The leviathan that is the Summer of Recovery continues it’s rampage against the American economy, creating a swath of destruction similar to a Jenny Craig support group’s effect on an Old Country Buffet. This time, it’s caused the unemployment rate to rise to 9.6%:
Job losses continued to mount in the U.S. economy last month, though at a more modest pace than expected, putting further pressure on policy makers to take action to spur growth and employment.
Ok, let’s stop right there. Someone is going to have to talk to the official spokesmen of the Obama Summer of Recovery Communication Department, aka the main stream media, and tell them to stop using the term “unexpectedly.” Everything bad that happens in this economy is somehow not expected.
Not expected by who? I know I expected these things to happen. Pretty much everyone who opposes the Keynesian economic policies of this administration expected this.
After 18 months of fail, I think it’s time to stop being surprised with more bad news.
Nonfarm payrolls fell by 54,000 last month, matching the level of revised losses recorded the previous month, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday. The revision in July layoffs to 54,000 followed an original estimate of a 131,000 drop in payrolls.
The U.S. economy has shed jobs for three straight months, though the losses in August were about half the 110,000 predicted by economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey.
The unemployment rate, calculated using a separate household survey, edged up to 9.6%, as expected, after holding at 9.5% for previous two months.
The Stimulus Plan was promised to keep unemployment under 8%. Without it, it was suggested the unemployment rate may jump as high as 8.5% in 2009 and peak at 9% in 2010.
And now Christina Romer is channeling Joe Biden as she leaves the White House, saying they didn’t really understand what was going on:
An estimate of what the economy will look like if a policy is adopted contains two components: a forecast of what would happen in the absence of the policy, and an estimate of the effect of the policy… we, like virtually every other forecaster, failed to anticipate how violent the recession would be in the absence of policy, and the degree to which the usual relationship between GDP and unemployment would break down.
So what is the anticipated response from the rabid socialists in the halls of Congress and the White House?
Brilliant.
