Did you hear? Happy Times have been here again since June 2009. And don’t check outside your window to find out that the sun smiles down; listen to the “experts”:
It’s official: The Great Recession ended last summer
By Neil Irwin
The Great Recession is officially over — and has been for more than a year.
The panel of economists that is the widely accepted arbiter of business cycles has called an end to what is now officially the longest U.S. economic downturn of the post-World War II era. The recession ended in June 2009, 18 months after it began in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research’s business cycle dating committee.
Yes I see all the qualifiers that the economists hastened to add to say that things aint rosy.
But I also can’t help but notice how convenient the proclamation was: just in time for the post-labor day political silly season, when people finally begin to listen to the campaign rhetoric.
It’s almost as if … No. Couldn’t be. No way a panel of economists would ever allow themselves to be useful idiots for big government liberalism.
On the other hand, Thomas Sowell DOES point out that the liberal intelligentsia have pretty much always been useful idiots for big government leftist ideologies in the past:
“George Orwell said that some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool. The record of twentieth century intellectuals was especially appalling in this regard. Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the twentieth century was without his intellectual supporters, not simply in his own country, but also in foreign democracies, where people were free to say whatever they wished. Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had their admirers, defenders, and apologists among the intelligentsia in Western democratic nations, despite the fact that these dictators ended up killing people of their own country on a scale unprecedented even by despotic regimes that preceded them” – Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p. 2.
In any event, I recently compiled a list of crises that were gripping the country during the period that Obama was gripping a golf club a few weeks back:
- Jobless claims rise to highest level in 9 months.
- Pre-owned home sales drop 27.2% to lowest level in 15 years.
- New home sales fall 12.4% to weakest level since 1963.
- 1 in 10 homeowners with a mortgage are at risk of foreclosure.
- US foreclosures up 4%; top 300,000 for 17th straight month (Obama’s been president for 19 months).
- 14.42% of all mortgages either delinquent or in foreclosure.
- Foreclosures jump 25%.
- New durable goods orders excluding transportation post largest decline in 1-1/2 years.
- Frightening trend: Commercial Property Owners Choose to Default.
- 401(k) hardship withdrawals, loans SOAR.
- Dow Jones dips below psychologically-important 10,000 level.
- Nightmare ‘Hindenburg Omen’ triggered, but economic fundamentals just as scary.
- US unemployment figures increase fears of double-dip recession.
- Taliban in Afghanistan strengthening, spreading; violence surging.
- Top Marine General says Obama Afghan deadline gives sustenance to enemy.
- Spending baseline has increased $4.4 trillion under Democrat control.
- 2010 Federal Deficit Second Largest in 65 Years (2nd only to 2009).
- Trade gap widens, largest increase in imports in 26 years.
- Weak GDP raises fears, with Fed running out of options.
I want you to go back over that list and see how many of these disasters are basically under the banner of “worst since …” And that many of these go back several decades.
Does that make it sound like we went through the rough patch and come out the other side? When less than a month ago we saw the jobless numbers at their highest in 9 months, pre-owned homes sales sink to their lowest level in 15 years, new home sales sink to their lowest level since 1963, durable goods orders sink to their lowest level in 1 1/2 years, the federal deficit soaring to its highest level in 65 years, the trade gap rising to its widest margin in 26 years, and so on?
How about this description of Obama’s economic legacy: the highest poverty rate increase in FIFTY YEARS just reported????
Poverty Rate In U.S. Saw Record Increase In 2009: 1 In 7 Americans Are Poor
HOPE YEN and LIZ SIDOTI | 09/11/10WASHINGTON — The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
Now, you see all those other terrible numbers and you think, “And the eggheads say we’re out of recession now?”
Even DEMOCRATS don’t believe this load of giant load of junk:
Disappointed Supporters Question Obama
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: September 20, 2010WASHINGTON — It was billed as “Investing In America,” a live televised conversation between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees on the state of the economy, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check.
But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters.
In question after question in Monday’s one-hour session, which took place at the Newseum here and was televised on CNBC, Mr. Obama was confronted by people who said, in short, that they had expected more from him. People from Main Street wanted to know if the American dream still lived for them. People from Wall Street complained that he was treating them like a piñata, “whacking us with the stick,” in the words of a former law school classmate of Mr. Obama’s who now runs a hedge fund.
“I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for,” said the first questioner, an African-American woman who identified herself as a chief financial officer, a mother and a military veteran. “I’ve been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class, and I’m waiting, sir, I’m waiting. I still don’t feel it yet.”
The jokes on you, fools. You voted for demagogic rhetoric and empty promises of “hope” and “change.”
And you got precisely what you voted for; the worst failure in American history.
Obama’s response to the woman was his typical load of demagogic garbage that the Republicans only care about their own power, whereas Obama is transcendentally hovering above politics, only caring about the people. Even though Obama was there in the first place for a political campaign event.
The elite liberal government class will, of course, continue to assure us that Obama’s economy is somehow proceeding exactly according to plan. But when these people tell you “Good morning,” you’d darned well better check outside:
Because these eggheads aren’t telling you the truth.
Start Thinking Right 