Obama avoids blaim for new unemployment

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment has risen to 9.8%, despite Obama’s entire team “working every single day… to accomplish” lower unemployment.

In a speech today, Obama avoided taking blaim or apologizing for the continuously rising unemployment, simply claiming that he’s still working to find new options and giving a little sentiment for those unemployed. Barack Obama attributes the fact that the unemployment rate has  gotten to only 9.8 because of his Keynesian initiatives.

I’m sure that after over eight months in office, the president with all the Congressional majority he needs should have been infinitely capable of saving the economy from the 10 percent figure, which is double what unemployment was just 9 short months ago. The president  needs to be capable of admitting that he made mistakes and that blame must be assessed.

Obama’s great stimulus, originally glorified as quick and effective recovery, is turning out to not be as such. The Real Gross Domestic Product has fallen and there have been no signs of recovery. The Keynesian belief that saving is inherently a flaw in the free market is crumbling, and it is growing evermore evident that the glorified Keynesian deficit spending cannot effectively be managed by government.

Dignity, honor, and respect are generally good qualities in a president, and not admitting failure shows one’s pride, but to not even apologize for a slow recovery seems heartless. If America is to have an honorable president, he shouldn’t be afraid to say he’s sorry.

Recession Update: Economy Worsens

CNN made a decieving headline today: “Jobless rate down for first time in a year”. What is perhaps comical is that the only “jobless rate” that was down was the number of jobs being lost (“only” 247,000 jobs were lost in July). What the headline implied was that the unemployment rate had decreased, when in reality,  unemployment is still on the rise. Indeed, we are in the middle of the deflationary spiral. The same CNN article acknowledges that the national unemployment rate will likely increase to the double digits.

While it may be a little early to call Obama’s economic policy a failure (seeing as most of those “shovel-ready” projects will not begin until the end of next year), there certainly has been little to no recovery. In the middle of July, when the markets usually boom due to the spending of savings on family vacations, the only good news was that fewer jobs were lost than the month before and the unemployment rate fell 0.1%.

Obama’s manipulation of the the banking industry doesn’t appear to have done too much help, either. According to Fox Business, due to continued real-estate deflation and instability, banks are continuing to experience significant losses. Of course, Obama’s solution to this problem is another bailout, this time of the real-estate industry. Based off of our experience of past bailouts, the real-estate bailout will likely shift the instability elsewhere, while keeping the real problem in place.

Confidence in Washington Falling Considerably

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, thirteen states now have double digit unemployment rates. As a result of the lack of improvement, many Americans are now questioning Washington’s ability to combat this problem. In fact, a new Fox News Poll indicates that a majority of Americans doubt that the Obama Administration has any clear plan for fixing the economy. The poll results also indicate that 73% of Americans doubt that Congress has such a plan either.

As of Healthcare, the poll indicates that most Americans don’t believe that major health care reform can occur without increasing taxes and the budget deficit. In fact, 64% of Americans would rather have their ailments treated by private health insitutions than by the federal government. Further, only 3% of Americans consider thier current healthcare quality poor.

What was perhaps most interesting about this poll was the last question:  “Do you think members of Congress should be required to read and know the details of legislation before they can vote on it — even if the bill is thousands of pages long?” The bipartisan answer was a resounding 92% yes.

So what does this all mean? It means that America has lost confidence in Washington. America has even lost confidence in Obama. Change has failed. Hope has backfired. What do we have left?

Economic Stimulation

History has shown us that liberal governmental economic policy does not help the economy (the New Deal, Jimmy Carter). Well, let’s see what it was that they did.

Conservatism was weak in the 1920s and panic lead the nation from recession to depression.

The New Deal (which extended the Great Depression  years) created government jobs, taxed the rich, and tryed to control the economy through central economic planning. He ended the gold standard, forever inflating the dollar. He set minimum wages and prevented people from working more than so many hours a week. He also created the now infamous Fannie Mae.

The result of the New Deal was… nothing. The unemployment rate lurched between 13%. and 24% until WWII.

Carter, on the other hand, tried to control the free market indirectly. He cut imports on foreign oil. His attempts to control the United States energy resulted in the still-remembered fuel-shortages. Carter essentially ruined the economy.

Reagan, on the other hand was successful at economic recovery. With large tax cuts and deregulation, he brought down inflation and unemployment.

History seems to speak against Obama, whose policies (government jobs and central economic planning, as well as regulation) resemble Roosevelt’s and Carter’s. Their policies failed.

As George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”