Friday, September 07, 2012

Is Obama going to talk us out of the recession?

Here is former Clinton Secretary of Labor and otherwise very liberal economist Robert Reich on Obama's acceptance speech last night:
Look, I desperately want Obama to win. But the one thing his speech last night lacked was the one thing that was the most important for him to offer — a plan for how to get the economy out of the doldrums.
This is Robert Reich, for crying out loud. If Obama can't please the like of Robert Reich, he's in big trouble.
Employers added only 96,000 nonfarm jobs in August. True, the unemployment rate fell to 8.1% from July’s 8.3%, But the size of the workforce continued to drop, according to a Labor Department report Friday. 
Unfortunately for the President — and the rest of us — jobs gains have averaged only 94,000 over the last three months. That’s down from an average of 95,000 in the second quarter. And well below the average gain of 225,000 in the first quarter of the year And compared to last year, the trend is still in the wrong direction: a monthly average gain of 139,000 this year compared to last year’s average monthly gain of 153,000.
Reich still says we're better off now that we were four years ago. We're just going to have nod our head politely when they say this, as we would when anyone makes a faith statement.

I was watching the Charlie Rose show last night, in which supporter after Obama supporter assured Rose that Obama was going to do what they argued Romney didn't: lay out a plan to get the nation out of the economic doldrums.

What happened instead? More high-flown rhetoric. Obama is apparently going to talk us out of the recession.

No comments: