Larry Summers, economic adviser to the White House, says that February’s bad weather may have a negative impact on jobs:
Let me say a word about the statistics. Who knows what the next number is going to be. The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. And in past blizzards, those statistics have been distorted by 100 to 200,000 jobs. So it’s going to be very important to know, very important to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends.
Who knows what the next number is going to be?
Chances are that Mr. Summers, his boss at the White House and our Doing-God’s-Work bankers at Goldman Sachs have a pretty good idea.
It sounds as if Mr. Summers is already spinning the upcoming jobs reports.
Will we be bouncing back above the official U-3 unemployment rate 0f 10% in the next report?
Even if we were to do that, according to Mr. Summers it’s not all that bad:
I think we’ve already made quite remarkable progress. If you look back a year ago, people thought a depression was a real possibility. There was talk of a complete meltdown in our financial system. Because we took strong actions, because the President led the way in pushing a major recovery act and injected nearly $900 billion into the economy, encouraging other nations to do similar things, because we took strong actions to force much more transparency on the banking system, to set the stage for private capital raising, it’s run to hundreds of billions of dollars, we’ve got a very different economic situation than we had a year ago.
If we’re talking specifically about the stock market, then we will not argue that the progress has been nothing short of remarkable.
If we’re looking at unemployment, government debt, increased government spending, significant contraction in credit, and a coming wave of mortgage interest rate resets, then we’d suggest that the situation is anything but remarkable.
Are we to believe that we are better off now than we were a couple of years ago when then President Bush said that he “abandoned free market principles to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse?”
The depression Mr. Summers speaks of is not only a possibility, but it’s actually happening right here, right now.
To play devil’s advocate for just a moment, what if the powers that be have failed to save the system as they have so vehemently argued they’ve done?
Would that mean that the economy will collapse, and that we will go into a depression? If we were “on the brink” then, as former Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson has stated, then what makes anyone think that we are not still on the brink when pretty much all of the economic statistics, save GDP and stock prices, are falling apart?
Perhaps the system was saved when the government committed over $20 Trillion dollars in bailouts, stimulus and other machinations. Perhaps the system was saved by trillion dollar toxic asset purchases made by the Fed.
But in the off chance that it wasn’t, are you prepared for what President Obama, Secretaries Geithner and Paulson, Ben Bernanke, President Bush, et. al. referred to as an economic meltdown that could, as many Congressional representatives have stated was the case in 2008, lead to martial law being declared in America?
There are some people on this earth that “just need to hurry up and die.†Larry Summers falls into this group. He will go soon enough. Maybe somebody could help him along with this task. Henry Kissinger takes my vote as THE #1 POS that needs to do the whole world a favor and become tree food.
Comments…..Mac-your comments and predictions have been right on so far. How long do we have, in your considered opinion, before TSHTF? Sounds to me like maybe early summer, based on the unemployment benefits stopping, the problems with option ARMs, and the stock market issues. Have we got that long?
Oh, good fucking grief! How fucking clueless do these morons think we are? These idiots shouldn’t be in charge of a lemonade stand. I read this article and I just flew off the handle in a fit of rage. They are all a bunch of cynical America haters. If they all suddenly disappeard in tiny little “poofs” the world would be a massively better place. I used to question God why he made mosquitoes. I felt bad because I’m sure God is way more wise than me. Now what twist of wisdom would allow these parasites in our federal government to continue on in this world? Maybe God can figure it out because I sure can’t.
I just don’t get it…
How can anyone, especially someone who SUPPOSEDLY is in the know, say this stuff with a straight face?
For all intents and purposes, NOTHING has changed over the past year. Sure, they bailed out companies that otherwise would have failed with printed/borrowed money, but all that done is shifted the SOME of the “hole” of bad debt/losses to the public sector.
IMO, the best concise summary of where we are was recently written by Mish last November:
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Here We Are Again, Twice.
To bail out the banks’ poor bets on Dot-Com companies and Latin America in 2001-2002, Greenspan purposely ignited a credit bubble that led to the mother of all housing crashes.
In response to the housing bust, the Fed refused to let failed banks go out of business and is attempting to force another credit bubble. However, banks aren’t lending (except in China where a suggestion to lend is not taken lightly).
All the Fed (central bankers in general) and Congress have done is create yet another asset bubble bailing out the wealthy. Meanwhile consumer debt still acts as a drag, unemployment is high and rising because sloshing money around at banks cannot possibly create any jobs (and it hasn’t), and the pool of real savings that it does take to create jobs has been exhausted. Meanwhile taxes are soaring which puts still more pressure on job losses, foreclosures and defaults.
Bernanke, Obama, Congress, the Fed, and Central Bankers worldwide have all failed to learn anything from:
1) The Great Depression
2) Two Lost Decades In Japan
3) The Dot-Com Bubble
4) The Housing Bubble
Instead they follow unwise and disproved Keynesian and Monetarist tactics that have failed to accomplish anything but create bigger bubbles. However, this is the end of the line. Housing was the bubble of last resort, nothing can come close to the number of jobs created by the global housing bubble.
Further attempts to reflate will do nothing but create a currency crisis, crash the economy, and add to future liabilities that cannot be paid back. A global economic crisis is coming. When and how it manifests itself is all that remains to be seen.
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Nothing about the economy can get better because our parasitic government leaders have outsourced our jobs. What wasn’t destroyed by outsourcing has been destroyed by imports and mass 3rd world immigration. This whole economic calamity was deliberately done by the Elites to bring our country down so they can implement the World Government … period.
You are absolutely right Rande: it was the deliberate rape of our financial system by Banksters, who have been made whole by the total transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street by the FED. Guess who owns the FED? The private member banks that control OUR public currency.
Mean while, OUR pension funds, home values, savings, and every other form of wealth has been destroyed; except for precious metals. Ron Paul is right! We must end the FED!
We must end the private manipulation and control of our nations money supply by a gang of pirates who are nothing more or less than a Financial Costra Nostra. We must repudiate the FED and ALL the debt it holds; form a TRUE Central Bank (without private Banksters) that belongs to WE THE PEOPLE, print RED, WHITE, AND BLUE DOLLARS, and then line ALL of Wall Street up against the wall ……..
Get the picture Goldman Sachs?
To MDF. Your comments should be forwarded to the appropriate authorities.
I think its too late the horse is out of the barn and people are turning from our dollar
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/02/khaleeji-will-be-gulfs-common-currency.html
Check out this link from zero-hedge… Scary how alot of mainstream people are coming out about the coming demise of the dollar
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/clsas-chris-wood-five-years-us-dollar-paper-standard-will-collapse-due-persistent-taxpayer-f
The wholesale, deliberate, premeditated financial rape of the American financial system by the banksters should result in the nationalization of the banking system, the prosecution of the banksters, and the end of the FED,
Shakespeare said it best: “Kill all the Lawyers!”Â
Comments…..The order of things. Recession, depression, war. end game. You haven’t seen anything yet. From now till then end of 2012 there is three times the morgage  resets. More people will loose their homes, followed by the commercial property collapse.2012 -2016 hyper-inflation collapse of the dollar and destruction of the rest of the economy. The parasites are over whelming the productive class when that happens the whole eco system dies.In a society that’s armed to the teeth gold is useless. Self sufficient cabin access to water and food and lots of ammo. (Philosophy is a form of expression but only mathematics is a true form of definition) 2016-2034 civil war prepare to survive, foresight is everything.
Get rid of your monopoly money while some fool will still take it- Hard Assets, baby!
For me it can only be one of 2 things when it comes to our leaders and why every major decision they have made has seemed to punish the working class:
1) Incompetence
2) Evil
I believe the people behind the curtain are the evil ones, the ones really running the show. Call them the elite, the illuminati, the globalists, whatever term you like.
Unfortunately for us I believe the majority of our leaders to be complete incompetent fools. The problem arises because they don’t understand what the economy is. They think it’s the stock markets and GDP. They have forgotten that the economy is comprised of a maximally employed populace producing goods and services with fiscal responsibility and money for a rainy day.
It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. By using a different definition of economy they are able to seemingly continue to “lie” to us while our way of life continues to fall apart and the big boys get their bonuses and golden parachutes.
I don’t expect anything to change until the real SHTF, at which point we’ll have news conferences with a “stunned” Congress who didn’t see this coming.
Comments…..what’s keeping the US economy running right now is the business of war, 85% of the country’s GDP is military .That is why these wars have no end in sight and always have to be justified by false flag operations. Example 50% of California’s production is military, imagine if that stopped. There was a time when americans produced everything they consumed plus some. Today the Chinese fill up all the shelves at WallMart with their slave driven economy and everybody else is a terrorist,so the military complex can fill their pockets and poor people die all over the world including young americans. SAD
@granny in regards to ” How long do we have, in your considered opinion, before TSHTF?”
Chris, “It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. “ … well put.
Granny, Yours is a very tough question for me to answer. I have done my best to provide additional information regarding this in the following articles:
Major Financial and Social Mayhem Before November Elections
and
Europe Goes First, Endgame Will Be Collapse of the Dollar Paper Standard
My personal view is that by the end of this decade you may not recognize America anymore. I don’t believe the system has been or can be “saved.” The forces of nature will always shift towards equilibrium and that is what is happening now, in my opinion.
This is why I have suggested that the “prepping” mindset involves much more than just stockpiling food or guns or ammo. It is a lifestyle shift, in my opinion, that includes an individual plan to mitigate drastic economic and social changes. Personal development in the form of spirituality, emotions, trade skills, etc. will all be necessary to “survive” in this new environment.
Comments…..Remember the story of noah, he knew exactly how much time he had to build his boat, the flood didn’t come when he was half way through. Man has no control over future events, but he does have a choice believe as Noah believed and get on the boat, or mock and laugh and stay behind and drown . The choice is yours. Oh and by the way when we look at the sruvival rate of salmon when it’s spawning time,it’s only 2% I don’t think humans will do better than that. No doubt it will be an up hill battle.