posted April 04, 2012 01:57 PM            

The numbers aren't made up. There is no proof to support that theory.

There is no Kool-Aid drinking going on. Jobs were lost, and jobs have been added. There's nothing remotely strange in saying that. Not even Conservatives would go along with Bush having created 10 million jobs.

ECONOMY
Updated April 4, 2012, 1:33 p.m. ET

ADP: 209,000 Jobs Added

BY KATHLEEN MADIGAN
Private businesses hired at a modest rate in March close to what economists expected, according to a report released Wednesday.

Separately, the U.S. nonmanufacturing sector expanded in March but at a slower pace than in February, according to data released Wednesday by the Institute for Supply Management. Employment strengthened.

Private-sector jobs in the U.S. increased 209,000 last month, according to a national employment report published by payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. and consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers.

The gain was just above economists' median expectation of 200,000 contained in a survey done by Dow Jones Newswires.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577323343872365330.html?mod=WSJ_economy_LeftTopHighlights

posted April 04, 2012 07:24 PM            

Even Politifact confirms that Bush created almost 10,000,000 jobs. And Politifact is no friend of the truth OR facts. Facts and the truth are not friends of leftists.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/11/john-boehner/john-boehner-says-bush-tax-cuts-created-8-million-/

"Here are the CPS figures for the same periods we looked at above:

June 2001: 136,873,000 people employed
January 2008: 146,407,000 people employed
Increase over about six and a half years: 9,534,000 people"

The fact is that under O'Bomber's total economic mis-management, the US is down millions of jobs from when he first began infesting the White House. That's the real record and that's the record voters are going to hold O'Bomber and the idiot Socialists he brought into his administration to destroy the US economy accountable for.

O'Bomber thinks the election is going to be about keeping children on their parents insurance policies until age 26. O'Bomber thinks the election is going to be about requiring free birth control for everyone...even if that means shoving his radical socialist policies down the throats of religious institutions..in voilation of their religious liberty rights as spelled out in the very first stanza of the 1st Amendment.

O'Bomber thinks the election is going to be about everything his team of morons and idiots can dream us to distract voters from his moronic domestic, economic and foreign policies.

posted April 04, 2012 08:17 PM            

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

posted April 04, 2012 09:52 PM            

quote:

---

The fact is that under O'Bomber's total economic mis-management, the US is down millions of jobs from when he first began infesting the White House. That's the real record and that's the record voters are going to hold O'Bomber and the idiot Socialists he brought into his administration to destroy the US economy accountable for.

---

BS. Straight up. Jobs didn't evaporate because of anything HE did. If he can illustrate that, or if people can self-educate, your premise is a bust. You know the chart Node posted has been making the rounds for quite some time now.

quote:

---

O'Bomber thinks the election is going to be about keeping children on their parents insurance policies until age 26. O'Bomber thinks the election is going to be about requiring free birth control for everyone...even if that means shoving his radical socialist policies down the throats of religious institutions..in voilation of their religious liberty rights as spelled out in the very first stanza of the 1st Amendment.

---

I doubt he thinks either of those things.

quote:

---

O'Bomber is wrong...and so are you acoustic...as you almost always are.

---

posted May 04, 2012 10:06 AM            

So, the new jobs report will be hailed as a triumph for O'Bomber. But, the numbers lie...and so do those who assert that unemployment falling to 8.1% from 8.2% is due to anything other than more than 522,000 unemployed Americans dropping off the unemployed rolls last month. Not because they found jobs but because they're so discouraged they just quit looking for work in the O'Bomber economy.

For some idiotic reason, some say the economic outlook is brightening!

May 4, 2012
Another dismal month of job creation: More unemployed give up looking for work (Updated)
Rick Moran

I don't know why we even bother mentioning the "official" unemployment rate. It is so decieving of the true employmnet situation that it's not worth paying attention to.

For the record, the Labor Department says the unemployment rate fell to 8.1% - down from 8.2% last month. But looking inside the numbers gives a dreary picture of what it's like to be unemployed in Obama's economy.

MSNBC:

The U.S. economy generated fewer jobs than expected in April, but the unemployment rate dipped slightly and data from prior months was revised upward, painting a murky picture of labor market conditions.

It was the second straight month that hiring slowed in the U.S. and it raises concerns, six months before Americans go to the polls to choose either President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger Mitt Romney as president, that the nation's job-creating machine is sputtering.

The Labor Department said Friday that non-farm payrolls rose by 115,000 last month, much lower than the consensus estimate of about 165,000. The jobless rate slid a notch to 8.1 percent from 8.2 percent, as more people left the work force.

Still, the government revised upward its initial estimates for payroll growth in February and March by a combined 53,000. That left the six-month average of job growth at 197,000, nearly exactly where it would have been had April job growth come in as expected at 170,000.

"We're still growing just gradually," said Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.

"Hiring is coming back into line with what you would expect with sluggish growth."

That last quote is telling. It suggests that previously, hiring wasn't even reflecting sluggish growth. Now at least, with economic growth around 2%, we have a jobs market that reflects that anemic situation.

Perhaps by election day, so many Americans will have become discouraged about looking for work that the unemployment rate will be at 5%. Obama can only hope.

UPDATE

Zero Hedge blog reports that the number of people not in the labor force rose by a frightening 522,000 in April. Labor force participation hit a 30-year low of 64.3%.

posted May 04, 2012 01:57 PM              

this gentleman confirmed what i have been saying for months...unemployment is not the huge issue some would like to make it..why?

because millions of the unemployed have taken those govt "handouts" and started working FOR THEMSELVES. so they are less and less in need of the safety net, but they are not OFFICIALLY EMPLOYED either.

have to ask you'all, is this an indication of an OVERREGULATED society or of one where individual enterprise is being encouraged????

it certainly explains the falling off of unemployment applications and recipients without a comparable "new job hires" report. cause for celebration of the good old entrepreneurial spirit, i'd say.

posted May 04, 2012 04:49 PM            

Katatonic, you couldn't sell that crap to America if you had it gold plated and tied in a nice red ribbon.

Unemployed people want to work...except in (perhaps) circles in which you run.

It's fine with me if you wish to believe unemployment isn't going to be a major or THE campaign issue in November.

posted May 23, 2012 07:39 PM            

Five million Americans have been thrown under the bus. They are walking around dazed, outcast, and defeated. Worst of all, they are not even counted in official tallies of the unemployed. They are those whom the Obama administration simply wishes to ignore: working-age adults who have dropped out of the labor market completely. They are those for whom the economic recovery underway should have created jobs but has not.

Despite Obama's latest assertion of having created 4 million jobs in the last 26 months, the reality is that in the past two years, 5.4 million workers have left the job market entirely. These are the 5.4 million whom academics like to call "discouraged workers," and as far as the administration and its media cheerleaders are concerned, they do not exist.

The fact is that these millions of Americans are not so much discouraged as they are hopeless. They are working-age adults who, in a normal economic recovery, would have found jobs in an expanding economy. But this recovery -- one can hardly call it that -- is not at all normal. The U.S. economy has expanded on average at something like 2% since Obama took office, and now, with the latest GDP growth figures for the first quarter of 2012 revised downward to 1.8%, the economy seems to be slipping back toward stagnation, if not recession.

During a normal period of recovery, the economy grows at a rate of more than 4%. This was the case during the Reagan recovery of the 1980s, the Clinton recovery of the 1990s (with a major assist on spending restraint from Newt Gingrich), and the Bush recovery of the mid-2000s. But ever since Obama took office, the economy has suffered. Under constant attack by a hostile administration, businesses have decided not to expand, or they have moved or expanded their operations overseas. The result is that 4.7 million fewer jobs have been created in the past three and a half years than would otherwise have been the case -- almost enough to provide a job for every one of those who have dropped out of the labor market.

Those 5.4 million include older workers who have lost their jobs and decided to apply for disability benefits or exhaust their 401(k) savings while waiting to file for Social Security at age 62. Many of those who retire early are now consigned to live out their lives in poverty. For this cohort, early retirement means that they will not enjoy the golden years they had planned, and many will outlive their savings entirely. And for this, they have President Obama to blame.

Not all of the lost 5.4 million are older workers, however. A large number are young men and women in their teens and twenties who have never worked at full-time jobs. They are, in many cases, well-educated young people who have completed college degrees but who are unable to find suitable employment in this stagnant economy. In fact, 40% of young adults aged 24 to 35 (4.6 million of them) are living with their parents, according to the 2010 census. In large numbers, those who have found employment are working at low-paying jobs in the "hospitality" sector, as the Labor Department calls it. This has been the fastest-growing sector of the economy in recent months, and it includes food service. Since February 2010, 576,000 jobs have been added in restaurants and bars alone.

The educated young people who fill these jobs -- and those who have no jobs at all -- are falling permanently behind in their careers. Over the course of their lives, they will achieve less, earn lower salaries, and accumulate less in retirement savings. Compounded over the course of a 40-year career, the effects of this slow start are significant. For this less-than-rosy future, the young have the president to blame.

It is not as if Obama lacked the means to create more jobs. Simply by lowering taxes and reducing regulations, President Reagan created the greatest economic boom in modern American history. At this point during the Reagan recovery (the first quarter of the fourth year in office), the economy expanded by 7.4%. Now, at exactly the same point in the Obama presidency, it is growing at 1.8%. That slow growth is the reason for the lack of jobs and for the tragic loss of hope for so many Americans.

Obama had every opportunity to create jobs. His ban on mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, a region of perennial high unemployment, has cost many thousands of good jobs. The Environmental Protection Agency's veto of Arch Coal's Spruce Mine permit, which the American Coal Council calls "drastic and unprecedented," is just one in a series of job-killing actions taken by the Obama EPA. Obama's closure of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling and continued slow permitting has cost "tens of thousands of jobs," according to one informed source. His refusal to approve the Keystone XL pipeline project is costing an estimated 149,000 jobs, according to TransCanada.

Furthermore, the uncertainties caused by provisions in ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank have discouraged investment, particularly among small businesses that create the lion's share of new jobs in America. Obama's refusal to allow untaxed repatriation of overseas earnings by American corporations has blocked investment of $1 trillion in the U.S. economy. A tax holiday for overseas earnings could add 2.9 million jobs, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, yet Obama has ruled out repatriation on ideological grounds. It is, after all, a business-friendly measure.

Obama's threats to raise taxes on the rich have also cut jobs by precipitating capital flight on an unprecedented scale. Affluent Americans are renouncing their citizenship and fleeing in record numbers to Singapore, the Bahamas, and other tax-friendly locales. Each one of those wealthy citizens has taken thousands of jobs with him, and for this the president is to blame.

If the president had "focused like a laser beam" on job creation, as he promised to do in 2009, he would not have found it that difficult to create jobs. But instead of following up on his promise, Obama treated job-creation as a mere photo op. Having promised to focus on job-creation, he promptly forgot about it and flew off on vacation.

Had the president remained on vacation, things might have gone well. Instead, he chose to squander nearly a trillion dollars in his 2009 stimulus bill, a fraudulent measure that has stimulated nothing except debt levels. He then followed up with a proposal for another $447 billion giveaway, which Congress had the good sense to defeat.

Obama also had the opportunity to lower corporate taxes across the board, a measure that would have spurred job-creation, but taxes for American corporations remain the highest of any major developed economy. Meanwhile, he has blown $100 billion in an attempt to prop up green energy companies that were supposed to create 5 million jobs. In one case after another, however, those green companies have gone bust, and those 5 million jobs have not been created. Instead, 5.4 million have been lost.

There can be no doubt as to who is responsible for those lost jobs, and for the lost dreams of each of those 5.4 million Americans. For the suffering of those who have dropped out of the labor market entirely, as well as for the 21 million (14% of the labor force) who are officially counted as unemployed or underemployed, there is only one person to blame. Come November, those 26.2 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, or no longer looking for work need to remember who was in charge the last four years and vote accordingly. These people should have plenty of time to get to the polls and vote. After all, they're not doing much of anything else.

posted May 24, 2012 01:03 PM            

That is...if you don't mind paying your entire annual income in taxes just to keep the US budget balanced!

Hey, here's a novel idea. Why don't we send all our over-spending demoscat congressional members and our doper prez back home in the next election before they totally destroy the United States? 535 crack-heads and a prez on crack could do a better job of managing the nations finances. Oh wait, O'Bomber swears he never did crack, he just inhaled Mary Jane and Blow!!

And yet, some blockhead posted..the "Outlook for 2011 economy is brightening".

Real federal deficit dwarfs official tally
Dennis Cauchon
USA TODAY

The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

A U.S. household's median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

Contrasting deficits
The federal government calculates the deficit in a way that makes the number smaller than if standard accounting rules were followed (in trillions).

Sources: USA TODAY research; Congressional Budget Office
Deficits are a major issue in this year's presidential campaign, but USA TODAY has calculated federal finances under accounting rules since 2004 and found no correlation between fluctuations in the deficit and which party ran Congress or the White House.

Key findings:

•Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That's $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.

•Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.

•Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.

"By law, the federal government can't tell the truth," says accountant Sheila Weinberg of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting.

Jim Horney, a former Senate budget staff expert now at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says retirement programs should not count as part of the deficit because, unlike a business, Congress can change what it owes by cutting benefits or lifting taxes.

posted May 24, 2012 01:29 PM              

let us not forget how forgiving we were supposed to be of gw and his drunk-driving well past school years. do you think ronnie reagan was a lily white teetotaller? never smoked a joint? he lived in hollywood. just no one ever asked him or made an issue of his rat pack days.

posted May 24, 2012 01:35 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by katatonic:
when you stop revelling in martinis, jwhop, you can discuss someone else's substance consumption. till then, you are just pizzing in the wind with your "doper" president.

let us not forget how forgiving we were supposed to be of gw and his drunk-driving well past school years. do you think ronnie reagan was a lily white teetotaller? never smoked a joint? he lived in hollywood. just no one ever asked him or made an issue of his rat pack days.

call yourself a christian, start acting like one.

---

Weren't you the one who says she tries to be kind to everyone

------------------
Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted May 28, 2012 09:49 AM            

May 28, 2012
Obama's Fantasy Politics Fooling Fewer and Fewer Americans
M Catharine Evans

In response to an article entitled "More Maryland families than ever require government aid to stay afloat" a 58-year old commenter wrote "there are no jobs for someone my age...we just tough it out."

He's not alone.

Neil Bergsman, director of the Maryland Budget & Tax Policy Institute told the Maryland Reporter "it took from January 2008 to February 2012 to double the number of people enrolled in the Food Supplement Program."

For cash-strapped families in Maryland who do not qualify for state assistance, food bank officials said there has been a surge in demand for the basics. Even people who wrote checks and donated food to their local food pantries a couple of years ago are now asking for help.

Apparently, the state of Maryland is not doing well. Just like the rest of the country.

A headline at the Weekly Standard reads "Under Obama: 30 Worst Months of Employment in the Past 25 Years."

A report from the Employment Policies Institute reporting on high unemployment figures for teens declared, "When the analysis is broadened to include discouraged teens that have stopped actively looking for work but would still like a job, nearly every state experiences a jump in their teen unemployment rates."

Researchers from the Journal of Labor Economics found summer jobs are strong indicators of a teen's future success in the marketplace. With D.C. coming in first at 51.7% unemployment, young people living in the nation's capital should be discovering just how much the economy sucks under Obama's failed policies.

Others toughing it out are college graduates and those with Master's and PhD's. Record numbers are on food stamps.

Another group not getting much attention in the news are middle-aged parents going through their savings and tapping into their retirement funds to help out their grown children.

39% of all adults ages 18 to 34 say they either live with their parents now or moved back in temporarily in recent years. Among 18- to 24-year-olds more than half (53%) live at home. Among adults ages 25 to 29, 41% live with or moved back in with their parents.

On Friday Fox News chronicled Barack Obama's desperate struggle to win back the white working-class voters who supported him in 2008.

Among middle-class, white voters who said they were struggling financially, Obama trailed Romney 58 percent to 32 percent.

Obama scored pretty well with white voters [in 2008] with household incomes less than $50,000. He nabbed 47 percent, according to exit polls. That was more than enough to deliver the win given Obama's massive margins among minority voters.

So the situation is worse, not better than four years ago. No one knows that more than hard-working taxpayers dealing with stagnant wages and rising food and gas prices.

But what makes the last four years and the economic anxiety so much harder to take is the fact that Obama lied.

He lied from the get-go. In 2008 he promised transparency, debt reduction, an end to crony capitalism, a spirit of bipartisanship, "the same kind of healthcare that members of Congress give themselves," and he said he would "put more money into working families' pockets."

In the first quarter of 2011 49.1%.of the population living in Obama's America resided in households where "at least one member received some type of government benefit."

Obama never had any intention of helping people; only of helping himself and the people who put him in office. He's sunk billions into phony companies with taxpayer monies.

It's Grove Parc Plaza all over again. He and slumlord Valerie Jarrett looted the Treasury to pay off various cronies and there's nothing to show for it but a bunch of scurrying rats.

Obama suckered idealistic young people into voting for him. On some level their naiveté and desire to believe is understandable.

But far more bizarre was Obama's effect on professional intellectuals and upper middle-class white suburbanites. They read Dreams from my Father and deemed it a "'tour de force." (words from my own sister-an attorney!).

A blind man could have seen candidate Obama and his radical friends really did want to spread the wealth around. But as Cardinal Ratzinger once wrote "intellectuals are blind when it comes to their intellectual constructs. For this reason they could forswear every realism and continue to fight for a system incapable of honoring its promises."

The talented Mr. Obama has betrayed the middle class where it hurts - -in their bank accounts, investment portfolios and in their job security. Even if they haven't been laid off they know neighbors, friends, or relatives who have suddenly found themselves working two part-time jobs at one quarter of their previous salaries.

A member of my own family, a bank vice-president for 20 years, was laid off in 2010. Shellshocked at the impending loss of his home (which he eventually had to sell) he spiraled downward for over a year. My brother's toughing it out now, still unable to understand what happened to make him believe in that hopey-changey stuff.

Think Obama is losing sleep over the lies he spewed in 2008?

For the record in 2003 George W. Bush gave up golf saying it sent the wrong message while our troops were in harm's way. According to White House Dossier the current commander-in-chief hit his 90th round of golf this past December in Hawaii. As Americans planned staycations, the Obamas have spent millions on treks to Spain, Marthas Vineyard, Mexico and South Africa. And the President is still not letting up on golf despite the economic maelstrom headed our way.

Lastly looming over regular folks' heads is a 15 trillion dollar debt. Remember when Senator Obama blasted Bush for increasing the debt? Well he has managed to outdo Bush in three years!

CBS News reported in March 2012:

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

posted May 31, 2012 07:31 PM            

Very few people will hear the news today that the Commerce Department has revised the growth of the nation's Gross Domestic Product downward. The original estimate of first quarter 2012 growth of a lethargic 2.2% has been revised to an anemic 1.9%. The forecast per many economists is for that level to remain or worsen slightly for the remainder of the year.

The Obama economy over the past four quarters has grown just 1.95% despite the fact that trillions have been spent on so-called government stimulus since February 2009.

By comparison at this point in the Reagan presidency after inheriting a far worse economic situation than Obama, the 1st quarter (1984) GDP growth was 8.0% and the average GDP growth for the previous four quarters (March 1983-March 1984) was 8.5%.

Further the unemployment rate during this same period for Ronald Reagan fell from 10.1% (May 1983) to 7.4% (May 1984) a phenomenal drop of over 27% in just 12 months.

On the other hand, for Barack Obama the unemployment situation has been abysmal. Using what the Bureau of Labor Statistics refers to as the U-5 rate (total unemployed plus discouraged workers and other marginally attached to the labor force) in order to make a valid comparison to the Reagan years the unemployment rate in May of 2011 was 10.7% and has declined only to 9.6% in April of 2012. (a drop of just 10%)

The Federal Reserve and various economists expect very little improvement, if a not a worsening in the unemployment rate over the next three quarters.

Regardless of many lies told or obfuscations offered the economy is in dismal shape and is destined to get worse.

posted July 13, 2012 12:50 PM            

ALMOST the only thing on which Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, agree is that the economy is in a bad way. Unemployment is stuck above 8% and growth probably slipped below an annualised 2% in the first half of this year. Ahead lie the threats of a euro break-up, a slowdown in China and the “fiscal cliff”, a withering year-end combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Mr Obama and Mr Romney disagree only on what would make things worse: re-electing a left-wing president who has regulated to death a private sector he neither likes nor understands; or swapping him for a rapacious private-equity man bent on enriching the very people who caused the mess.

America’s economy is certainly in a tender state. But the pessimism of the presidential slanging-match misses something vital. Led by its inventive private sector, the economy is remaking itself (see article). Old weaknesses are being remedied and new strengths discovered, with an agility that has much to teach stagnant Europe and dirigiste Asia.

Balance your imbalances

America’s sluggishness stems above all from pre-crisis excesses and the misshapen economy they created. Until 2008 growth relied too heavily on consumer spending and house-buying, both of them financed by foreign savings channelled through an undercapitalised financial system. Household debt, already nearly 100% of income in 2000, reached 133% in 2007. Recoveries from debt-driven busts always take years, as households and banks repair their balance-sheets.

Nonetheless, in the past three years that repair has proceeded fast. America’s houses are now among the world’s most undervalued: 19% below fair value, according to our house-price index. And because the Treasury and other regulators, unlike their euro-zone counterparts, chose to confront the rot in their financial system quickly, American banks have had to write off debts and raise equity faster than their peers. (Citigroup alone has flushed through some $143 billion of loan losses; no euro-zone bank has set aside more than $30 billion.) American capital ratios are among the world’s highest. And consumers have cut back, too: debts are now 114% of income.

New strengths have also been found. One is a more dynamic export sector. The weaker dollar helps explain why the trade deficit has shrunk from 6% of GDP in 2006 to about 4% today. But other, more permanent, shifts—especially the growth of a consuming class in emerging markets—augur well. On the campaign trail, both parties attack China as a currency-fiddling, rule-breaking supplier of cheap imports (see Lexington). But a richer China has become the third-largest market for America’s exports, up 53% since 2007.

And American exporters are changing. Some of the products—Boeing jets, Microsoft software and Hollywood films—are familiar. But there is a boom, too, in high-value services (architecture, engineering and finance) and a growing “app economy”, nurtured by Facebook, Apple and Google, which employs more than 300,000 people; its games, virtual merchandise and so on sell effortlessly across borders. Constrained by weakness at home and in Europe, even small companies are seeking a toehold in emerging markets. American manufacturers are recapturing some markets once lost to imports, and pioneering new processes such as 3D printing.

Meanwhile, what was once an Achilles heel is becoming a competitive advantage. America has paid dearly for its addiction to imported oil. Whenever West Texas Intermediate climbs above $100 per barrel (as it did in 2008, last year and again this year), growth suffers. But high prices have had an effect, restraining demand and stimulating supply. Net imports of oil this year are on track to be the lowest since 1995, and America should eventually become a net exporter of gas.

Many countries have shale gas, but, as it did with the internet revolution, America leads in exploiting it (see our special report this week). Federal money helped finance development of the “fracking” technology that makes shale gas accessible, just as it paid for the internet’s precursors. However its use was commercialised by a Texas wildcatter called George Mitchell, the sort of risk-taker America has in abundance. In Europe shale gas has been locked in by green rules and limited property rights. In America shale has already lowered consumers’ energy bills and, by displacing coal, carbon emissions. In future, it will give a spur to the domestic manufacture of anything needing large amounts of energy.

America’s work-out is not finished. Even when the results are more visible, it will leave many problems unsolved. Because the companies leading the process are so productive, they pay high wages but do not employ many people. They may thus do little to reduce unemployment, while aggravating inequality. Yet this is still a more balanced and sustainable basis for growth than what America had before—and a far better platform for prosperity than unreformed, elderly Europe.

Of cliffs, and other perils

What should the next president do to generate muscle in this new economy? First, do no harm. Not driving the economy over the fiscal cliff would be a start: instead, settle on a credible long-term deficit plan that includes both tax rises and cuts to entitlement programmes. There are other madnesses brewing. Some Democrats want to restrict exports of natural gas to hold down the price for domestic consumers—a brilliant strategy to discourage domestic investment and production. A braver Mr Obama would expedite approval of gas exports. For his part, Mr Romney should back off his promise to brand China a currency manipulator, an invitation to a trade war.

posted July 18, 2012 12:01 PM            

About 14% of U.S. companies surveyed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor definitely plan to move some of their manufacturing back home—the latest sign of growing interest among executives in a strategy known as "reshoring."

...

In February, Boston Consulting Group surveyed 106 companies with annual sales of $1 billion or more and found that 37% planned to reshore or were "actively considering" it. The MIT survey is more precise in singling out those with definite plans. When asked the broader question of whether they were considering a move to reshore, the MIT study found that 33% of those surveyed said yes.

US builders broke ground on the most new homes in nearly 4 years, a sign of housing recovery - Washington Post

posted July 26, 2012 12:00 PM            

Not only is O'Bomber at fault for the stumbling economy and unemployment still at 8.2% with real unemployment..the U6 number above 14% but now voters are placing the blame where it belongs...on Barack Hussein O'Bomber.

July 24, 2012
Voters Blame Obama More Than Bush for Poor Economy

President Obama’s first term has coincided with the longest period of sustained economic misery in decades, but for the better part of four years, the president has always had one line to fall back on: It’s Bush’s fault, not mine. And for most of that time, the voters have seemed to agree.

This may be changing. A new poll at The Hill asked voters who is most to blame for the economy, and the voters said the buck stops at the White House:

Two-thirds of likely voters say the weak economy is Washington’s fault, and more blame President Obama than anybody else, according to a new poll for The Hill.

It found that 66 percent believe paltry job growth and slow economic recovery is the result of bad policy. Thirty-four percent say Obama is the most to blame, followed by 23 percent who say Congress is the culprit. Twenty percent point the finger at Wall Street, and 18 percent cite former President George W. Bush.

Among major polls, these findings are a first. And the news gets worse for the president: the poll found that more than half of respondents believe that Obama has taken the wrong steps to turn the economy around, a poor sign for public trust in his economic stewardship.

The implications of these results for the upcoming election are obvious. Current polls still show Obama ahead of Romney by a decent margin, although the president doubtless wishes it were higher. But if the economy continues to stagnate or get worse—as many think it might—the drapes in the Oval Office may be in for another change come next January.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/07/24/voters-blame-obama-more-than-bush-for-poor-economy/

posted July 26, 2012 02:45 PM            

The Hill’s poll of 1,000 voters was conducted July 19 by Pulse Opinion Research. http://blogs.marketwatch.com/election/2012/07/23/obama-gets-more -blame-than-bush-for-weak-economy-in-new-poll/

(July 18,2012)
The CBS/New York Times survey finds that 64 percent of voters believe that Obama's policies have contributed significantly or somewhat to the persistent weakness in the economy. Still, 81 percent of voters believe the same about the policies of former President George W. Bush.

Obama leads Mitt Romney in measures of middle class security — with 52 percent of respondents saying that Obama will do more to help the middle class. The survey also finds that 52 percent of voters believe that Romney's policies favor the rich. http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/07/poll-voters-blame-obama-for-the-economy-129400.html

posted July 27, 2012 11:48 AM            

quote:

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Registered voters don't.

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One could easily make the argument that registered voters do decide elections as only registered voters get to vote.

Your polls do nothing aside from feeding your delusion. Most Conservatives would take issue with your thinking if you were to proclaim that Romney has this in the bag. Embarrassed smiley is correct for you once again.

posted July 27, 2012 01:33 PM            

The outlook for the US economy is not brightening, it's worsening.

The latest report shows the US economy grew at an anemic 1%.

More Americans are on food stamps and Social Security Disability than at any time in history.

More Americans are below the poverty line than at any time since the 1960s.

More Americans are unemployed or underemployed than at any time since the US Depression.

posted July 27, 2012 07:06 PM            

I've yet to see anyone say a thing about corporate "reshoring," or about the new home construction I posted.

No, it's more of the same un-nuanced views we've come to expect. No actual discussion of the economy. Just some partisan blaming. We know conservatives intent to neutralize Obama as much as possible, and that's why Republicans get so much of the blame.

posted July 28, 2012 05:16 AM            

the twin towers combined had 50,000 people working in it.

plus branches in other places.