Maybe I should have posted
this in "Politics" but it's basically about the poor economy.
[blockquote]As they always say, unemployment is a lagging indicator. It tells you were you were not where you're headed. Employment is typically one of the last indicators of a positive economy to perk up. Businesses avoid making employment decisions for as long as possible, waiting for the overall trend to not only be confirmed but confirmed doubly and then again. They downsize their workforce in the later stages of a recession; and they add workers in the later stages of a recovery.
GDP growth is a leading indicator. The GDP usually tells you which way the labor market is headed... in six months' time.
Point being, Clinton and Reagan both knew, at this point in their presidencies, that help was on the way. They had already recorded positive recovery bursts in GDP -- in fact, Clinton never even had to wait on such a thing, as the GDP was already growing (and in fact had been growing for the last six months of George Bush the Elder's term) when he assumed office.[/blockquote]
Leaving out a bunch of stuff in the middle of the post that further substantiates his point, here is the payoff:
[blockquote]But Obama?
I think he had one quarter of 4.1% growth (or thereabouts) which isn't really the sort of robust burst of activity you associate with a typical recovery. And since then it's been an anemic recession-in-all-but-technical-definition rate of 1.5% to under 3%.
So is there help on the way for Obama? Unless his policies have set the stage for a Reagan-like explosion in entrepreneurship and risk-taking and investment timed to detonate in the next quarter or two, then it doesn't look that way.
Going into the election (and the Conventional Wisdom is that people make their decisions on the strength of the economy six months before an election -- a habit that hurt George Bush the elder), it looks like Obama will have a bad economy that is mostly flat in its badness -- bad, not getting worse, but still bad, with no powerful signal for coming expansion.
And hence, the jobs won't be coming. I don't think they're coming at all, but even if they do -- if they come very late, it won't help Obama as much as it would if they came a year out from November 2012.[/blockquote]
So we are all screwed as far as the economy and the employment outlook. It will be interesting to see how the media tries to cover for Toonces as the election gets closer. Because they will try. Remember "Funemployment?"
