Is Anyone Ready for Stimulus Part III?

Today unemployment rates topped 9.5%. While still below the unemployment rates for the 1982-1983 recession (11.0% unemployment), this is now the second worst recession since the Great Depression and is now fully in President Obama's lap.

Today's release of the nation's employment figures by the Department of Labor (DOL) show that the nation is still waiting for even a few of President Obama's 3.5 million jobs saved or created, or his 600,000 jobs saved or created, or even his 150,000 jobs saved or created. So far in his term in office employment has dropped by about 2.6 million jobs, while the unemployment rate has hit 9.5 percent, the highest in almost 26 years.

Take a look at this chart:

Or this chart:

Clearly, the value of the estimates from the White House and the President's economic advisors have now reached room temperature (meaning, they no longer have any value). In January the "stimulus package" was supposed to prevent unemployment from rising above 10%. The President and his supporters confidently assured us that unemployment would not rise above 8% and would "create or save" 3.5 million jobs. These predictions can also be thrown on the refuse pile.

Congress passed the stimulus bill in February 2009 and the President has repeated his claims. President Obama recently said that the stimulus bill has already created or saved 150,000 new jobs and that it will “create or save” another600,000 jobs by the end of the summer. Asked when the public should begin to judge the effects of the stimulus, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said “I think we should begin to judge it now.”

If we even accept the challenge and argue the impact of the first two stimulus packages...the original Stimulus and the Supplemental Appropriation passed in February, where are all the new jobs to come from? Certainly not in health care or in traditional industries if we accept the conservative analysis of the "Tax and Trade Global Fraud bill" or the "Private Sector Health Care Seizure act".

The President says that the new "green jobs" can't be out-sourced. Why can't LED lighting, new concrete materials, wind turbines, solar panels and computer programming for the smart grid be done in India, China or VietNam? Certainly all the "green cars" can be produced in Canada or Mexico if not across the pond. Accountants certainly can keep track of purchase and sale of carbon credits from offices elsewhere.

In any event, I believe the political pressure on the Democrt led Congress will rise through July....but most definitely during the moth-long August recess.  I think political reality requires action on the Cap and Trade bill in the Senate and the Health care bill in both Houses of Congress in July.  If not, I believe that when Congress re-convenes in September the pressure for the Senate and the House of Representative to take up a third stilus bill will be too much to resist. That will result in both "Cap and Trade" and "Health Care" being put on the shelf as jobs will trump the other causes due to the budget/deficit considerations of a third stimulus.

Maybe we need to have the Secretary of the Energy replacing light bulbs double time.

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