Category: Economy

In January, the Associated Press reported that Ohio’s unemployment rate stood at 10.9% as of December 2009.  That rate has fallen slightly in the six months or so since that news article, standing now at 10.7% according to the Dayton Daily News.

The number of unemployed workers in May dropped to 641,000 from 652,000 in April. During the past 12 months, the number of unemployed has gone up by 22,000 from 619,000. The May 2009 unemployment rate was 10.3 percent.

Anyone looking to call this an improvement needs to explain that thinking, because these are more than likely seasonal jobs that either have disappeared or will disappear.

For my home town of Cleveland, the unemployment rate is even worse: 17.1 percent according to Simply Cleveland.  (In the interests of fuller disclosure, I have been unemployed since at least December of 2007, existing on financial aid and what food I can get from food pantries.)

Cleveland has an unemployment rate of 17.1%, compared the national average of 6.9%.

According to our Cleveland Trends data, the number of Cleveland, Ohio jobs has decreased by 28% since November 2008.

It seems that Party who likes to apologize to Corporations  — for Our Oceans, getting in the way of, their Profits — is at it again!

Not only are they blaming the Victims of the Bush Great Recession, for not taking one of those non-existent Jobs (there is only 1 job to had for each 6 people that need one) —

The Leader of the GOBP Party is now telling American to brace for the Raising of the Retirement Age — his rationale: It’s the only way we’ll be able to pay for the Afghanistan War!

Jeesh!  Don’t they know that the Unemployed, have PAID FOR Unemployment Insurance,  just for times like these?

Don’t they know that American Workers have PAID FOR FICA Taxes, just so that we can retire with a meager shred of Dignity?  

Don’t they know that these are Social Contracts, that OUR Govt has MADE WITH US — in a effort to carry out the ideal “that all are created equal” —

that none should be cast aside, without hope, without opportunity, without a social safety net…

NO of course Not … the Party of No Way, has some very different type of Contracts in mind …

Paul Krugman outlines a serious warning in his NYT Op-Ed Sunday :

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline – on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost – to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs – will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world – most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting – governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

It is [the] the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times. And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

  The Republican’s filibuster of the “tax extenders” bill will have severe economic consequences.

  Moody’s is predicting the loss of 200,000 jobs. Nomura Securities says it will knock 0.4% off of the GDP.

  A good 2 million unemployed families will have their last financial lifeline cut by the second week of July. The suffering of these families is about to increase many fold.

 In midst of the outcry from the struggling working class, came this statement from Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.):

 “It is very clear that the Republicans in the Senate want this economy to fail. They see that things are beginning to turn around…. In cynical political terms, it doesn’t serve them in terms of their election interests if things are beginning to turn around.”

 Now I like conspiracy theories more than most, maybe even too much, but I also recognize that describing a political opponent in 2-dimensional terms with evil intent is usually an indication of something missing from your theory.

  What is missing here is the concept of class interests.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Jeeves and Wooster

Mike Luckovich, Comics.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

  Senator Durbin stood in front of the Senate this morning and tried his best to whip up support for an unemployment extension bill during his nine minute speech.

  When his speech finished the Senate immediately went back to discussing what it considered more important: nominations and the border patrol.

 1.2 million people will lose their last financial lifeline just this month, and the Senate couldn’t find more than nine minutes of their time to address it.

  Yesterday the Senate was in session for 5.5 hours and it didn’t address the unemployment problem even once.

While we’ve all been busy watching the “oil spill live cam”, a similar uncontrolled discharge has been taking place in Washington, DC

In this case, however, it’s lobbyists that are spilling all over the landscape as the House and Senate attempt to merge their two visions of financial reform.

They’re trying desperately to influence the outcome of the conference in which House and Senate negotiators have been engaged; this to craft the exact language of the reconciled legislation.

There’s an additional element of drama hovering over the events as eight House members, including one of the most vocal of the Republican negotiators, face ethics questions related to this very bill.

The best part: if you’re enough of a political geek, you can actually watch the events unfold, unedited and unfiltered, from the comfort of your very own computer.

So far, it’s been amazing political theater, and if you follow along I’ll tell you how you can get in on the fun, too.

The Reaganomics, working as forecast, not by supporters of!

Why isn’t the economy moving, watch or read this clip report from last night. A simple explanation of how and who controls what, as the repub or conservative meme’s coming from the top to their herds about how their ideology on capitalism and the economy will cause prosperity, especially the continuing saying it will help small businesses develop and grow, for everyone, ‘Trickle Down’. There is very little private capital, their grease for the economic machine, being invested into small businesses as we talk and hear about billions between corporations and wall street and multi millions into the pockets of the corporate execs with ever growing tax write off corporate perks to go along with their huge tax cuts!

Last week I admitted that I got nuthin when the latest developments in financial reform were announced. The picture is bleak in regards to any oversite.

Today we have further developments and I have to say once again … I still … got nuthin.

The 2011 fiscal year for 46 states begins in 10 days. In many cases it is a countdown to financial doom.

Despite what you may have heard from conservative sources, state and local government have been cutting and cutting. 231,000 state and local government jobs have vanished since August 2008 – 22,000 in just the past month. Most of those jobs were at the local level, such as police, firefighters, and school teachers.

The fat has already been trimmed. The muscle has been cut into. There is nothing left to cut but bone.

At least 19 states are getting the saws ready, because knives won’t cut bone.

According to Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, states are facing a budget gap of $180 billion next year. The shortfall could lead to the destruction of 900,000 jobs at the state level, an employment source that is often thought of as an economic safety net.

Up to 300,000 of those laid off will be school teachers, and some estimate the total number of government workers to be let go in the 1-to-2 million range.

It’s part two of our “Netroots Nation Goes To Vegas Piano Bar Extravaganza”, and in keeping with tradition that means we are again taking a story request.

This time we won’t be talking about energy security or “climate security”; instead, we’ll discuss retirement security, keeping your money for yourself instead of paying it out in “mystery fees”, and how one of the “usual suspects” is at it again.

And if all that wasn’t enough…we also have pie.

This morning I read that lawmakers are on final approach for banking reform.