Asia manufacturing slows, because the customers for the exports in Europe and America are expecting another slow fall and winter and are delaying shopping or reducing the budgets for back-to-school. In the US, the Obama administration finally marks down its predictions for GDP and employment for the remainder of this year (one month left in the Q3) and for all of 2012, and the result is frail and suggestive of worse. The reduction for the GDP this year is from 2.7 to 1.7 % GDP, which translates into the sluggishness in hiring and the caution in investing. The jobless rate for all of the election year is projected at 9% and higher. What surprises is that critics claim these numbers are based on rosy scenarios. Rosy? Am waiting the few hours till the August jobs number is released; however, the major shops are already crumbling to reduce their estimates for hires to a meager 75,000 -- way less than we need to stay even with the population growth. POTUS jobs proposals on Thursday 8 September is a campaign tool, not state policy. POTUS long ago lost control of the narrative about jobs. The earliest we are to see even 4% GDP growth is 2015. Gasp. What will a second Obama administration look like? Why does POTUS want a job he has not solved? The blame-shifting at the White House must be Olympic-class.
And this is the positive spin on the projections:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/white-house-unemployment-will-average-9-percent-in-election-year.php?wpisrc=nl_wonk
The White House projects 9 percent unemployment through next year, reports Brian Beutler: "President Obama's mid-session budget review confirms what most private and government projections have recently concluded -- that the economy is considerably weaker than earlier forecasts held, and won't fully recover from the Great Recession for years. Most troubling, both for the country and for Obama politically, is that near-term unemployment is expected to remain significantly higher than expected, averaging 9 percent in fiscal year 2012...The revised figures 'reflect the substantial amount of economic turbulence over the past two months,' OMB says, triggered by the European debt crisis, the earthquake in Japan, congressional brinkmanship over the debt ceiling among others. They also take into account the fact that GDP growth in the first half of fiscal year 2011 turned out to be significantly lower than originally thought."
TAegan Goddard: Political Wire:
No Jobs Created Last Month
The U.S. government reported that zero net new jobs were created last month. The unemployment rate remained at 9.1%.
June and July employment numbers were also revised downward.
Wall Street Journal: "The economy slowed sharply in the first half, heightening concerns it could fall back into recession only two years after the end of the severe downturn of 2008 and 2009."
Felix Salmon: "You can call this a double dip, if you like, or you can view it as a kind of aftershock of the financial crisis. Either way, the economy is clearly now below its stall speed, and we don't have access to the mechanisms necessary to get it moving again. That is going to make for poisonous politics, Washington gridlock, and untold human misery among millions of new and long-term unemployed across the land. Happy Labor Day, people."
–It’s often said when it rains, it pours. That is an apt description of the August employment report and the likely path in the labor market later this year. Given slowing growth in the real economy there is little in the employment report to indicate a pickup in job creating heading into the final 16 weeks of 2011. –Joseph Brusuelas, Bloomberg
What surprises is the MSM surprise in the zero we have in the Oval Off.. er, Job Growth numbers:
AP: 'alarming'
CNN: 'surprising'
MSNBC: 'the hiring slowdown probably will not be seen as a recession signal as layoffs are not rising that much'
NYTimes: 'Economists blamed the slow pace of job creation on sluggish demand for goods and services, and heightened uncertainty over the economy'
Utterly false. There is complete and total certainty in the economy. Certainty in the increasing cost of healthcare, taxes, 'employee fees', and government mandates coming this way. What competent business in its right mind would assume these increased costs through the hiring of new employees (aka liabilities), an increase in their risk and exposure, and reducing their cash position? Especially with nothing on the horizon indicating any reversal in the "sluggish demand for goods and services."
Whether it was candidate Obama or early within his administration, I remember an interview where a typical softball question asked B.O of his second term. His response was that if he didn't think he was doing a good job he wouldn't even run for a second term. So the question is by what standard of self analysis does he give himself a passing grade? A sales rep wouldn't have made it into the second year. Perhaps an independent reporter could pull up the old softball interview and ask him by what standard does he consider he's doing a good job, and quite frankly why is he even considering running again?
"His response was that if he didn't think he was doing a good job he wouldn't even run for a second term."
Is there anyone on the planet who DIDN'T know he began planning for his second term on 5 Nov 08? Anyone? The H in his name stands for Hypocrite, among other things.
Defeating an incumbent is a struggle of logic, accident and the completely unexpected -- like Desert 1. Odds favor the incumbent heavily. The GOP is more confident about taking the Senate than winning the WH. And, in truth, if you are GOP bloody-minded, winning the Senate and holding the House is plenty; and leaving the WH to a lame duck who has little aptitude for Washington puts the Democrats in a weakened state to raise money or the '14 mid-term. Consider an Obama second term: to what need besides posturing and speechifying -- and rolling over to the GOP Congress. Obamacare? It may not survive SCOTUS. The deep challenge is the dark economy. Housing not until 2020. Jobs start again in 2012? Maybe 2018? Then the super inflation. Who wants the job? A GOP governor to take the WH in January 17 will have to be rugged.
Democrat House Organ Media (TM) not willing to blame "the Administration" or use "Critics of the Administration" to place blame squarely where it belongs: The White House and Agencies that have been setting policies for the American Economy.
Plus leaving The One twisting in the wind for another term would have the added benefit of putting one more nail in the blue state model and the Dems/Progs/Libs vision of government. But if he does get re-elected it certainly would blow to hell all those predictors of voter behavior when employment and the economy are so far down the gurgler.
"It may not survive SCOTUS."
I'd be surprised if some of Obamacare's worst, most obscene, most expensive features don't survive. SCOTUS would have to cast a serious pall over commerce clause abuse, throwing thousands of programs in doubt, if they strike it down even in part. Does Justice Kennedy have the stones for that kind of havoc?
Back when SCOTUS decided Chadha in 1983, the Congress chose simply to ignore most of the decision's consequences for 280+ statutes that were invalidated. It's been trying to reinstate one-house review of executive branch regulations under the table ever since.
"I'd be surprised if some of Obamacare's worst, most obscene, most expensive features don't survive."
The Obamacare law does not include the clause that is necessary for the parts to remain intact if one part is struck down. Therefore, if one part goes, all of Obamacare goes. [Sorry, not a lawyer, so I don't know the name of this 'legalism'.]
SCOTUS review is de novo. It can find anything it wants, interpret the statute and the legislative history any way it wants.
The first rule of statutory interpretation is that you look to the 4 corners of the document, and if you find it is not ambiguous, or internally inconsistent, end of analysis. But SCOTUS has been starting wtih the legislative history first to see if there's anything ambiguous about the history, and then looking to the document itself for literally decades. That's why federal court cases are such crap shoots.
SCOTUS "... can find anything it wants, interpret the statute and the legislative history any way it wants."
Yes, but I think that's what most judges do, anyway, no matter what level of the justice system they're in. The attitude is that if you don't like it 'appeal me', which every judge knows expensive, difficult and time consuming and not likely in most cases. Not to mention that a higher court tends to support the lower court. It can always find 'something' to save a ridiculous decision.
But, I take your point: SCOTUS can certainly do whatever it wants. It makes the final determination as to what is and what isn't legal, proper and right.
Not that it matters as to the above, but the clause that our Constitutional Scholar and Complainer-in-Chief didn't add to Obamacare is the Severability clause. Of course, if SCOTUS wants laws to have severability clauses -- so as to be clear that that's the intention of the legislature -- it can say that as well.