Economic Policy Institute is a lobbyist whorehouse. Always has been. They claim to be "progressive" but put out the damnedest attacks on Democrats.
Here's the latest. EPI's garbage misstates Department of Labor jobs data to claim that Obama is responsible for losing 11-million American jobs.
A recovery that's 11 million jobs short -- on the front page.
That's on the dkos front page. Glowing commentary.
Meanwhile, here's the real jobs figures -- adjusted to reflect both The Fed's Big Bubble and the Bush deficits (recall tax giveaways and Iraq). Go to the CBO figure at 134,000,000 non-bubble jobs at start of 2008:
Uh... yeah... the Crash of 2008 still has us down by 3,000,000 jobs compared to where we should have been in January 2008. That's why it's called a crash.
11,000,000 jobs down ??? That's claiming the Big Bubble Binge (2002-2008) was normal and that the economic insanity balloon should have blown up bigger and bigger forever !
So what is that EPI trash doing on the dkos front page ?
Simple fact: apart from the Fed generating such as the housing bubble and Bush throwing a trillion out on Iraq, the Non-Bubble Employment Level would have straight-lined to about 134,000,000 jobs for January, 2008.
No way is Obama going to re-start the housing bubble or invade another country on the Treasury credit card.
134,000,000 jobs for January, 2008. That is the real world target for employment recovery. Not the bubble-and-war-driven 138,000,000 jobs from 2008 that was reached artificially.
The Fed's long binge has slacked to quantitative easing dribbles. No one is buying McMansions. No one is buying vacation homes in desolate areas.
Bush ran up deficits, a.k.a. debt tax, believing that these deficits did not matter. Obama is not stupid, no way so narcissistic.
So Obama's real world, non-bubble target is 134,000,000 jobs to get back to where the recession started. Meanwhile the overall jobs destruction from the Fed/Bush Crash amounts to some 8,000,000 jobs as measured against the Big Bubble distortions.
Macroeconomics 101.
BTW: that line for "4.3 million jobs we should have gained" in the original whoregraph is somewhere in a mental class with arsenic-laced soda pop and syphilis. Same as saying:
The Fed/Bush Bubble should have gone on forever !!!
This EPI is supposed to be a "progressive" think tank. "We should have gained" is liars' poison.
Missing George Bush much ?????
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These dkos guys got bobswern. They got a bunch of us. There's no shortage of econ smarts at dkos.
Timothy, however, is not an economist.
There's gotta be somebody they can get can to do econ quality control.