President Obama claims credit for 1,000,000+ jobs “created or saved”
So, President Obama is claiming credit for a 9.8+% unemployment rate?
Obama highlights fresh signs of economic growth
Darlene Superville, The Associated PressWASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said Saturday that reports the economy is growing again and that more than 1 million jobs were saved or created by his stimulus plan show “we are moving in the right direction.”
But he tempered his upbeat message with a cautious word about further job losses and progress yet to be made.
Unemployment hit a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September, and the October report due next week could show it topping 10 percent.
Further down, we find:
Obama’s assessment came a day after an independent federal board reported that nearly 650,000 direct jobs have been saved or created because of stimulus program money provided to businesses, contractors, state and local governments, nonprofit groups and universities.
Well, which is it? 650,000 or “over one million?”
The 1 million jobs cited by Obama include those from direct economic assistance, plus those linked to the economic boost from $288 billion in tax cuts under the stimulus program, according to White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein.
The story continues to note that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) noted that three million jobs have been lost since the stimulus plan was passed.
President Obama told us, when he was lobbying to get the porkulus plan passed, that unemployment would reach nine percent if Congress didn’t pass it, but would be held down to eight percent if it was passed. September’s unemployment figure was 9.8%, almost two percent higher than what the Administration claimed the plan would yield, and almost one percent higher than what the Administration said would happen if we didn’t pass the bill.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment has increased from 7.6 million to 15.1 million people since the recession began in December of 2007.
Let’s do some math. According to the BLS (same link), in September the workforce totaled 154,006,000 people, 138,864,000 of whom were employed and 15,142,000 were unemployed, a 90.17% employment rate, or 9.83% unemployment rate. Let’s take the smaller projection of 650,000 saved/created jobs, and add them to the mix. Assuming the same base size of the workforce, that would mean the independent board is claiming that there would have been 138,214,000 million people employed, for a total employment/unemployment rate of 89.75%/10.25%, absent the stimulus plan; using the President’s claim of a million jobs saved or created, the number of people who would have been employed absent his programs would be 137,864,000, for an employment/unemployment rate of 89.52%/10.48%.
Yet, we’re getting these numbers from the same people who claimed that the porkulus plan would have held unemployment to 8%. Why, I have to ask, ought we to believe that their numbers are any less pulled out of their as . . . thin air than the claims being made when the porkulus plan was being debated? Their record for getting these things right isn’t exactly impressive.
There’s more:
Consumer Spending Falls, Fueling Concerns About Recovery
By Conor Dougherty, The Wall Street JournalConsumer spending fell in September while incomes remained flat, fueling concerns that the recovery could lose steam in the absence of government stimulus outlays.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that consumer spending fell 0.5% in September. The decline was largely attributed to reduced car sales a month after the “cash for clunkers” program ended. Spending on durable goods such as cars and other products designed to last more than three years fell 7%, more than erasing gains from a month earlier.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported that third-quarter gross domestic product increased 3.5% after four quarters of contraction, likely marking an end to the recession that started in December 2007. But with the expiration of federal stimulus programs, economists expect growth to slow through this year and into 2010.
Here are the numbers, graphically:
If you look at the chart, there’s a rather obvious reason for the decline in consumer spending: real incomes have been continually declining, so a continued increase in consumer spending was unsustainable. The big increase in August reflects the Cash for Clunkers program, which has since expired; it brought a surge of new car sales, but may well have crammed the new car market, pushing what should have been several months of new car sales into a shorter time frame; we just might see new car sales really tumble over the next few months, as demand for new cars declines.
And a month from now, the up to $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers expires. that’s two big pump-priming programs, funded by more government borrowing, that will have taken their best shots, and stimulated something unsustainable in their absence.
The Wall Street Journal also noted that, with unemployment high, it’s unlikely that consumer spending levels can be sustained. It’s good to know that the Journal agrees with my assessment! 
The recession appears to be ending, but that would have happened regardless: recessions and recoveries are simply normal parts of the business cycle. President Obama will claim credit for it, and some people who don’t understand economics will give him that credit, but, in the end, the government really doesn’t control the economy. It can make things easier or harder by messing with credit and/or the money supply, and it can reduce our debt — well, in theory, anyway — or saddle us with more debt, but these short-term stimulus plans are really like the lidocaine I got when I got some stitches recently: it doesn’t help you avoid pain, it just delays it for a while.
In the end, the stimulus jobs for which President Obama wants to claim credit — mostly government employees at this point — will have to be paid for by other means, whether that means higher taxes on the public, or in those jobs being lost once the stimulus plan is over, leaving us without those “saved or created” jobs, but an additional $787 billion in debt for our economic lidocaine.
Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Obama’s assessment came a day after an independent federal board reported that nearly 650,000 direct jobs have been saved or created because of stimulus program money provided to businesses, contractors, state and local governments, nonprofit groups and universities.
Well, which is it? 650,000 or “over one million?”
Which part of the word “direct” do you not understand?
Here’s the thing - reputable economists say (i) the recession was worse than predicted and (ii) the stimulus package helped.
It’s wingnuts who try to blame the recession on Obama, and who don’t acknowledge the very worse results that would have happened *without* government action.
Simple fact - if the government had followed the course of action you’re screaming for now, the country would be a lot worse off, and you’d be screaming for something else. This is because you base your criticism not on economics, but tribalism.
1 November 2009, 7:29 pmDana Pico:
I don’t blame recessions on anyone, and certainly couldn’t blame this one on President Obama, given that it started before he was elected.
But the notion that the stimulus plan helped is an effort at guessing what would have happened had it not been passed. We’ve already seen just how accurate President Obama’s forecasts have been, so there’s no particular reason to think that his statements that the stimulus plan helped in the least.
So, now we’ve got unemployment two percent higher than what the President said it would be if we passed his plan, and we’re an additional $787 billion in debt to boot. Somehow, I fiond that unimpressive.
1 November 2009, 7:35 pmThe Pennsylvania Guardian:
My confidence just keeps increasing everday with Obama !!!
1 November 2009, 8:05 pmPhoenician in a time of Romans:
But the notion that the stimulus plan helped is an effort at guessing what would have happened had it not been passed.
This is true. It is, however, based on empirical economic observation of what happens in recessions - including the Great Depression.
We’ve already seen just how accurate President Obama’s forecasts have been, so there’s no particular reason to think that his statements that the stimulus plan helped in the least.
I see. So, let me see if I have got this straight. You predict on Monday that Wednesday will be fine, and thus you pour concrete. It rains on Wednesday. On Friday, you’re talking to the customer and you tell them that their concrete isn’t dry because it rained on Wednesday.
And they say to you “No, it’s your incompetance in pouring concrete that’s to blame. We’ve already seen just how accurate your forecasts have been, so there’s no particular reason to think that your statement about concrete drying was accurate in the least.”
1 November 2009, 8:21 pmYorkshire:
Pho:
I see. So, let me see if I have got this straight. You predict on Monday that Wednesday will be fine, and thus you pour concrete. It rains on Wednesday. On Friday, you’re talking to the customer and you tell them that their concrete isn’t dry because it rained on Wednesday.
And they say to you “No, it’s your incompetance in pouring concrete that’s to blame. We’ve already seen just how accurate your forecasts have been, so there’s no particular reason to think that your statement about concrete drying was accurate in the least.”
Well, you certainly lack any knowledge of concrete.
1 November 2009, 9:22 pmYorkshire:
WASHINGTON — Many communities hit hardest by job losses, those built around dying factories and mills, have been slowest to see relief from President Obama’s stimulus plan, underscoring how hard it is for Washington policymakers to create lasting work in areas that need it most.
The manufacturing industry has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs during the recession as plants have closed or scaled back. Places such as the southwest Missouri city of Lamar, tucked amid endless fields of winter wheat and soybeans, have seen the cornerstones of their economies disappear, leaving a gap that even billions in roadwork and government aid cannot fill.
Lamar began feeling the recession ahead of the rest of the country, when the furniture-maker O’Sullivan Industries closed its doors in mid-2007, immediately leaving 700 workers unemployed and turning its factory into a million-square-foot vacancy.
— rest of story —
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/01/hard-hit-factory-towns-slow-relief-stimulus/?test=latestnews
1 November 2009, 9:28 pmPhoenician in a time of Romans:
Well, you certainly lack any knowledge of concrete.
Just as you, Dana and Eric lack any knowledge of economics.
Unlike you, however, I don’t bloviate endlessly about concrete pouring techniques.
1 November 2009, 10:08 pmJohn Hitchcock:
Pooter wrote:
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
(emphasis mine)
So, two UCLA economists basically said we won’t enter another depression unless we do what we just did and continue to do.
1 November 2009, 10:09 pmDana Pico:
The Phoenician amused me:
Ignoring the fact that you know nothing about the setting of concrete, your illustration is one in which I would have been predicting the weather, something I am not remotely qualified to do. And so it appears with the Obama Administration: they have predicted the economy, and the inaccuracies of their predictions leads one to conclude that they were not remotely qualified to do so.
1 November 2009, 10:22 pmYorkshire:
Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Well, you certainly lack any knowledge of concrete.
Just as you, Dana and Eric lack any knowledge of economics.
Unlike you, however, I don’t bloviate endlessly about concrete pouring techniques.
Obviously you learned nothing from that either.
1 November 2009, 10:27 pmPhoenician in a time of Romans:
Ignoring the fact that you know nothing about the setting of concrete, your illustration is one in which I would have been predicting the weather, something I am not remotely qualified to do. And so it appears with the Obama Administration: they have predicted the economy, and the inaccuracies of their predictions leads one to conclude that they were not remotely qualified to do so.
Once again, Dana, the clue-plane buzzes way over your head. The Obama Administration - along with everyone else - underestimated how bad the recession was going to get. This is a different issue from using economic data to look back and figure out from models what would have happened if something had been different.
You are claiming that their failure on the first - along with everyone else - invalidates their use of econometric models after the event. You are wrong.
1 November 2009, 10:30 pmJohn Hitchcock:
Pooter, spouting the “Blame Bush Game”:
Back to that UCLA economics article:
Like real economists said, government interference exacerbated the economic problem in the 1930s instead of working to fix them. And we won’t have another ’30s unless we do what we did and continue to do.
1 November 2009, 10:40 pmThomas Tallis:
you guys do realize that it’s a little ripe for you to pretend to care about the economy after what you’ve been nodding your heads to for the past eight years, right?
2 November 2009, 12:25 amJohn Hitchcock:
TT are you still busy sticking your head … in the sand? What on Providence’s green Earth are you chattering about?
2 November 2009, 12:30 amDana Pico:
The Phoenician wrote:
What part of “they got it very wrong” do you find so difficult to understand? Telling me that “everyone else” got it wrong doesn’t somehow mean that the Obama Administration got it right, or that they have a decent record of being right on which to claim expertise.
There is, I suppose, the possibility that they actually did know what was going to happen, and simply lied about it.
2 November 2009, 7:28 amPerry:
Dana:“There is, I suppose, the possibility that they actually did know what was going to happen, and simply lied about it.”
When all else fails in your attempt at logic, wheel out the straw man again. There is no evidence for a lie.
You all gloss over Phoenician’s original point, which essentially is: In complex situations, out of control elements can influence the outcome, as in the relationship between the weather and the pouring of concrete.
The economy falls into that category of being complex. Add to that fact a second fact, that we are in uncharted territory in attempting to put the course right, thus you have the bait that the right wing uses to make political attacks on the Obama administration. And irony of all ironies, you could even call it hypocrisy, as the right wing attacks Obama for the problem they have essentially caused, going back to Reagan, with second term Clinton throwing in his little piece to the mess of no regulation.
And on top of it all, Bush-Obama are given no credit by the right wing for preventing another great depression. And even worse, if it can so be, I see no attack on Wall Street by the right, as Wall Streeters continue many of the same risk taking practices, with our money, that sent us into this tail spin to begin with.
Here is what Pulitizer Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has to say about the causes of our crisis: “Financial markets had lent on the basis of a bubble – a bubble in large part of their making. They had incentive structures that encouraged excessive risk-taking and shortsighted behaviour. And that was no accident. It was the fruit of vigorous lobbying, which strived equally hard to prevent regulation of changes in the financial structure, new products like credit default swaps – which, while supposedly designed to manage risk, actually created it – and ingenious devices to exploit poor and uninformed borrowers and investors. The sector may not have made good economic investments, but its political investments paid off handsomely.”
One problem we continue to have is that Wall Street continues these practices, with our money, including the rewarding of huge executive salaries and bonuses. Even though the Obama administration has yet to effectively rein in these arrogant and greedy folks, one would hope that these Wall Streeters would have learned their lesson. But no, it is not about our country, it is about them, as is characteristic of right wing ideology, I’m sorry to say. In spite of Obama, they have a powerful grip on the machinery of government, with their lobbying and their bribes, known as unbridled campaign contributions, as the economy of China continues to grow at a 9% per annum clip.
Our system remains badly out of whack! It’s going to be a long haul, even longer if we, in our impatience, are stupid enough to allow the same right wing perpetrators gain back some power in 2010!
2 November 2009, 9:07 amThomas Tallis:
John H, did you know that bluster & aggressive stances aren’t really a substitute for thought? Have a look at your “the federal government is violating the constitution!” post - CSPT was blissfully unconcerned with constitutional violations as long as Bush sat in the office. the last eight years while the President slowly drove a lance through the economy, “conservatives” online cheerled & mischaracterized the genuinely conservative stance - that Bush’s stewardship of the office was a affront to the constitution at almost every turn - as “Bush-bashing.” Now, eight years later, his successor has precedent for ignoring the constitution; the powers that derive from the presidency in the wake of Bush’s presidency are absurd, but they’re firmly in place now. don’t like it? you should have complained a little louder when the guy establishing the tradition had an (R) next to his name. too late now, and if you think you guys don’t actually shoulder most of the blame for the new style of running a presidency, then you’re in really pathetic denial.
2 November 2009, 9:30 amRovin:
You libtards are funny. Three million jobs have been LOST since the stimulus/porkulus bill was passed.
Of course, if we use Blu’s Dulfer formula, this is probably closer to ten million.
And it will get much worse if this cap and trade/global warming hoax bill passes and forget about trying to sell your house:
pathetic denial? Yes, you liberals certainly have the lock on this term. And your, “yeah but Boooooosh did it too” is wearing mighty thin.
2 November 2009, 9:55 amjcw:
“the last eight years while the President slowly drove a lance through the economy”
Sorry Thomas, the Federal Reserve was responsible for that.
2 November 2009, 11:37 amEric:
Pho is just making excuses for Obama. His line of thinking doesn’t extend much beyond Bush = bad, Obama = The New Messiah. Even Perry has enough independence of thought to criticise Obama, but not Pho.
2 November 2009, 3:01 pmEric:
I imagine Pho doesn’t know much more about economics beyond the usual Left Wing ideology of more government spending = good, relying on a free market = bad.
Besides, if he were so much more knowledgeable on economics than the rest of us, he’d be filthy rich and cruising the Caribbean on his yacht instead of spouting his drivel on this blog.
2 November 2009, 3:05 pmSharon:
I want one of the jobs Obama “saved.”
2 November 2009, 3:48 pmDana Pico:
Sharon wrote:
Well, since he saved them all, and kept us out of Great Depression II — or maybe Greater Depression? — then if you have a job, it’s one that President Obama saved. Surely you knew that!
2 November 2009, 5:24 pmDana Pico:
Perry wrote:
To give them credit for “preventing another great depression,” one must assume that there would have been another depression had nothing been done. There’s no proof that such would have occurred, and cannot be any proof; we cannot know what would have happened if something was done, or not done, differently.
The Depression saw unemployment around 25%; not only are we nowhere near that, but unemployment thus far hasn’t even reached the levels we saw in the early 1980s; in a lot of ways, the current recession isn’t as severe as the one in the early 1980s. To assume that a depression was about to occur, and give the president credit for avoiding it, seems silly to me.
2 November 2009, 5:48 pmDNW:
The President deserves credit for noting apart from dumping federal cash into the economy and then crowing that the GDP is growing.
By the way, just as an indicator of how the collaborationist press has been asleep at the wheel for years, it turns out that 2/3rds of the growth in GDP over the last decade was related to financial sector incomes.
Now consider that the manufacturing sector started into its decline ten years ago, and that structural weaknesses and trends were ignored earlier than that during a frenzy of Dot.Com excitement and housing price run-ups, and you can see that the press has just about been worthless at their self-announced task.
Anyway, to your point:
Non-farm related unemployment during the Great Depression was up to 37%, not including under-employment and reduced employment.
I haven’t bothered to look it up, but I would imagine that if government workers were factored out, and only the productive free market sectors of the economy considered, the unemployment rate would now be quite a bit higher than 10 per cent.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
2 November 2009, 6:26 pmDana Pico:
There is, of course, some good economic news. remember this?
How ’bout this?
It’s clear that Ford benefited from the Cash for Clunkers surge, but this still shows that without taking a government bailout, Ford was able to get back on the right track.
2 November 2009, 9:21 pmSharon:
On Diane Rehm’s show Friday, the guests pointed out that the economic messages right now are mixed; yes, GDP is up, but consumer confidence is low, unemployment is 10%, housing starts are slightly up. What I haven’t heard much about is how much of the growth in the 3d quarter is due to government spending. If we eliminate government spending–which we cannot keep doing–how will the economy look?
2 November 2009, 10:24 pmSharon:
BTW, Dana, I work as a freelancer. It’s great in that I can set my own schedule, but the work is sporadic and, this year in particular, has been less than usual. I would love to work full-time, but there aren’t many jobs out there. And more to the point, with the recession, there are lots and lots of people looking for the same jobs I would do, up to and including my ex-husband whose job is on the chopping block.
2 November 2009, 10:28 pmYorkshire:
I think the strip mining community in By-Gosh West Virginny is going to go conservative after the EPA shuts down a lot of mines when the start revoking permits to mine. Unemployed miners are never happy people.
3 November 2009, 8:52 amPerry:
The environmental damage of strip mining not only ruins the environment around the mines, it also worsens the quality of life of those living near the mines, that is, the miners themselves. In addition, the slides of slag into nearby rivers and streams diverts their course and pollutes their waters. Then the rest of the story is the coal itself, low grade coal which pollutes the air with fly ash containing mercury and oxides of sulfur producing acid rain, and pollutes the ground water with heavy metals.
We here in Sussex County, DE, are acutely aware of this, since we have a dirty coal plant here owned and operated by NRG, producing the environmental damage just listed, and resulting in higher incidence of health problems.
So the miners have issues at the mines, and the residents have issues at the power generation facilities.
Tough choices must be made to alleviate these problems. They will not make everyone happy, but they have to be made anyway.
3 November 2009, 9:38 amnikki:
Update on Art downs ,Had stroke last tues transported to jhu doing 50/50
3 November 2009, 9:00 pmDana feel free to email me
Yorkshire:
nikki:
Update on Art downs ,Had stroke last tues transported to jhu doing 50/50
Dana feel free to email me
Damn!
3 November 2009, 9:14 pmDana Pico:
I have e-mailed Nikki, really just a few minutes after she commented, and gave her my cell number as well. I’ll keep everybody posted.
3 November 2009, 9:28 pmDana Pico:
Perry wrote:
Does it worsen the quality of life for the miners more than unemployment does?
3 November 2009, 9:30 pmYorkshire:
Dana Pico:
Perry wrote:
The environmental damage of strip mining not only ruins the environment around the mines, it also worsens the quality of life of those living near the mines, that is, the miners themselves.
Does it worsen the quality of life for the miners more than unemployment does?
Will it make the quality of life better in DE when the power plant shuts down and nothing is there to replace it?
One thing that is constant in the environmentalist movement, the answer is always no. No you can’t do this or that. And more important, we have NO alternate solutions in the meantime. If one thinks the Republicans are the party of NO, the environmentalists are a party of NEVER.
4 November 2009, 8:09 amCommon Sense Political Thought » Blog Archive » How’s that stimulus plan workin’ for ya?:
[...] I asked if President Obama was actually trying to take credit for the 9.8% unemployment rate in September; wonder if he’ll claim the credit for this bit of news: October unemployment rate rises to 10.2%.. Category: 2009 Economic Stimulus Bill, Economics | Comment (RSS) | Trackback [...]
6 November 2009, 10:01 am