Economic Justice?

[Marc Peterson]

The media tries helping the administration out by signaling an end to the recession as in this report; "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year as government stimulus helped lift consumer spending and home building, fueling an unexpectedly strong advance.

Signaling the end of the worst recession in 70 years, the Commerce Department on Thursday said the economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the July-September period, snapping four down quarters with its fastest growth pace since the third quarter of 2007 and exceeding forecasts for a 3.3 percent rate.

The report helped lift global stock markets which were also boosted by improving third-quarter corporate earnings, including higher-than-expected profits from household goods makers Procter & Gamble Co and Colgate-Palmolive Co."

Where are the jobs? That was the Administration's platform; Corporate profits are bad, jobs are good. Now we have corporate profits soaring while unemployment rates also soar.

Yes, Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, which gave millions and millions of dollars to the administration are doing good. The American worker is suffering. Does this seem out of place to anyone else? Also, this growth is entirely artificial. It is based on two things – government spending (which cannot go on indefinitely at the rate it is, despite what some think, and on the fact that US consumers purchased fewer imported goods (which affects the trade balance, which affects the way GDP is calculated, through some arcane cipherment).

That second point – US consumers purchasing fewer imported goods – is actually a sign that the economy, despite the GDP report, is still NOT doing well. The reason people bought fewer imports is because more people don’t have jobs, and fewer people had the disposable income to make such purchases.

Over the long term, the government spending will not be able to artificially inflate the GDP forever. Ever dollar spent in stimulus spending is a dollar taken from the private sector that could be expanding a business or hiring another worker. Our unemployment rate in MI is 15.3% with 100k people running out of unemployment relief by year's end. Our children now are saddled with Trillions more in debt than even the horrendous amount before all this govt. spending. Was that a good thing to do to them? Quadrupling deficits while spending money we don't have to make sure Wall Street bonuses come back huge but punishing small businesses with more taxes and coming health-insurance costs and regulations so they can't hire more people?

I believe it is officially out of whack.

[Marc Peterson]

Hey Tom, good to talk to you again. The most pertinent part of that story was about 2/3 of the way through; But the job market has yet to show signs of recovery, putting pressure on the White House to show that the stimulus was worth its hefty price tag.. There is not now, nor has there ever been an economic measure of a "saved job". It's a made up number for PR purposes.

Even the AP had to admit; "The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

[Tom Grainger]

Hi Marc,
There seems to be a difference from your local reality to what was reported today on Huffington Post :

WASHINGTON — About 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, the White House said Friday, saying it is on track to reach the president's goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.
New job numbers from businesses, contractors, state and local governments, nonprofit groups and universities were scheduled to be released publicly later Friday. White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said the figures will show that, when adding in jobs linked to $288 billion in tax cuts, the stimulus plan has created or saved more than 1 million jobs.
The data will be posted on recovery.gov, the web site of the independent panel overseeing stimulus spending.
"It's a great example of the unprecedented transparency, where the American taxpayer can point and click and see their taxes creating jobs," Bernstein said.
Government recovery plans – everything from the $787 billion stimulus to tax credits for buying new homes to government deals on new cars – are credited with helping the economy grow again after a record four straight losing quarters.
But the job market has yet to show signs of recovery, putting pressure on the White House to show that the stimulus was worth its hefty price tag.
When it is released Friday, the new data will be the largest and most complete look at how the stimulus money has been spent so far. The White House promised the data would be far more reliable than the first batch of numbers on federal contracts, which the administration initially embraced, then branded a "test run" after thousands of errors were discovered.
Teachers are expected to represent the largest number of jobs in the report. With state budgets in crisis, federal aid helped governors avoid major cuts in education, which officials said spared hundreds of thousands of teachers from the unemployment line.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/30/white-house-650000-jobs-i_n_339820.html

As always I need to do more doube checking... perhaps these were created by the "Buy American" initiative and reflect the jobs lost in Canada ( Canada is the USA's largest trading partner and supplier of oil imports )