In his usual style, Charles Pierce addressed today's highly disconcerting BLS figures:
At the moment, the president is having the worst morning of his presidency. The Blog's First Law Of Economics -- Fck The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money. -- has smacked him right upside the chops. The May jobs numbers are altogether unspinnable. The economy produced 69,000 new jobs or, if you need a handy comparison, 3000 fewer new jobs than there were people who, on average, bestirred themselves to watch the Kansas City Chiefs last season, and the Chiefs were 7-9. Unemployment ticked up to 8.2 percent and, most significantly, there was an increase of 300,000 in the number of in the number of the long-term unemployed, which adds up to a level of despair and hopelessness for which there is no moral metric. I would note that an additional 13,000 jobs were lost in the private sector which, of course, don't count as far as many people in our political class are concerned because the salaries paid to public employees are paid out in money cooties that aren't as clean and sparkly as the money that sits in, say, Tagg Romney's trust fund.
I believe there's a typo where he referred to "private" job losses when he meant "public" job losses, but his core point stands. U6, the figure that really matters, went up from 14.5% to 14.8%. That utterly unacceptable figure not only means far too much misery to far too many people, but it also invariably means political misery for any incumbent.
Pierce goes on to note:
And still -- still! --the elite political consensus in this country is leaning perilously in the direction of austerity -- or, as putative Democratic analyst Ed Rendell put it on Morning Joe today, "making the tough choices." -- at a time when 300,000 people of all ages have been thrown out of work and have failed to find any in longer than a year. And, next month, as an added bonus for being part of the greatest nation there absolutely ever was, about 70,000 of the long-term unemployed are going have their benefits run out sooner than they expected, bringing this year's total up to nearly half-a-million. We have 300,000 long-term unemployed who could be rebuilding bridges, or serving coffee to those who are. We have 300,000 long-term unemployed who could be repairing roads, or driving vans full of people who do. We have 300,000 long-term unemployed who, all evidence indicates, their government largely has abandoned, and about whom their country's corporate landlords could care even less. Perhaps this isn't the best time in history for the president to be boasting regularly about how much federal spending he's cut.
I cannot fathom for the life of me why ANY Dem spokesman would talk about "tough choices" in the current economic climate. For that matter, I cannot fathom why a spokesman who would utter such drivel would be sent out on Morning Joe. As per
Krugman's opening graf today:
“The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.” So declared John Maynard Keynes 75 years ago, and he was right. Even if you have a long-run deficit problem — and who doesn’t? — slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the depression.
Pierce closes as follows:
The nation is in crisis now, and The Deficit is not it. The nation is in crisis now because an irresponsible and unaccountable money power ruined the economy, and the political system was unwilling or incapable of either fully repairing the damage, or fully holding to account the people who caused it. Half-measures were the order of the day, and too many of them were based on the mostly unreasonable assumption that American corporations are in any way patriotic, and on the entirely unreasonable assumption that the American government today responds to all of its citizens, and not just to the ones who write the checks. We are, most of us, just one bad turn away from being part of the long-term unemployed. We are suckers, we are. We're playing in a rigged game.
There is little to be added to such a powerful conclusion. Until today, there was at least the hope that U3/U6 would continue its slow descent and that, by election day, U3 might get down into the mid-7s. Since WWII, no incumbent POTUS has been re-elected w/ U3 >7.2%, and, in that situation,
U3 dropped over 3 full points in the 21 months leading up to Reagan's re-election. U3 of
7.8% was fatal to Ford's hopes in '76, and U3 of
7.4% was fatal to Bush I's hopes in '92.
I'm not sure what can be done at this point, esp. given the eurozone crisis. Maybe Bernanke can try QE3. I do know that "green shoots" and other palaver we've heard from this WH and attempts at "Grand Bargains" w/ a party of lying nihilists won't cut it now.