What I read in recent news only makes my jaded cynicism even more acidic.
The end-of-month BLS's (Bureau of Labor Statistics) NFP (Non-Farm Payroll) figures came out and the "official" number of jobs created in the month of August - ZERO!
Despite all of the government's manipulated, fudged and fluffed-up numbers to make things look better than they really are the best they could come up with is zero!?!
Each and every month at least 100,000-150,000 new jobs must be created just to keep up with population growth. With zero job growth... that means the real job losses for last month were in the hundreds of thousands!!
And then there's this little nugget of information that makes the chances of finding a job even worse.
The "official" rate of inflation is around 3.6% (the real rate of inflation is around 11%). The "official" rates of GDP growth for the first quarter and second quarter of 2011 are 1.9% and 1%, respectively. Subtract the "official" rate of inflation from each of the two quarters' "official" rate of GDP growth and you have two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth - the very definition of a recession!
Take a closer look at these charts in USInflationCalculator.com, BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) and even including the White House's own figures and it looks very possible the recession may have started in the third quarter of 2010!
But you won't "officially" hear anything about the US being in another recession, especially not from the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), until after the election because it's just too damned politically inconvenient!
For the past three years the politicians have only paid lip-service to the jobs issue - the core structural problem of the US economy!
Oh, but now that it's an election year the jobs issue has suddenly become the campaign holy grail.
Obama's campaign speech - sorry, "bold jobs plan", later this week had to be rescheduled because the Republicans threw a hissy-fit!?
(It seems the Republicans would feel threatened if the President made his speech same night that wanted to have their presidential-candidate debate. Yet again, making it painfully obvious that there are absolutely no statesmen left in the US government.)
Now the big, stinking conflict is Obama's speech has been rescheduled to be on at the same time as the NFL's New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers season-opener.
Whoa, whoa. Wait.
A sitting President of the United States, supposedly the world's most powerful man, is allowing himself to be pushed around by a bunch of campaigning wannabes and a stupid football game!?
Excuse me if I have absolutely no confidence in whatever "bold plan" this kind of president may have!
Geesh! These are the bozos that have been entrusted with the stability and well-being of the United States of America!?!
Here's a simple jobs/consumer-driven-economy truth that seems to escape all the highly educated and overpaid policymakers in DC: consumers are people who have jobs - people who have jobs are consumers. But these DC clowns just don't get it!
We're so screwed.
Washington DC and Wall Street seem hell-bent to make things worse for the rest of us.
The government is starting to sue the big banks for damages caused during the mortgage meltdown. If the government sues for too much then the banks will need another bailout.
Do you see the perverse irony in this?
First, the US taxpayer has been stuck with bailing out the banks since 2008. Now if the government sues the banks too much then:
- the banks will pass the lawsuit costs onto their US-taxpayer customers and...
- the US taxpayer will be stuck with bailing-out the banks again and...
- the politicians will vote and approve pay raises for themselves; the banksters will pay themselves outrageous bonuses; both politicians and banksters richly rewarding themselves for screwing over the US taxpayer with this colossal, catch-22 clusterfart!
The banks have also made it clear to their bought-and-paid-for political puppets that the US government is not to pursue any criminal prosecutions of the "too big to fail" banks or else the banksters will crash the entire US economy into oblivion.
What do the banksters care? The entire US could burn to the ground but the banksters will be fat and happy because they have all their fortunes stashed away in offshore accounts.
Folks, we've been sold a load of crap. The biggest terrorist threats to America aren't radical Muslims, "towel-heads" or "hay-rabs".
The biggest terrorist threats to America are the Wall Street slimeballs and their political lackeys who, in one hand, are holding a financial gun to the head of every man, woman and child in this country while, in the other hand, they have a tight grip on a noose around our necks! If we don't let them do as they damn well please they'll pull the trigger. If we do let them have their way they'll slowly strangle us till none are left!
Here's a short, recent history lesson on how to handle banksters.
Back around 2007-2008 when things were starting to go to hell here in the US, Iceland was having similar problems with their banks. The US coddled and rewarded the banksters while the people and government of Iceland told the banksters to kiss off!
The Icelandic banks failed, the country defaulted, and now, three years later, Iceland's economy is recovering and has healthy economic growth. The US, once you get past all the bravado and BS, during the same period of time has been sliding into an intentionally prolonged economic depression!
Zero job growth in spite of spin and manipulated employment numbers; most likely the US is well into another recession (as if we ever got out of the first one) and the perpetrators of all of this, the economic terrorists of Wall Street and Washington DC, are the greatest domestic threats America has ever faced.
Comments
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Related Links:
US Inflation Calculator - Current Inflation Rates: 2011-2011
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/
John Williams' Shadow Government Statistics - Alternate Inflation Charts
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
Eye On Housing - Real GDP Growth – 2011 First Quarter, Third Estimate: Revised Slightly Higher, But Still Weak
http://eyeonhousing.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/real-gdp-growth-2011-first-quarter-third-estimate-revised-slightly-higher-but-still-weak/
BEA Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce - GDP GROWS 1.0 PERCENT IN SECOND QUARTER
Second Estimate of GDP
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdphighlights.pdf
WhiteHouse.gov - Advance Estimate of GDP for the First Quarter of 2011
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/28/advance-estimate-gdp-first-quarter-2011
About.com - Recession
http://economics.about.com/od/economicsglossary/g/recession.htm
Wikipedia - Recession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession
About.com - What Is an Economic Recession?
http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/f/Recession.htm
NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research
Bloomberg - Iceland Is No Ireland as State Free of Bank Debt, Grimsson Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-26/iceland-faring-much-better-after-permitting-banks-to-fail-grimsson-says.html
Seeking Alpha - Ireland, Iceland and Letting Banks Fail
http://seekingalpha.com/article/240617-ireland-iceland-and-letting-banks-fail
Bloomberg - Iceland Shows Ireland Did ‘Wrong Things’ Saving Banks
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/iceland-proves-ireland-did-wrong-things-saving-banks-instead-of-taxpayer.html