Posts Tagged ‘recession’
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
Now that the stimulus spending is winding down (note to critics of stimulus spending, who said it didn’t do anything: if it didn’t do any good, why is the loss of it endangering the recovery?), the job market is looking grim again. For reasons I can’t quite fathom in this oddest of election years, neither party seems to have much to say about the number one issue in the polls: jobs. The Dems know that they can’t pass anything right now, but instead of trying to get a big jobs bill through, and forcing the GOP to defend the indefensible, they seem to have given up. The Republicans are all about one issue only–extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, because it’s not a good idea to raise taxes in a recession, although it’s hard to know who will be hurt by taking a bit more from really rich people, and on the discredited theory that keeping the tax cuts will create jobs, (note to GOP: where are all the jobs that the tax cut was supposed to produce in the first place?).
In the meantime, the millions without work can spend their days waiting for the economy to tank again and looking for jobs that don’t exist, or worrying about a mosque in New York or immigrants taking the jobs that don’t exist in Arizona.
On that Islamic Center issue, I just returned from a few days in New York, where nobody I met was talking about the Ground Zero mosque (note to readers: it’s a community center, not a mosque, and it’s not at Ground Zero) even though Rupert Murdoch’s Post was doing its lurid best to keep up with his Fox News and make an election issue of it. I’m convinced the only politician in America with any courage at all is Mayor Bloomberg (a Republican), who is still standing firm on the principle of freedom of religion.
Topics: cartoon, economy, employment, jobs, opinion, recession, unemployment | 4 Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Medical marijuana shops are cropping up all over the place. We all know, of course, that this is a total sham; it’s a way to legalize marijuana while pretending that we’re doing it for purely ethical reasons. We won’t admit that the prohibition of ganja was as effective as the prohibition of alcohol, so we save face this way. But why stop there? There are equally good uses for dope, and times like these call for a little creativity. Here’s one way to expand the use of marijuana, also for humanitarian purposes.
Topics: economy, foreclosure, marijuana, medical marijuana, opinion, recession, unemployment | 2 Comments »
Monday, December 21st, 2009
I’m no fan of Christmas shopping, but the last thing this struggling economy needed was a huge blizzard wiping out crucial shopping days in some of the largest markets in the country. It’s depressing to think that the only quick way out of this recession is for rampant consumerism to come roaring back. What I want for Christmas is for everyone to shop until they drop. And would it be too much to ask that you tell the storekeepers you saw their ads in the newspaper?
Topics: blizzard, Christmas, Christmas sales, economy, recession, retail sales, snow | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 7th, 2009
With job creation at the top of the economic wish list as the nation slowly recovers from the deep recession, and with the Afghanistan decision made, Obama last week convened a jobs summit. The truth is, and everyone knows it, there’s little more that can be done to create the millions of jobs needed to offset those lost the last two years, unless the government is willing to spend billions more on additional stimulus. This puts Obama in a precarious place; does he risk adding to the already huge deficit, risking runaway inflation down the road, or does he stand pat and hope the economy creates more jobs than anticipated? Perhaps intervention from another agency will save the day. It can’t hurt to ask. “Tis the season.
Topics: Afghanistan, Christmas, climate change, economy, employment, health care, jobs, Obama, recession | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
I had some qualms about drawing this one. I toyed with a number of Thanksgiving themes–the president pardoning the turkey, the Thanksgiving feast, both contemporary and historical, linking these images with other events like the Afghanistan decision or Wall Street bonuses–but I decided against them. Too predictable or too familiar. I ended up doing this one, mostly because even though it’s a downer, it’s closer to what I think is the underlying truth about the time we’re in right now. Over the past few decades we’ve squandered much of our wealth and our economic security, and I don’t think we’ll be going back to what we had anytime soon. Wall Street greed is only partly to blame. We built an economy on cheap imported consumer goods, and watched passively as manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas, salaries retreated, and the middle class stagnated while the wealthiest piled up unprecedented riches. As the bitter partisan divide became an unbridgeable chasm, we kicked difficult choices like Medicare, Social Security and health care reform down the road. And here we are, with a shattered economy, a fragile recovery leaving huge unemployment in its wake, and a holiday season upon us that promises little cheer for retailers or consumers. Happy Thanksgiving.
Topics: cornucopia, economy, recession, Thanksgiving | 2 Comments »
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
I join the growing chorus of critics who don’t believe that Obama has focused enough on job creation. In fact, I’m more than a little disappointed in the tepid performance by Democrats in general. They won the election by large margins, yet they seem afraid to lead. The Republicans have been successful at all kinds of stalling tactics on judicial nominees (remember the outraged demand by Republicans for an up and down vote for Bush’s nominees?), many other appointments, climate change legislation, and the despicable tactics being employed against health care reform. Yet Democrats don’t seem to have the stomach for a real fight.
It will take political courage to spend the money needed for more stimulus aimed at job creation in the face of rising deficits, yet that’s exactly what most economists think we need. I also seem to remember the mantra that deficits don’t matter, when Bush was racking them up; evidently they only matter when Democrats control the White House. Yet the Dems apparently are afraid of the consequences if they actually get out in front of controversial legislation. As a good friend of mine, a recently-elected Colorado legislator, reminded me the other day, people don’t vote to re-elect legislators who do nothing, and they especially don’t re-elect cowards.
Let’s have some backbone, people. Do something.
Topics: economy, employment, jobs, Obama, recession, Thanksgiving, unemployment | 5 Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2009
The closer we get to economic recovery, the more difficult it’s going to be to reform Wall Street. Congress has already dithered for almost a year, and still no substantial reforms of the practices that led to the economic meltdown have emerged. For all Obama’s lecturing of the miscreants, he’s done little to force them to change their ways. The few banks that are now showing a profit are doing so largely because they’re trading in the same kinds of risky securities that led us to this mess in the first place. Worse, they’ve learned the wrong lesson: if they screw up again, we’ll bail them out rather than risk the destruction of the economy, and they’ll be rewarded yet again with huge bonuses paid for by the taxpayers, assuming we have anything left by then.
Topics: banking, economy, financial reform, Obama, recession, reform, securities, stock market, Wall Street | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
The balloon boy story had it all: a strong human interest story, a mystery, great video, and a touch of voyeurism. It lacked only two important elements. It wasn’t true, and it wasn’t really about anything important in the broader scheme of things. In other words, it was exactly the kind of story television news loves. The story that’s hardly being covered at all is the tragedy that’s befalling millions of kids as the economy continues to struggle and millions fall into poverty and despair.
Topics: balloon boy, child poverty, economy, poverty, recession, weather balloon | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
I tried to imagine how it must feel to be one of those Wall Street bankers who stand to make tens of millions in bonuses from bailout money after nearly bringing the world’s economy to its knees. I know I’d feel too guilty to take the money, so I could only speculate that these guys must have an honorable reason for not refusing their ill-gotten windfalls. I came up with this.
Topics: bailout, bankers, banks, bonuses, economy, recession, Wall Street | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
Great news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its 52-week high the other day. The economy continues to show signs of recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. But where are the jobs? How many years will it take to absorb the massive numbers of unemployed, not to mention the new high school and college graduates who enter the job market each spring?
Topics: economy, Great Recession, jobless recovery, jobs, recession, recovery | No Comments »
