This form the Washington Post today, with my questions below the star line.
WaPo reports - - -
The U.S. economy shed jobs in April for the fourth consecutive month, but at a slower-than-expected pace that helped improve the unemployment rate, the federal government reported today.
At the same time, a jump in factory orders and new action by the Federal Reserve helped buoy U.S. stock markets, which appeared headed for a second day of gains.
Employers eliminated 240,000 jobs over the first three months of the year, and analysts had expected a comparable drop of perhaps 80,000 positions for April.
But new data from the Labor Department showed that total employment was down just 20,000 for the month, as health- and education-related businesses and others in the service sector continued their steady expansion of payrolls. The unemployment rate fell to 5 percent, from 5.1 percent the month before.
The data was reported on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Whether today's spate of data represents a positive turn for the economy or a pause in the downward trend, Wall Street took heart from the news -- at least initially. The Dow Jones industrial average was up about 100 points after the first hour of trading, before falling back.
The Dow yesterday closed above 13,000 for the first time since the start of the year, after a 190-point rally driven by a slight drop in oil prices, recent corporate profit reports, and a sense that the worst has passed in the credit and mortgage crisis. ...
The rest of WaPo's story is here.
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I'm sorry whenever hard working people lose their jobs. I hope the unemployment numbers continue to drop.
Now questions:
Where's the recession Dems and so many in MSM have been telling us about?
Don't recent polls show most Americans believe the country's already in a recession, with millions of them believing it's a deep one?
How did they come to believe that?
And will we see any headlines reporting the Dow closed at a high for the year, followed by stories about what that may be telling us about the economy?
And how do the Dems feel about this latest good economic news?
Happy?
Just asking.
Friday, May 02, 2008
The latest economic news: questions
Posted by JWM at 3:12 PM
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3 comments:
John, Off topic: The Drudge Report has an interesting article.
“NOT FUNNY: Republican blogger has Al Franken's Senate campaign reeling...”
As I read about this blogger, I saw many similarities to you, and your diligent reporting.
This one sentence: “Brodkorb [scooped the traditional media] by detailing….” reiterates the importance of independent news sources.
He reported a news story the MSM chose to ignore. Finally Brodkorb had so many readers, the media had to report about Franken‘s tax problems, or look even more biased than they already do.
It seems the MSM saw new stories sourced to an (Unprofessional) blogger, and it was embarrassing, not to mention raising a credibility question.
It looked as if the journalists were either, lazy and sloppy, or had decided what news to suppress, neither a good choice.
I think I have found just the right place in Minnesota for ‘You Know Who,’ when he graduates.
While there might be some temporary good news on the economy, there really is no way we can avoid a recession any more than we could avoid one in 2001. Back then, the Federal Reserve had pumped up bank reserves and pushed a very easy money policy, which resulted in a financial bubble in the stock markets.
Such bubbles have to end, of course, and the Clintons made it worse with their ill-advised attack on Microsoft, which is the dominant company in the NASDAQ exchange. (The entire thing was a shameless move by Washington to extort political money from high-tech firms.)
Since 2001, unfortunately, the Federal Reserve System has been even more aggressive in pushing easy money, and between that and other government policies, the housing bubble has popped, and there is no way we can avoid some painful economic readjustments. Now, the "recovery" prescriptions we are hearing from Democrats, such as reorganizing the entire economy into a series of highly-regulated cartels is a policy of more unemployment.
While Democrats love to brag about the New Deal, don't forget that the New Deal gave us a decade of double-digit unemployment. Contrary to what typical history books tell us, Herbert Hoover was NOT a true believer in laissez-faire economics. To the contrary, his administration intervened to try to mitigate the recession, but only made things worse.
As an economist, I cannot say that the Bush Administration has been a good steward on the economy. They have pursued easy money policies, and such policies give us the "good" effects at the beginning of the inflation, but sooner or later there is a price to be paid, and we will pay it.
Unfortunately, the administration wants the Fed to follow the "Hair of the Dog" prescription for preventing a recession that cannot be prevented.
Are the Democrats offering anything better? Not that I can see, unless one thinks that we will have a prosperous economy by forcing up business costs, throwing business executives into prison on trumped-up charges, destroying the energy industries, and criminalizing entrepreneurship. Oh, don't forget the targeted subsidies to businesses and industries that have political ties with the Democratic Party.
Democrats dress awfully well for socialists.
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