. About half of all workers in the payroll survey have a 2-week, semi-monthly, or monthly pay period.

So unless you were a day laborer, or snowed in for at least a week, your employment status didn't change, and snow won't explain away the bad news.

Even according to Obama's advisors, his economic "stimulus" has already contributed most of what they expect it to contribute to reducing unemployment.

The stimulus will continue to trickle into the economy for the next couple of years, but as a concentrated force, it's largely spent. Christina Romer, the chair of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said last fall, "By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to further growth," adding that she didn't expect unemployment to fall significantly until 2011.

And in the same excellent article from the Atlantic which I linked above, Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson describes some bleak consequences of long-term unemployment for black communities...

"One problem that has plagued the black community over the years is resignation," Wilson said--a self-defeating "set of beliefs about what to expect from life and how to respond," passed from parent to child. "And I think there was sort of a feeling that norms of resignation would weaken somewhat with the Obama election. But these hard economic times could reinforce some of these norms."

Wilson, age 74, is a careful scholar, who chooses his words precisely and does not seem given to overstatement. But he sounded forlorn when describing the "very bleak" future he sees for the neighborhoods that he's spent a lifetime studying. There is "no way," he told me, "that the extremely high jobless rates we're seeing won't have profound consequences for the social organization of inner-city neighborhoods."

Update: I just found this graph of long-term unemployment, which cheerleaders for Obama will probably call "encouraging."

The Simple Arithmetic of Obama's Idiotic "Stimulus"

by: Jacob Freeze

Wed Mar 03, 2010 at 23:49:46 PM EST

Although 83% of Democrats (meaning "TV-intoxicated monkeys") still approve of Obama's "job performance," which isn't much different from approving of the "job performance" of a hockey puck that Republicans have been slapping around for 13 months...

Although millions of TV-intoxicated monkeys still approve of Obama's "performance" as President, which isn't much different from approving of Donald Duck's "performance" as King Lear...

While the economy continues to shed jobs, the war in Afghanistan gets bigger, Obama's generals talk about "delaying" withdrawal from Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of workers give up even looking for work every month...

Democratic monkey-economists are constantly paraded around the networks to explain how Obama's idiotic "stimulus" succeeded, because without Obama's idiotic "stimulus" everything would be even worse...

And the Democratic monkey-economists know that everything would be even worse without Obama's idiotic "stimulus" because none of them can predict or explain fuck-all, and the economic melt-down hit us like a run-away bus without so much as one millisecond of warning from Democratic monkey-economists or the Democratic monkey-politicians who rolled and rolled and rolled over for Bush for eight long years.

But instead of believing all those ridiculous monkeys and their catastrophically discredited theories, maybe we should ask ourselves how many jobs the same amount of money as Obama's idiotic "stimulus" could have created if Obama had simply hired workers for public works.

If we spread out the "stimulus" of $780 billion over five years, and hired workers at $30,000 per annum, which would give a working mom and dad, for example, a respectable middle-class income of $60,000, then 1,000,000 jobs cost $30 billion per year, and $150 billion over five years, so...

The same amount of money as Obama's idiotic "stimulus" could have created and maintained more than 5,000,000 jobs for five years.

5,000,000 jobs for five years!

But instead the monkey-Democrats and President "Hockey-Puck" Obama...

Instead the monkey-Democrats and President "Donald Duck" Obama gave us...

An idiotic "stimulus" stuffed with tax cuts, and 4,000,000 jobs disappeared since January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States.

Pictures of the Great Recession

by: Jacob Freeze

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 18:07:54 PM EST

The shaded area in the graph shows the upper and lower bounds of all recessions after World War II. The purple line is the current recession.

And meanwhile in Sacramento, Reno, and Seattle...

US Lost 85,000 Jobs in December

by: Jacob Freeze

Fri Jan 08, 2010 at 13:23:57 PM EST

Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-85,000) in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 10.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

And why did the most common measure of unemployment remain at 10% while more jobs were lost? Let's ask the New York Times!

Though jobs were lost in December, the unemployment rate did not rise, an indication that more jobless workers had given up their search for work.

For anyone who wants to wonk with those numbers, Seeking Alpha is highly recommended, and there you can learn that a lot of apparently good news is more than offset by bad news in another category.

Continuing unemployment claims declined!

Claims for extended unemployment benefits declined!

But new claims for emergency benefits are booming, with an increase of more than 40% since last month, and...

The "emergency" just keeps getting worse.

The Long Grind Down

by: Jacob Freeze

Wed Nov 11, 2009 at 09:19:57 AM EST

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 190,000 in October. In the most recent 3 months, job losses have averaged 188,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 357,000 during the prior 3 months. In contrast, losses averaged 645,000 per month from November 2008 to April 2009. Since December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million.

Perceptive readers will notice that jobs are not disappearing as fast as they disappeared earlier this year, and that's the good news.

The bad news is that there are fewer and fewer jobs, month after month after month.

Meanwhile, back in the cloud of dubious definitions, the flagship unemployment statistic surged past 10.2%, as 558,000 people became "unemployed" in October, either by losing their jobs or unsuccessfully entering the workforce.

Obama and his playmates are claiming that their stimulus has created or saved about 640,000 jobs, but more than half those jobs were in education, and that statistic is even more nebulous than "unemployment."

Indiana, for example, reported saving or creating 13,232 education jobs with its stimulus money, but Cris Johnston, the director of the government efficiency division of the state budget office, said that it was difficult to say whether the state would have actually lost those jobs without the money.

"We can't make the statement that they were created or retained," Mr. Johnston said. Indiana, he said had followed federal guidelines in reporting how many full-time jobs were paid for with the stimulus money, which also paid for education supplies and other expenses. And while New York City officials have said the stimulus helped them save thousands of teaching jobs, it would have been politically difficult for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to actually lay off that many teachers while running for re-election.

So 558,000 people became "unemployed" in October alone, and meanwhile Obama's feeble stimulus has conceivably created or saved a grand total of 640,000 jobs, or about the same as the last five weeks of the long grind down.

Unemployment Gets Worse Faster

by: Jacob Freeze

Fri Oct 02, 2009 at 11:12:04 AM EDT

Now, it's getting worse faster.

"The American economy lost 263,000 jobs in September - far more than expected - and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent," says the New York Times. "Economists had expected 175,000 monthly job losses."

In Elizabeth, N.J., Stephanie Wheeler has been watching her savings and unemployment benefits run out. "It's terrifying," Ms. Wheeler, 56, said. "I'm petrified of being set out on the street."

"I try to eat less," she said.

The Guardian added a few jolly observations...

It was the 21st consecutive monthly drop in jobs, providing a stark reminder that the economic crisis is far from over. Rapidly approaching double digits, the rate of unemployment is at its highest since June 1983, when it reached 10.1%.

And after we exceed those solitary Reagan-era peaks above 10%, there's nothing between us and the Great Depression!

And that last little uptick on the right of the graph is the low expectations of almost everybody, but the real numbers ran right up against the magic threshold at 10%, and that's the magic threshold of the next Great Depression.

Obama's "stimulus" sold out the rest of us with his tax-cutting concessions to Republicans and Blue Dogs, and they didn't even thank him!

"Americans are asking, 'Where are the jobs?'" House GOP leader John Boehner said Thursday. "But since the 'stimulus' was signed, we've lost roughly 3 million private sector jobs, and we're nearing 10 percent unemployment."

Meanwhile Barack Obama is prancing around in Denmark, at this very moment, lobbying to get the Olympic Games in Chicago. This is the sort of assignment we usually assign to ex-Presidents, but I have to admit...

Barack Obama will be a great ex-President, touring the world like a rock star, beginning in 2012.

Six Job-Seekers Chase Every Job

by: Jacob Freeze

Sat Sep 26, 2009 at 22:08:26 PM EDT

Despite signs that the economy has resumed growing, unemployed Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.

Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department's latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.

President Obama was apparently unimpressed by this news when it reached him in yet another TV studio where he was emitting still more meaningless blather.

"Maybe those are big numbers," Obama quipped, "but... I can't count!"

(Mr. Obama was probably referring to his puzzling announcement that "I have been in office for just nine months -- though some days it seems a lot longer," on September 22 at the UN, only eight months and two days after his inauguration.)

And since nobody cares about unemployment when there are much more fun things to think about, like those evil Republican racists and their latest shenanigans, the rest of this diary consists of a semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis of Obama's slip, quip, gaffe, or goof about "nine months," beginning with the Freudian headline...

Obama's Occult White-House Pregnancy!

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(It's teh humor!)

The New American Reality of Long-Term Unemployment and Destitution

by: Jacob Freeze

Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 04:51:23 AM EDT

As illustrated by this (slightly improved) graphic from the New York Times, long-term unemployment (as a percentage of the workforce) has now outrun all previous recessions since this data began to be collected in 1948, and even more bad news is lurking under the numbers.

At the height of unemployment in 1982, one of every five unemployed workers was on a temporary layoff, with the expectation they would be recalled, sooner or later. Today the comparable figure is 1 of 10.

So only one in ten workers is likely to get his or her old job back, and meanwhile, according to another jolly headline in the same newspaper...

Prolonged Aid to Unemployed Is Running Out.

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

And of course there's more bad news in the fine print.

For every job that becomes available, about six people are looking.

So more and more people are looking for jobs...

Initial weekly jobless claims rose by 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 584,000 during the week ended July 25...

But there are fewer and fewer jobs...

"Although this level of weekly claims is well off the 643,000 high reported in the May 9th week, it still implies a 375,000 decline in payroll employment for the month."

And even among so many other gloomy factoids, it's still possible that the most salient predictor of our absurd economic future emerged from Obama's absurd beer-fest with Gates and Crowley, when the American beer industry protested that all the beer those three new best friends forever drank was "foreign beer," and one of those "foreign beers" was Budweiser, now owned by the giant Brazilian-Belgian beer-monster InterBrew-Ambev.

Now every little check Obama writes for more and bigger war in Afghanistan or unemployment benefits extended even beyond the current limit of 79 weeks (which is about to expire for hundreds of thousands of Americans), and all the really big checks to cover the ongoing $23.7 trillion financial meltdown...

All those checks will be underwritten by corporate and sovereign-fund monstrosities from faraway places, in return for bigger and bigger pieces of Fire-Sale America, and if anybody asks you what's even more American than Budweiser beer, the answer is...

Long-term unemployment and destitution.