on jobs record, we must keep a certain perspective....

[spanone]

JANUARY 9, 2009, 12:04 PM ET
Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record

President George W. Bush entered office in 2001 just as a recession was starting, and is preparing to leave in the middle of a long one. That’s almost 22 months of recession during his 96 months in office.

His job-creation record won’t look much better. The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton‘s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.

Here’s a look at job creation under each president since the Labor Department started keeping payroll records in 1939. The counts are based on total payrolls between the start of the month the president took office (using the final payroll count for the end of the prior December) and his final December in office.

Because the size of the economy and labor force varies, we also calculate in percentage terms how much the total payroll count expanded under each president. The current President Bush, once taking account how long he’s been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.



http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

[ixion]

1. Obama bailed out Wall St. and failed on Main St.

that's been pretty clear.

[dennis4868]

2. Yep....

That's the repub talking point....the bailouts happened under Bush by the way.....the stimulus package was for main street and according to the CBO and all serious economist saved us from going into a depression....should more have been done to help main street? Of course and Obama agrees with that....were there DINOs and a 24/7 filibuster not allowing more stimulus and other job creating bills to pass, yes!!!! DUers love to blame Obama and NEVER the broken congress and their spineless Dems members. Obama cannot pass laws all by himself.

[franzia99]

4. How about we all agree that we need a lot of dem primary challenges in 2012?

If the dems in congress are garbage then let's replace them. No free passes.

[franzia99]

3. I agree. I'm tired of dems giving him a free pass. If we do that, we'll keep getting shit.

[donheld]

5. Aren't we kind of over a barrel?

It's either we support Obama, a third and probably irrelevant, party candidate, or we get the likes of Romney, Guiliani or god forbid Sarah.

[franzia99]

6. Can we at least replace dems in Congress? BTW, we can't think in terms of "over a barrel." If we

do then we'll never be able to hold any dem candidate accountable.

Also, I hope you appreciate the seriousness of our economic problems. We have many years of pain ahead absent serious government intervention. According to the article below we can expect 10 years of high unemployment (5% higher than normal) after a financial crisis like the one we just had.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/shiller73/English

NEW HAVEN – Much of the talk emerging from the August 2010 Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, attended by many of the world’s central bankers and economists, has been about a paper presented there that gave a dire long-run assessment of the future of the world’s economies.

According to the Reinharts’ paper, when compared to the decade that precedes financial crises like the one that started three years ago, “GDP growth and housing prices are significantly lower and unemployment higher” in the subsequent “ten-year window.” Thus, one might infer that we face another seven years or so of bad times.

But now the Reinharts and Rogoff have systematically studied many more examples in modern financial history. There is also the world financial crisis that attended the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and there are the country-specific financial crises in Spain in 1977, Chile in 1981, Norway in 1987, Finland and Sweden in 1991, Mexico in 1994, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand in 1997, Colombia in 1998, and Argentina and Turkey in 2001.

So, there are many more than just two modern cases (though they are not all entirely independent, because they are somewhat bunched in time). From them, the Reinharts and Rogoff found, for example, that median annual growth rates of real per capita GDP for advanced countries were one percentage point lower in the decade following a crisis, while median unemployment rates were five percentage points higher.

[donheld]

7. I hope you appreciate the seriousness of our economic problems

More than you may ever know. I'm lousy at expressing myself most times. I do know and will say IMHO we're in the worst financial crisis for at least the last 80 years
NOBODY is really addressing that issue. Between the Tea Baggers, Citizens United. a weak livered Democratic party, and a very corporate media I see no way out
without a real revolution.