Interesting as our own CBCpravda reported that although Canada had increased jobs the unemployment rate had gone up. They barely mentioned 27000 new jobs and then launched into a huge negative spin. I suspect they will be playing the Iggy ads constantly , and since the lieberals cant pay for them , they will be included in the half hour broadcasts of CBCpravda newsworld for the next few days.

anyone found out how much of the money the lieberals have paid back of the adscam money or are they waiting for some statute of limitations date ?

The journalists are just fatigued after 8 years of Bush bashing and they are using the Obama term to blow a little sunshine up our butts and regain their balance.

Its about balance isn't it ? No agendas here ?

Drudge has a link up now to a Telegraph article on a paper by James Buchanan stating that Obama's policies are driving us into DEPRESSION.

You should do a "juxtapose" with one of those fabulous -worst economy in 50 years- articles from the Bush Boom, Kate. Its almost begging to be done.

This spin is even being touted on Bloomberg TV and radio, the supposedly "all business" media. Wall to wall, all I'm hearing from these DORKS is that the economy is "turning the corner" and its "safe to get back into the market" or my all-time favorite, "the worst is behind us".

You can't print a trillion dollars of Monopoly money to pay off creditors and expect everything to be hunky f-in' dory. I'm math and business challenged, but even I can see that.

BTW, that report has an interesting statistic buried on page 15. The actual percentage of people unemployed or working part-time but wanting full-time, including those who could work but have stopped looking, is something like 16.5%

The percentage of unemployed youts is on the order of 25%, a new record claimed the article I read.

Something for all you lovely Lefties to ponder on this Labour Day.

The touts are all braying that the "rate of decline" has slowed. Yeah sure its still declining, but not as fast as before! YAY! Everybody sing Kumbaya!

Lefties & journalists have a hard time with numbers.

Like when there is a million km2 more Arctic ice than two years ago, they whine on about how fast the ice is melting and how soon we are gonna drown.

Putting a smile on a turd.

When the media and old Joe Biden tell you that the unemployment numbers are going up, but take heart! ... The rate of increased job losses is slowing is like a doctor telling you that your case of syphilis is being cured, but your cancerous brain tumor is still growing ...

It's gonna be a long three years.

We can put all the bad economic news behind us now. Obama has appointed another czar, this one for manufacturing: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/president-obama-to-appoint-ron-bloom-manufacturing-czar.html

Oh...I see we've gone from "Seven Year American Recession Watch Remains On High Alert" to "Nine Month American Recovery Watch Remains On High Alert." This would be a good "juxtapose" story, illustrating right whingers total lack of grip on reality.

Keep working on that reading comprehension, ulie.

uli:

The graph is reality.

Does it seem OK to you?

Or is the obvious failure of Obama's recovery plan Bush's fault?

...and you keep working on your economic predictions , Kate.

You can't fix in a few months what took years to screw up, syf.

Happy Labour Day.

"Imagine that, throughout America, nobody lost or gained a single payroll job during the course of an entire month, but suddenly a lot more people who had previously not been interested in working (homemakers or longtime retirees, for example) started applying for jobs."

Imagine,too, how the numbers would skyrocket if welfare recipients had a sudden and miraculous attack of "conscience" and actually got off their lazy butts and decided to contribute instead of leeching off of society.

But no, we should only "imagine" retirees or homemakers, the other is just fantasy.

"Or is the obvious failure of Obama's recovery plan Bush's fault?

Posted by: set you free at September 7, 2009 11:16 AM "

SYF. To the brain/logic/reason dead like nuli,of course it is.Bush didn't print trillions to "stimulate" the economy and help the losers who should not have qualified for a loan on a postage stamp,let alone a 1/4 million buck house. BTW the way,lefturds. THAT great "stimulus" plan was a totally DemoRat scam,led by none other then the great Owe.But why let facts get in the way.

uli you made a little mistake. here, let me help you:

"You can't fix in a few months what -the Democrats- took years to screw up."

there, i fixed it. you forgot it was the democrat party that made the banks lend huge sums of money to people who couldn't ever hope to pay it back.

Uli, I guess that makes BO a liar then because according to him the purpose of rhamming through the stimulus was to save the economy quickly.

The Dark blue line was the line used by Obama and the Dems to sell the stimulus to the public.

Anyone that truly believed the 'stimulous' would work was drinking the Kool-Aid. You only stimulate the economy by increasing productive jobs. Hiring more civil servants won't, propping up failing businesses won't but increasing productivity does. If they increased capital purchases to make more widgets with an increased demand for widgets it could have helped. When it increases control of entire industries it won't. People have divested a lot of US equity because investors know it will not work and they make those decisions, not the US government. Some in the US do not want Chinese investment in Canada. China wants something useful for their money. In the oil sands and rare earth mining they get that. In the US they get paper that keeps devaluing.

Phantom:

Yeah, ain't social justice wonderful?

But the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under the Bill Clinton regime in 1999 could not be pinned one one party or the other. Congress voted by a large majority for its repeal.

One of the consequences was the invention of mortgatge-backed securities which, obviously, got a tacit approval from Congress, since it did allow for expansion of credit in a historically unconventional way.

The US public understands this quite well and that understanding is reflected in its mistrust of Congress, whose poll numbers make Obama's minus-13 Rasmussen rating seem spectacular.

Both parties are way to the left of the average US citizen.

But, as uli will likely point out, the average US citizen cannot be trusted to spend his own money or raise his own children. Those society-building tasks are best left to the intelligent ruling elites, a group to which uli has deluded itself into beliving it's a part of.

Don't look at the short term. Rising unemployment always grows the economy. Any excess of a good lowers the value of that good, causing increased demand for it. As demand grows, the value rises again.

Once Duceppe is ensconced in the Senate, Quebec will split between the mainline parties, allowing a majority Government.

Hey hey, you guys - Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club sets it all out for us to see.

It is NOT about porkulus not working.
It is NOT about the "green" wealth redistribution agenda.
It is NOT about turning America socialist.
It is not about Dems in congress taking over auto companies.
It is NOT about Dems in congress forcing banks to lend lend lend and create a housing bubble.
It is Not about Obama printing money,taking us all into hock.
It is NOT about people being worried about gov't health care.

It is ONLY about racism .

[1) Van Jones, unlike everyone else I have quoted on the topic of our oil addiction and George Bush's complicity with it, is African-American.

2) By specifying that Bush's addiction was "crack-head"-like, Jones linked Bush to a drug largely used in the black community.

3) Van Jones works for the first black man to be elected president.] Carl Pope

Less Bad is the New Good, how sad.

How about companies are reaching their minimal workforces to support operation levels based on demand so the pace of job loss is lessening.

That is not the same as things are getting better, that is saying we are reaching the minimal level required to provide the current sustainable level of economic activity.

Watch commodities, if they spike in the last quarter we will trigger another small bump up in unemployment (-0.5 to -0.7%)as companies wring out the last of the job cuts.

Inflation is a concern no matter what the economists say. Inflation is too much money chasing too few things...commodity production and stockpiles are dwindling and any uptick in economic activity such as retail inventory replenishment will increase the demand and price quickly leading to input cost inflation as there are no cost saving left in the system. Manufacturers will have to pass the costs on.

Economists look at consumer demand as the primary driver of inflation and deflation, we came off of a commodity inflationary period in 2008... anyone remember the spikes in prices in the first half of 2008? We were in recession and we saw high core inflation on food and durables, so do not think that the recession's deflationary pressures can mitigate inflation when any sort of demand hits, even the short term pent-up demand that will emerge through the end of the year as seasonal restocking and product line changes are ordered.

Yet do not think re-hiring will come with this demand, manufactureres whose access to credit is impaired will not build huge excess Inventories (inventory = capital = credit), they will be only building to order in a JIT (just in time) delivery system because transports are under utilized and that makes JIT possible. Inventories are built up when activity is high because volumes demand it to meet orders and deal with shipping times. We are not there yet.

"The fact that labor force participation is rising often signals that consumers are taking a more upbeat view of the labor market and are finally looking for jobs,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics.

Or perhaps because people like to eat.

For years and years the beloved American media was on recession watch - look out ! the economy will crash, any minute now. For seven and a half years, no less.

And, yes, a recession did arrive, in about the normal time frame, thanks in part to Barney/Pelosi & Dems.

But when Obama's "stimulus" obviously fails in just 6 short months the media spins black is white (or rather red ink is black ink).

Very impressive illustration about large amounts of money.

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

The June 09 & July 09 data points have a Biden factor... they were picked from Pelosi's butt.. (NO! NO! Joe has more class than to mess with Nancy dearest....))

The mother of all wealth transfers would be massive inflation, followed by the fed's default on debt... US $ = Zero, But that would mean the US Congress is dominated by Communists... eh

Murray Rothbard, contra Milt Friedman, believed the great depression was principally caused by government intervention to prevent a decline in prices and wages to their correcting market-clearing levels.

von Mises believed that in a TRUE free market there would be no INVOLUNTARY unemployment. That seems like a shocking statement at first blush, but if you think about it, it's quite true.

25% of teenagers are unemployed (an all time high) chiefly due to the $7.50 minimum wage stateside, which makes it illegal to price your unskilled but eager labour at say $7.00. Millions of teachable moments forfeited.

Finally, Obama's Treasury Department has deliberately under-reported the public debt. The public debt is made up of two components: 1) debt held by the public and 2) debt held by intergovernmental government agencies. The total is approx. $12 TRILLION. They left off component #2 and presented component #1 as the totality of "public debt" and thereby vastly understated the debt to GDP ratio which is NOW 85% (not approx 70%) and over 100% by 2012 using Obama's own probably overly-rosy GDP growth estimates.

It is NOT hyperbole to describe this as "gangster government".

green shots of denial, cherry blossoms by the edge of waterfall

The REALLY GOOD THING about this is, if YOU were a US employer, and you had to surple somebody, would you poof the hard working republican or the lazy obama fan? some choice......

ooooooooohhhhhhhh. now I get it.

the original graph wasn't a plot of projected unemployment rate; it was the predicted *rate of deceleration* of the %age of those on the unemployment line . . . . .

oooooookay.

they all do it ya know !

25% of teenagers are unemployed (an all time high) chiefly due to the $7.50 minimum wage stateside, which makes it illegal to price your unskilled but eager labour at say $7.00. Millions of teachable moments forfeited."

mmmmm ya dhimmi but sadly in very dire times there are those who would work for 3 bucks a pop. it only takes enough to fill that demand for labour and then another bunch ever most desperate takes the underground economy bottom wage to 2.50 an hour. it never ends.

I find economics unique in that any trend, or move by regulators etc has within it a self-correcting aspect.

I wonder if this high unemployment will eliminate the "jobs Americans won't do". See President Obama is just trying so solve the "un-documented worker" problem first, but is just being sneaky about it so that the legal Latino vote won't disappear.

Hey, Kate's posting about watching for a recovery from a recession that she says never happened in the first place.

Strange doings!

Obama is trying to blow smoke up a certain orifice (or, at least, his media puppets are).

No bleety dear, Kate's posting about the media trying to spin a recovery into existence by lying.

Try to keep up, eh?

syf:

[After the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999], One of the consequences was the invention of mortgatge-backed securities which, obviously, got a tacit approval from Congress, since it did allow for expansion of credit in a historically unconventional way.

Nice try. The first CDO's were issued in 1987, some 12 years earlier. They got larger in the 90's, and then exploded from 2004-2007. As I've pointed out repeatedly here, some of the main culprits are the ratings agencies (S&P and Moody's) (RA's) and the inherent conflict of interest of them relying on fees paid by investment banks which issued these CDO's. The RA's had every incentive to rate the CDO's as AAA, and none to report them accurately. As you may know, most pension funds are only able to buy bonds rated AA or higher (some can only buy AAA paper). Providing accurate ratings would have dried up the market for these securities, and resulted in lower revenues for both the RA's and the IB's.

At the same time, organizations like Countrywide (whose, if there were any justice, senior execs should be prosecuted under RICO) developed the infamous "no documentation" and "NINA" (no income, no assets) mortgages. They could do this because they did not hold the paper long; as soon as they had enough mortgages to qualify, they spun off another CDO to unsuspecting pension funds, etc., effectively off-loading risk while picking up fees. In Canada, because our banks hold a major portion of their mortgages, we didn't get the same lax standards (in Bay St. parlance, the banks still had "skin in the game").

It's amusing to watch people try to assign blame to the Dems or the Repubs, but the whole process started under Reagan and Bush I, got bigger and bigger under Clinton, and exploded under Bush II when he had a Democratic congress opposing him. Both parties participated in the process; trying to say it's one fault or the other's may make for some amusing flame wars (hi bleet and uli!), but it's not factual, productive, or retributive.

What we need, IMHO, is a system where the buyers of bonds, not the issuers, pay the ratings agencies, and have some recourse against them for negligence. That would inspire (one hopes) some actual due diligence for the ratings agencies, more transparent credit markets, and appropriate pricing of risk. But here in the real world, I'm not holding my breath.

Kev:

Nonetheless, the Glass-Steagall act was repealed in 1999, throwing the doors wide open.

The point being is that both parties in Congress were complicit in creating an unsustainable situation, which finally imploded in 2007.

Is it unfettered capitalism that mortgages were given to people who had no incomes? What capitalist in their right mind would advance such loans unless there was some pressure from the ‘social justice' groups such as ACORN?

bleet:

Hey, Kate's posting about watching for a recovery from a recession that she says never happened in the first place.

Nice revisionism. Kate, and many others here, denied that a recession was looming in 2007, and in early 2008. I used to get flamed here repeatedly for suggesting that big trouble lay ahead. Now the big trouble has arrived, Kate and most people here understand that the US is still in very bad shape (and Canada's not in good shape, but not as bad as our American friends), and once again, we have idiots from both sides of the aisle citing "declining second derivatives" as evidence that things are getting better.

To put this into a simple to understand analogy, let's say you have a car with an out-of-control accelerator. In a couple of minutes, you go from 60 to 120 mph. Then, in the next couple of minutes, as you come up against the barriers of horsepower and drag, you only go from 120 to 130 mph. Do you say "Hey, things are getting better! We're not accelerating as fast as we were!"? If you do, you're likely to drink Bambam's Kool-Aid as well.

Kev,
Your bias is showing. Have the Dems ever done anything worth questioning?

If, year after year, you keep on saying a recession is coming, you will eventually be right. They DO happen periodically. Guaranteed !!

Kate's reason for the 'seven year recession watch' series was because the friggin media could not tolerate a Bush Boom and incessantly said dark times were just around the corner.

Now that Obama is at the controls and things seem to be getting obviously worse, what does the media do ? Presto, spin things better. It's all a matter of agenda.

Note: The financial downturn in Sept 08 may have been brought on partly by the fear of realizing that Obama was starting to out poll Hillary and would probably beat the Dolt McCain.

The obvious juxtaposition to the “Nine Month American Recovery Watch Remains On High Alert” would be the blog posts on SDA during the Bush presidency titled “Seven Year American Recession Watch Remains On High Alert”, (December 26, 2007).

In the first case the government run media is telling everyone that increases in unemployment is good news.

In the second case the same media, though running against the government of the day, could not wait for a recession, depression would have been better, however recession would do.

Is it not interesting how times and reporting changes.

no, Lev,it isn't interesting at all.

When people warned that Bush's policies were leading to a recession, Kate mocked them all.

Why? Because no recession could happen under her Great and Beloved Bush!

When the economic system all but collapsed last fall, why then her snide and ridiculing 'Recession Watch' posts mysteriously....disappeared....

Undaunted she leaps into the fray with "Recovery Watch', showing how the media now minimizes the recession she originally denied was on the horizion...all because the media's always giving a tongue bath to that smarty-pants Obama with his facts and big words and stuff.

Why she even cheery picks quotes from such august publications as The Miami Herald and the Charlotte Observer to prove her point!

Convincing stuff!

so bleety, you buying heavy in the market now 'cause the recovery is on?

if so, i've got a bridge in brooklyn i'd like to sell you.

so bleety, you buying heavy in the market now 'cause the recovery is on?

if so, i've got a bridge in brooklyn i'd like to sell you.

Comrade beet:

I turn red in embarrassment at the cyclical nature of free-market economics.

Under the glorious people's revolution the US dear leader Obama is authoring for the ignorant masses who are incapable of spending their own money or raising their own children, there will be change.

It's not merely a hope that the USSA will never have a recession again since the situation we now face is the death-throes of capitalism.

There will be full employment in the green economy, just like there was in the motherland.

Who can forget the glorious labours as the unemployed were given jobs sweeping sidewalks in the motherland?

All worked and all were happy in their equality of misery.

Sure, the Commisars were relatively rich, but they deserved it based on their intellectual superiority.

They knew how to spend our money and raise our children, Glory be to Lenin.

It still perplexes me how such a progressive system of improving the lot of all humanity failed.

Ah, but it did not fail. It is rising again, as it did in the northern lands of Trudeaupia some 40 years ago.

We must praise the works of Comrades Moore and Stone at that European film festival which welcomed the People's Hero, Chavez. We must all continue his inspired work.

Marx is God, Obama is the messenger.

From the preceding comment it is clear that the communist is absolutely unable to deviate from the party line, reported facts are irrelevant.

I know that it is pointless to bring up some relevant facts rather than hot air, though, let’s try some.
“When people warned that Bush's policies were leading to a recession……”

Let us see now, as it was, when Bush was president the democrats run the congress, they had the power to do what would have been necessary, as per their ideology, they had the power to stop Bush every step of the way. Never did.

When Bush attempted to fix the government run mortgage companies, two of the democratic senators Frank and Doods had the power to prevent that, and they did.
The action of those two congressmen precipitated the collapse of the house market and dive into recession. They are directly responsible.

Obama could not be more pleased, he has a chance to screw the US and it is obvious that he will do his best.

Now as I said, it is pointless to do this because one has to be informed. It is rather difficult to argue with willful ignorance.

As for Bush, never thought much of him, remember one quote of Bush the elder,
“There is nothing wrong with government spending money”, a big bloody misstatement.
From that point on, Bush was out of favor. It turned out that the younger Bush took that statement to his hart.

This would be the end of discussion on my part.

That would be 4th comment up, I thought everyone else was sleeping by now.

sonofAttila:

Kev,
Your bias is showing. Have the Dems ever done anything worth questioning?

Hmm.. I wrote:

1- It's amusing to watch people try to assign blame to the Dems or the Repubs, but the whole process started under Reagan and Bush I, got bigger and bigger under Clinton, and exploded under Bush II when he had a Democratic congress opposing him. Both parties participated in the process; trying to say it's one fault or the other's may make for some amusing flame wars (hi bleet and uli!), but it's not factual, productive, or retributive.

2 - once again, we have idiots from both sides of the aisle citing "declining second derivatives" as evidence that things are getting better.

Where, in either of those comments, is the bias you speak of? I say Democrats and Republicans are both responsible, and you accuse me of being pro-Democrat?

Is this a natural talent for you, or did you spend some time studying at uli's school of deliberate non-comprehension?

"Kate, and many others here, denied that a recession was looming in 2007, and in early 2008." - KevinB

Nice revisionism Kevin, this same recession watch has been going on since the advent of the Bush admin, and an eerily similar economic cheerleading from the press took place during the Clinton Admin, right up until election day, when a recession miraculously appeared on the second Wednesday of November of that year.

Their was a recession, and it started during the Clinton Admin. We came out of it during the Bush Admin, but still, Krugman of the NYT was predicting a "W" shaped recession, where we would dive back into it. For the length of the Bush Admin, recession was predicted. There is a saying about a stopped clock Kevin. You can't prove a clock is working by pointing to the two times yesterday when they were correct.

The cheerleading tone of the press today is astonishing in light of their negative coverage for the past eight years.

Periodic recessions are cause by human nature - they are a given. Have been happening since time began.

People and companies, some more than others, are inclined, during good times, to pull out all the stops and leverage leverage leverage.

When liquidity gets a little tight and some selling starts, it tends to snowball. The Media's feramongering every night on The National can turn the selling-fear-selling-fear into a self perpetuating phenomena.

The selling stops when enough bargain hunters overwhelm the fear mongers.

Example: A really, really nice house here was for sale for about a year at $8.9 Million (Worth no where near that) The owner/ builder, turned down two offers around the $8Million mark. Then the downturn of Sept 08 hit. Fear and probably liquidity crunch set in. Just accepted less than $5.9milllion. The new owner will probably do ok. Life goes on.

When everybody else is running, you walk.
When everybody else is walking, you run.

Works every time.

and since a recession is by definition two negative growth GDP quarters in a row, the recession did happen 7.5 years into the GWB presidency. the obaminator now is 7 years ahead of that schedule.

tim:

Nice revisionism Kevin, this same recession watch has been going on since the advent of the Bush admin

cal2:

and since a recession is by definition two negative growth GDP quarters in a row, the recession did happen 7.5 years into the GWB presidency

First, the NBER's definition of a recession is NOT "two quarters of negative GDP" - that's the popular definition. The NBER defines a recession as, "...a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."

Second, both of you apparently forget that we did have a recession in 2001, lasting from March to November in the first year of GWB's presidency. Not that I think he was to blame, but the people predicting it "from the advent" were, in fact, correct.

Third, while the policies adopted by the US government (lowering interest rates, massive fiscal deficits, etc.) and by American consumers (mortgaging their homes to buy new toys) certainly created a mini-boom, it was obvious to anyone with any financial acumen that it wasn't sustainable. Easy Al Greenspan and the world's continual acceptance of US Treasury paper certainly kept it going longer than many thought possible, but that just made the eventual bust even deeper.

Finally, anyone who thinks we're getting out of a mess this big in just a year is smoking something very expensive.