President Obama has been running around like a child who just got a dollar from the tooth fairy, trumpeting the latest jobs numbers as evidence his master plan has been working all along.
“The economy has built momentum!” the president exclaimed during an impromptu appearance in Washington Friday. “We are making progress!”
Actually, he looks more like Chamberlain waving the promise signed by “Herr Hitler” and exclaiming, “Peace in our time.”
Turns out people whose job it is to forecast the economy are noticeably less sanguine than our suddenly jubilant president.
The Wall Street Journal notes that here are disturbing signs of weakness amid the admittedly robust addition of 288,000 jobs to the economy that occurred last month:
Consumer spending remains weak, a consequence of a labor market delivering new jobs but skimpy wage growth . . .
The number of people working part time because they can’t find full-time work rose, and the share of the population either working or looking for work remains around 30-year lows. June’s labor-force participation rate was 62.8%, unchanged from the prior month.
And while U.S. workers’ earnings have been climbing about 2% annually—just enough to cover inflation—wages show few signs of breaking out of that range as an abundance of idled labor allows firms to keep payroll costs contained.
These signs of trouble suggest the massive 2.9 percent contraction in GDP the first quarter of the year wasn’t just due to global cooling:
Amid this weakness, hopes for a big second-quarter rebound are now beginning to wither. Forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers on Thursday lowered its estimate of second-quarter growth by 0.6 percentage point to an annualized 2.7% after new trade data showed stronger imports than expected, subtracting from domestic output. J.P. Morgan Chase pulled its estimate down to a 2.5% pace from 3%.
Other economists’ second-quarter forecasts are running only slightly ahead of the 2.4% pace averaged from mid-2009, when the recession ended, through the end of last year.
The economy is trying to plow ahead, but the headwinds whipped up by Obama – like massive regulation, taxes that are too high, scary levels of debt, and high gas prices resulting from antipathy to carbon fuels and from a world in a state of disorder – will prevent a return to the either roaring 80s or the other roaring decades precipitated by Ronald Reagan, the 90s and the 2000s.
17 thoughts on “Forecasters Slash Second-Quarter Growth Forecasts”
Could the job growth just be tied into not renewing long term UI ? They seem to coincide.
Give each illegal a bicycle, hook em up to the grid and make em start peddling. No wind turbines killing our national bird, and can provide ponchos for those rainy days when the solar panels won’t work.
At the rate Obama’s letting em all in American manufacturers can have free energy in no time and once again be the producer of goods to the planet.
In what country is the inflation 2%? You surely aren’t talking about the US, where we’re reduced to eating the cheapest chicken parts we can find at the grocery store? And not having any money for a vacation or cringing when we have to fill up the gas tank or open our electric bill? Where is this utopia of only 2% inflation?
I used to be a breast man.
You covered it, Robin. I am in a constant state of sticker shock.
Seriously…my last vacation was in 2010. I can barely find money for gas and groceries and I rarely eat meat or eat out. Forget shopping and anything that is not on sale. I am so sick of these sanctimonious politicians who think that everything is fine because they don’t have to look at us everyday. Something has got to give and soon.
If MrObama says it, the MSM reports it as unassailable truth.
Case closed.
Any negative or true accounting of our economic future either isn’t reported but delegated to page 37of the paper MSM or in some late-night TV round table discussion by serious (boring) men and women.
Of course, if 300,000 illegal aliens crossed our border last month, and 300,000 babies were born here in the US, then all numbers stated in our supposed growth is bogus.
What plan?
Is it 3 quarters of neg growth that makes a recession?
2 but at this point I’d say it really doesn’t mean much considering most of America has been in a recession now for years no matter what the bureaucrats say.
In some local rag recently, a writer made reference to The Great Recession, caps as shown. I’m betting the “journalist” is fresh out of “journalism” “college”, fully indoctrinated in such phrases and their importance to use in writing about the economy. I’ve seen The Great Depression that way, but I didn’t know the recession had made it to the level of Capital Letters. Struck me as very wrong.
Great my butt. I lived through the Carter years and gas lines as a young man just out of high school. I went to vocational school and learned to bang nails as a carpenter. Thankfully i always had a job but work was not always there. I fared Obama mush easier than the Carter years.
Of course I had to be creative. In the gas lines that stretched around blocks to the 3 local gas stations in one block with a dunkin donuts in the middle of them, i got my childhood wagon, took it to the DD and ordered a few dozen donuts and a few boxes of coffee and a stack of cups. I walked the gas lines until I sold out and went back again and again until the lines were gone. did quite well!
then i would take a 5 gallon gas can and walk to one of the gas stations and walked to the pump and asked if i could butt in line for just a couple gallons of gas “since I ran out waiting and now am blocking the line.” It worked and after 3 or 4 times at different stations I had my full tank on the days i was not supposed to be able to purchase.
Creativity saved the day.
Obama has already abdicated the presidency. He will say or do anything to get through the next 2.5 years so that he can enjoy the perks. He doesn’t have the decency to resign.
The only question to potential presidential candidates should be: How do you plan to clean up Obama’s monumental mess? Specifics, please.
One cannot expect decency from a man with an indecent heart, a soul devoid of depth and a mind immune to reason.
Short but accurate, Geoff.
If he has abdicated, it’s still ValJar who is ruling, and she has plenty more mischief up her sleeve. How many Americans realize that Red Diaper babies are controlling the country? How many even know (or care) what that means?
I have a relative, supposedly down-to-earth and more into sports than politics, who rejects the idea that Obama is a radical leftist with a wrecking-ball agenda. When I mentioned the “fundamental transformation” pledge, he said, “If some things in the country are wrong, shouldn’t they be fundamentally changed?” (I tried to explain that he was talking about the very foundations of the country.)
When I mentioned that a Marxist ideology is motivating this administration, he said, “Is there something wrong with being a Marxist?”
Seriously. This is not a young person; he lived through the latter phases of the Soviet Union. He didn’t go to college, so he wasn’t imbibing Marxism there. I think he has just picked up some weird notions from the Kultursmog: that it’s repressive McCarthyism to be wary of Marxists; that the main purpose of government is to take care of people who need help (he actually said that); and that Republicans stand for “the establishment” while Democrats stand for average people (he said that too). He mentioned machine politics, e.g. the Daleys, and I had to explain that they’re Democrats.
He also said that we shouldn’t try to stop aliens at the border because it isn’t fair that we were born in a better place than they were — as if we the citizens had nothing to do with making it a better place!
He thinks career politicians are preferable to citizen-legislators because government is complicated so it should be run by people who spend decades getting experience in government.
This is someone you would probably describe as a regular guy, not a political activist. He’s not a union member but a contractor — and he won’t attach any degree of blame to Democrats for the fact that he’s making a fraction of the money he did several years ago (maybe 2007). He still falls back on “George Bush wrecked the economy.”
We’ve got a tough challenge when otherwise-sensible and self-reliant people have internalized the craziness of left-wing politics.
Radegunda,
Your relative sounds like my parents. “The Republicans are for the rich, while the democrats are for the poor and middle class”. My mother repeated that to me growing up. In my high school government class, I was taught the true definition of a conservative. I was raised that way, but my mother labeled us Democrat.
Through the years, I tried and tried to tell her what she was. A CONSERVATIVE! She would vote for the republican candidate, but still claim herself as a democrat. Baffled, but happy she did this through the years I asked her why? Why vote republican when you think they are only for the rich, but proudly proclaim you’re a democrat? She said “My mom always said democrats help the working class.” Made sense (sorta) why she made her children blind to politics.
I got a text from her two days ago. Saying ” I found out I’m a conservative, which is old fashion democrat. I just watched Glen Beck.” REALLY? 20 years of telling her what she is, Glen Beck was able to tell her in 1 hour?? All I can say is thank God for Glen Beck!
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