The general slowdown in economy has now affected the one area that was at least middling for the last year: Job creation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a BIG miss in jobs on Friday, following a big miss in the ADP private jobs report earlier this week.
“The yearlong streak of robust monthly job creation was broken on Friday,” says the New York Times, “with the Labor Department’s report that employers added just 126,000 workers in March, a marked slowdown in hiring that echoed earlier signs that sluggish business investment and punishing weather were exacting a toll on the economy.”
This wasn’t just any miss either. This was a Dave Kingman sized miss too.
Economists’ consensus estimate was for job creation around 250,000 according to Bloomberg. That’s a miss by about half again that many workers.
At the same time, 277,000 workers dropped out of the labor force, yet unemployment remains unchanged.
That’s 631,000 labor force dropouts according to Mike Shedlock, over the last two months.
“The labor force declined in each of the last two months. Those ‘not in the labor force’ rose by a whopping 631,000 in the last two months.”
That’s a big number.
Anyone who has read the column over the last several months understands that the economic recovery, once again, is one of the most talked about yet least substantial phenomena since Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball video.
Actually, Miley Cyrus has probably created more jobs than Obama.
The market will actually look at this as good news because it will mean a more accommodative monetary policy…perhaps…but perhaps not.
At some point the real economy and the Fed economy have to meet. It’ll be kind of like in Heaven Can Wait, where the football player was denied his destiny by a merciful angel who just didn’t want any suffering in the world.
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The Fed of course as "angel" in this case.
The American economy, despite the tragic accident of Obama, Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley and any number of mortal wounds it has sustained over the last decade and a half, can still be the most vibrant in the world; if we want it to be; if we get the Fed (and Feds) to stop interfering.
Because here is the thing: Politics over a long period of time is a reflection of society as a whole. Yeah Obama sucks. But so do we because we allow him to continue year after year after year without let or hindrance.
We can blame John Boehner, or Mitch McConnell or even Harry Reid.
But as Reid pointed out: Obama won didn’t he?
Some of the most vocal critics of Obama were the most vocal critics of Romney as well.
Which goes to the point: These politicians are creatures of what we make of them. Nothing more or less. John McCain is who we allowed him to be; so is Barack Obama; so is Mitt Romney.
And so too is our economy. It is what we make of it.
We allow subprime lending as a bribe to all of us; we allow Dodd-Frank as our righteous dues for allowing subprime lending.
Enough I say.
It’s time that winners win and losers lost.
And that choice, my friends, is really up to you.
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