Down, Down, Down the Numbers Go, Giving the Lie to the Republican's Claims of a Strong Economy

posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:42 PM Permalink

Back on July 27th I posted an article about how every time this maladministration releases ANY information regarding the strength of the economy the numbers are ALWAYS subsequently revised downward (to the true numbers).

"Well, Mommy, there they go again," as Ronnie Raygun would have said.

See this article from Yahoo news:

Payrolls shrank in August for the first time in four years, the Labor Department reported on Friday, prompting calls for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates before credit market turmoil drags the economy into recession.

The unexpectedly bleak report of 4,000 fewer non-farm jobs shocked financial markets that had anticipated continued job creation and drove down stock prices and the dollar's value.

"It's dreadful," said Michael Metz, chief investment strategist for Oppenheimer & Co. "It shows the so-called support for the economy from rising employment is rapidly eroding and to me it seems almost inevitable we are heading for recession."[…]

The chairman of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, said the soft jobs report was "a punch to the gut of our economy" that implied the subprime lending crisis threatens to engulf the broader economy.

Another lawmaker, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, made a blunt and unusual call for the Fed to rescue the economy quickly with lower interest rates.

"The notion that inflation risks outweigh the risks to output and employment growth is not supported by the evidence and a strong response is required -- specifically, a meaningful interest rate cut," the Massachusetts Democrat said.

In addition to the August job losses, the Labor Department revised down its estimates for hiring in June and July by a total of 81,000. It said 68,000 jobs were added in July rather than 92,000 and 69,000 in June instead of 126,000.

I rest my case. The bush/cheney maladministration and the toadies that work within it are genetically incapable of telling the truth about the economy, and I don't buy any argument that "well, hey, these are big numbers we're dealing with," because any advanced elementary school student with an abacus could do a better job of reporting accurate numbers.

So, the total job numbers for June/July never added up to the 218,000 jobs the bush government claimed and instead only 137,000 jobs were created, a difference of 81,000 jobs as noted above.

They also claim that America lost 4,000 jobs last month and created no new jobs at all. Now, in September, Countrywide, caught up in the subprime loan scandal, just announced the elimination of another 12,000 jobs.

And if 4,000 jobs were lost and there were no new jobs created to just keep pace with new entries into the jobs market, wouldn't that actually mean the loss or failure to create anywhere from 73,000 jobs (under bush) to 179,000 jobs (at the rate Bill Clinton added jobs while he was in office).

Clinton saw 22,000,000 jobs created, while the Republicans brag about creating a mediocre 7.3 million jobs over the last seven years.

Please, sir, may I have some more lies about how strong our economy is?

UPDATE: I made another math error in this post and changed the "mediocre 73,000 jobs" to the accurate "mediocre 7.3 million jobs" in the penultimate sentence of this post. I apologize for my error as I genuinely try to be as accurate as I can.

Labels: Bush, cheney, Conservatives, conspiracy, corruption, disinformation, flip-flops, GOP, hypocrisy, jobs