The White House Spin Machine On Jobs Is Completely Disingenuous
The President tells us he is encouraged by jobs growth in the American economy. What happens when the auto, appliance and home buyer's stimulus disappears? When the When the nearly million census workers are gone? Well, you guessed it. With government GDP nearing half of the economy already, he wants to hire more government workers. In other words, he wants to raise taxes on the rest of us to grow the already incredibly incompetent corporatist bureaucracy in Washington. If no one seems to be regulating any of our industries, what do all of these people in Washington actually do?
At the same time, the President's bipartisan budget commission is holding secret meetings. Want to guess what's on the agenda? Social Security and Medicare cuts because the government has been raiding our Social Security fund for ages. Bailouts for Wall Street? We have plenty of money for that. In fact, the Federal Reserve is giving them all of the money than can consume for their Ponzi schemes at zero percent interest. Money for wars of choice? Keep the military-industrial complex humming. Iraq and Afghanistan are now the second and fifth most corrupt governments on earth under U.S. political leadership. Your tax dollars hard at work. Fascist-type, lobbyist-induced, taxpayer-funded incentives for special interests in real estate, the auto industry, the appliance industry and anyone else who has the money to bribe Congress? Keep them coming. Money for Congressional raises? Sure thing. Money to provide the best health care in the world for Congress? Absolutely. Money to run political campaigns costing billions of dollars? No problem at all. The corporatocracy doesn't care about the American people. Words mean nothing. Actions mean everything.
As we have said many times, the government is trying to recreate the last economic model under the completely inaccurate premise that the only thing wrong with the American economy was Wall Street's "temporary" financial crisis of liquidity. A subprime housing problem. Seemingly a belief that this was some repeat of 1998 or 1907. A preposterous notion perpetuated by a completely incompetent Federal Reserve, Wall Street, White House economics team, Congress, the mainstream media and general economics community. A notion we have consistently railed against, even before this crisis started. As the world begins to reveal itself, more and more people will see how systemic this lie truly is. The world is collapsing and what does it have to do with subprime U.S. mortgages? To the contrary, the exact opposite of what we have read or heard from every one of these incompetent sources is true. That is, the production of subprime U.S. mortgages (and other asinine government and financial stupidity) is the only thing that kept the American economy from completely collapsing post the 2000-2003 stock market crash. Just like China's government and financial stupidity is trying to keep a collapse from happening in its country today.
Soviet-style government-directed production quotas aka stimulus programs were and are feeding future economic defaults courtesy of incompetent bureaucrats who instead are reacting to lobbyist pressure for policy decisions. ie, Many people who took advantage of those programs will eventually default on them. We already see this dynamic in the "re-default" rate of mortgage adjustments. And if the government thought these stimulus programs would result in hiring back 15 million of the unemployed or would give greater economic opportunity to the additional 15 million underemployed, well the chart below tells a different story. All these programs did was transfer taxpayer money to people who were already employed who didn't need stimulus in the first place.
I don't spend a lot of time talking about employment as an economic metric. It's generally irrelevant to any macro analysis. ie, It's a second or third degree of data and one can accurately anticipate employment trends well in advance by focusing on what actually matters. But when the political apparatus starts telling us employment is improving, it's an outright misrepresentation of the facts. The President hasn't fixed anything other than "fixing" the wallets of big corporations and Wall Street mobsters.
At the same time, the President's bipartisan budget commission is holding secret meetings. Want to guess what's on the agenda? Social Security and Medicare cuts because the government has been raiding our Social Security fund for ages. Bailouts for Wall Street? We have plenty of money for that. In fact, the Federal Reserve is giving them all of the money than can consume for their Ponzi schemes at zero percent interest. Money for wars of choice? Keep the military-industrial complex humming. Iraq and Afghanistan are now the second and fifth most corrupt governments on earth under U.S. political leadership. Your tax dollars hard at work. Fascist-type, lobbyist-induced, taxpayer-funded incentives for special interests in real estate, the auto industry, the appliance industry and anyone else who has the money to bribe Congress? Keep them coming. Money for Congressional raises? Sure thing. Money to provide the best health care in the world for Congress? Absolutely. Money to run political campaigns costing billions of dollars? No problem at all. The corporatocracy doesn't care about the American people. Words mean nothing. Actions mean everything.
As we have said many times, the government is trying to recreate the last economic model under the completely inaccurate premise that the only thing wrong with the American economy was Wall Street's "temporary" financial crisis of liquidity. A subprime housing problem. Seemingly a belief that this was some repeat of 1998 or 1907. A preposterous notion perpetuated by a completely incompetent Federal Reserve, Wall Street, White House economics team, Congress, the mainstream media and general economics community. A notion we have consistently railed against, even before this crisis started. As the world begins to reveal itself, more and more people will see how systemic this lie truly is. The world is collapsing and what does it have to do with subprime U.S. mortgages? To the contrary, the exact opposite of what we have read or heard from every one of these incompetent sources is true. That is, the production of subprime U.S. mortgages (and other asinine government and financial stupidity) is the only thing that kept the American economy from completely collapsing post the 2000-2003 stock market crash. Just like China's government and financial stupidity is trying to keep a collapse from happening in its country today.
Soviet-style government-directed production quotas aka stimulus programs were and are feeding future economic defaults courtesy of incompetent bureaucrats who instead are reacting to lobbyist pressure for policy decisions. ie, Many people who took advantage of those programs will eventually default on them. We already see this dynamic in the "re-default" rate of mortgage adjustments. And if the government thought these stimulus programs would result in hiring back 15 million of the unemployed or would give greater economic opportunity to the additional 15 million underemployed, well the chart below tells a different story. All these programs did was transfer taxpayer money to people who were already employed who didn't need stimulus in the first place.
I don't spend a lot of time talking about employment as an economic metric. It's generally irrelevant to any macro analysis. ie, It's a second or third degree of data and one can accurately anticipate employment trends well in advance by focusing on what actually matters. But when the political apparatus starts telling us employment is improving, it's an outright misrepresentation of the facts. The President hasn't fixed anything other than "fixing" the wallets of big corporations and Wall Street mobsters.
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