Unemployment Falls to 8.6 Percent as More Quit Seeking Jobs

Here's an article that got my attention this AM. Its on a Time CNN page, so you expect it to be full of (*)(*)(*)(*). Which it is:

But then I went and read the feedback comments. Overwhelmingly, they rip the writer a new butthole. Pointing out the charade with numbers.

Then we have Carney at the Press briefing yesterday having to defend against the same Obama Administration liberal spin.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...yment_in_relation_to_shrinking_workforce.html

Liberals cannot compete in the bright lights.

 

Real unemployment would be 15.6.

40% of government spending is deficit spending.

 

There was also nothing to point to Carter at this point either...however Paul Volker's policies and Carter's willingness to take it politcally on the chin are what brought morning to america....long after he lost the election.

 

There is no doubt that Volker's policies to rein-in inflation were proper. And they were begun under Carter. But that does not detract from Reagan, who bore far more of the brunt of that tough love, as the impact of mending the 70's didn't hit hardest until '82-83. Had Carter done a better job overall, he could have been reelected. He was not.

Reagan took the reins, led the country, and then did what Carter could not do. Get reelected. Hugely so.

 

In fact, the economic bind facing Republicans in 2008 is far worse than what the Democrats were looking at back in 1980, when voters handed Carter a crushing defeat. By our count, the economy performed better during the Carter years than it did under Bush. By 12 of our 23 measures (two of the recent measures were not available in the earlier period), the economy was doing better in 1980 than in 1976. By comparison, only two of our 25 indicators are better now than they were in 2000.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/are-you-better-off-reagan_b_134521.html

 

I do not dispute any of that, although I am not going to check all the indicators

I also do not think Carter lost on the economy, although it hurt him. I think he suffered in many areas, not the least of which was going up against Reagan. Carter seemed weak and dazed his entire last year in office, in part with how the Iranians continually embarrassed him. Voting for Reagan in '80 was my first vote in a Presidential election. I missed '76, as I was deployed, and we weren't much for absentee ballots then.

OBTW, Carter is a far far better man than Obama.

 

That's all you CAN do is look. You have a handful of rational posters here and an army of uninformed bots and deliberate liars.

Ah, the old worn-out apsirin factory bit is being recycled once more. Why was it targeted again? Was anything else targeted as well? Did Bush ever target anything? What did he hit? As noted earlier, Clinton had to learn it all from scratch. While they knew of and planned for nothing but state-sponsored terror, his predecessors had been busy bungling their way into creating a new form of enemy in the likes of al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. Clinton was meanwhile elected on domestic issues, but got a wake-up call his first week in office via the CIA shootings and another four weeks after that in the WTC bombing. He had to play catch-up in a game he hadn't planed on playing, but he eventually put together an effective anti- and counter-terrorism effort that Bush would later simply walk away from. And what was the Republican Revolution doing about it all? Why, they were focused like a laser on REAL ISSUES -- things like goverment shutdowns and Monica Lewinsky. Band of clueless freaks. Not unlike the one they trot out now...

The Race

 

And all of the rational ones said this is good, but we aren't yet to great.

Read the whole thing. It's packed with right-wing lies and ignorance. No surprises there.

 

Attention, campers. The data are seasonally adjusted, for crying out loud.

 

Start a thread in an appropriate forum. Something defending Clinton and blaming the two Bush's that book-ended him. I am not going to hijack this thread any further.

OBTW, wear a raincoat.

 

I think it it as in large part the economy....the Iran hostage crisis didn't help but by and large it was the economy that did him. Halting inflation was key to his ideas but to do so he had to scare the hell out of everyone.

 

They were massive overkill and produced what at the time was the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. All that from having inherited the tail end of an oil price spike. Needless mess-making, much like what Bush-43 would do.

Off the path of common sense and onto the laissez-faire road to ruin that brought us to where we are today.

If it weren't for Bush-43, Reagan would have a arguable case for being the worst President in US history.

 

Are you currently in college?

 

I know there is a point in there somewhere. The U-3 numbers only show a tiny picture of the real employment situation. Does the Government really think that once a person runs out of unemployment benefits they become invisible? That they don't need to eat or need a roof over their heads any more? That they simply disappear? Does the Government or the liberals here on this forum think that because a person has to work a part time job barely making ends meet or sinking slowly the economy is somehow better? The disingenuousness of the U-3 numbers is a facade and a true slap in the face to the struggling Americans who believed in the Democrats promises to fix the economy by spending $840 Billion dollars. The billions spent on the "green energy" that brought us only a tiny handful of jobs compared to the unemployed, but surely stuck those unemployed with half a billion dollar boondoggles like the Solyndra ripoff. I simply can't believe any liberal can call the stimulus a success in the private sector, which by the way is how Obama and the Democrats sold it to the American public. It did pander to Government union workers keeping their unemployment under 5% for almost the entire duration of the crash (it's 4.5% right now).

The Democrats got shellacked for 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate due to some of the reasons listed above. Liberals can twist and turn all they want, deep down inside ya'all know whats coming in 2012, just like ya'all did in 2010. Barney Frank has been in Congress since 1981. Yet, he's retiring. I suspect Barney has been keeping track of the internal polling data and the future looks mighty grim for the Democrat party in general. Even the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Charlie Gonzalez is going to retire he's 66 and elected only 12 years ago. I assume it's due to Obama's promise to address the comprehensive amnesty in his first year, then broke that promise. I'm not holding high hopes for the Latino's coming out to vote for anyone next November.

November 2012 can't get here fast enough.

 

Neocon mythology and conservative propaganda. Clinton was never "given" Bin Laden, even in 1996 which was before the Cole and the embassies.

The only person who made this claim was a major of the radical Sudanese government, whose claim was denied as credible by all reasonable investigators.

But no one claimed the neocons were reasonable.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/clinton-passed-on-killing-bin-laden/

 

No, I'm pushing on into my late 60's now and putting the finishing touches on a very enjoyable and rewarding 40-year career in economics.

 

He didn't.

 

Re-read your own article. 315k did not give up looking for a job, 192k did. That would have an effect on the unemployment rate.

But the 278k additional employed more so.

 

I have to wonder why you'd call an article that gets its fact wrong "great".

315k did not give up looking for a job.

 

My calculator says 315K.

Also, jobless claims are up above 4000K again.

Not sure you're you're reading.

 

Funny how with our conservative friends, any time there is good economic news its a "false number".

 

The U-6 rate which dropped to 15.6% last month includes people who are employed part time, and thus by definition, not "unemployed".

 

U-3 is not affected by whether or not a person receives unemployment benefit. You've been mislead by conservative propaganda again.

 

http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm "Not in labor force
- Persons who currently want a job"

What's the source of your "calculator"?

Jobless claims were above 400k. They've been at the 400k level for the past few weeks, after dropping from the 450k range last Fall.

 

I was in error on the benefits. However, if a person is still receiving benefits and stops looking for work after say a year, to rest because he's worn out and discouraged, he's no longer unemployed under U-3, he becomes U-4.

The U-4 is 9.3%
The U-5 is 10.2%
The U-6 is 15.6%

U-3 numbers are artificial and present a blurred picture of the reality.

Got to go to my U-6 job now.