Continued High Unemployment -- A Manufactured Crisis to be Exploited

The on-going recession began in mid-2008 due to a housing bubble and financial instability brought on by the federal government's and Federal Reserve's easy money policies, which had been pricked by the needle of the 2007 sharp increase in energy prices.  Throughout the recession, which according to government numbers is falsely said to have ended in mid-2009, the government has continued to pursue the easy money policies that caused the recession.  What is more, it has selectively decided that some individuals and companies will not pay the price for bad decisions they may have made, albeit with much encouragement from the government.  This has heaped all of the costs of the recession on those who bore no or little responsibility for the recession or on a few responsible actors the government does not like for one reason or another.

To be more precise, the economy was rebounding from the recession in the latter part of 2009 and in early 2010.  But then ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" bills were passed and the Democrats clearly wanted massive tax increases.  These actions and many strange and arbitrary regulations created an avalanche of business uncertainty to add to the lingering uncertainty of the earlier bailouts and company asset thefts by the government. The second dip of the recession started in the latter half of 2010.  Then, once again, perhaps due to the extension of many of the Bush tax cuts, the economy showed some signs of recovery in the first quarter of this year.  But, continuing government ineptitude mixed with deliberate destruction of the private sector, caused the second quarter of this year to slip back into recession mode again.  This fact was hidden by the unrealistic measures of price inflation, which ignored large fuel and food price increases and over-emphasized some improvements in technology values.  Apparent increases in GDP were likely just artifacts of the understated inflationary effect on goods and services of the huge stimulus spending and the two Quantitative Easings.

Each month, I calculate the real unemployment rate and the number of missing jobs in comparison to January 2000 when most anyone who wanted a good job could find one.  In the belief that were good jobs available, as large a fraction of the population would be wanting to work today, one can calculate the needed jobs and the missing jobs.  The latest numbers based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report for May 2011 follow:

There actually was a nanoscale improvement in the number of missing jobs relative to April 2011.  The bad news is that the improvement in jobs creation ought to be much, much better at this time after the mid-2008 start of the recession if we were really seeing any improvement of the economy.  There were 693,000 more missing jobs in May 2011 than there were in May 2010!  A new crop of high school and college graduates is emerging and there are no jobs for them.  This is now a three-year old recession!  Recessions of the private sector never last this long.  Only government can make such an extended recession.  This is truly the Great Socialist Recession.

We are mired in the doldrums and there is no wind in sight.  The business community expects the Obama administration and the Democrats to continue making systematically awful choices with respect to the business of business and job creation.  It is true that Congress is doing less harm since the Republicans gained control of the House, but that has only invigorated the administration's determination to cause as much harm as possible through executive branch agencies.  Some of this is incompetence in business and economic matters, but some is very likely an effort to simply make many Americans dependent upon big government.  The plan is to make many individuals so destitute that they will think government is their only salvation.  It is to put many companies so at risk in the hands of regulators that they will bow and scrape before government to save their heads from the chopping block. 

What is better than a crisis of no growth, inflation, and joblessness for government to aggrandize its power?  This is well-understood by those many Democrat Socialists who hunger always to expand the scope and power of government, while making the private sector tremble in fear.  They well remember how the Great Depression grew government and gave the Democrats the initiative in politics for decades.  Some of the most influential Democrats are hoping the present crisis will give them the same power, if only they can make this recession into a long-lasting depression or at least something close to one.  These supreme power-lusting Democrat Socialist leaders are a minority of the party, but they are in control of the party policy.  The Great Socialist Recession is very unlikely to end until Obama is no longer occupying the White House and the Democrats no longer control the Senate.

The 90% Axis Powers Tax

The Obama - Pelosi - Reid Axis Powers combined and voted a 90% retroactive tax on the bonuses of employees earning more than $250,000 who work for firms receiving more than $5 billion in Federal bailout money. Some of these companies were basically forced by the government to take bailout money, even many which were in no danger of failing. Others were failing companies which should have been allowed to go bankrupt, which would have terminated the contracts that required the failing companies to pay out the bonuses now being paid out. Obama, Geithner, Chris Dodd, Pelosi, and many others in the Democrat administration and Congress were well aware of these bonuses, but pretended they were not. They were caught in this transparent lie. They had foolishly circumvented the system long established for dealing with failing companies whose management had proven that they did not warrent bonuses, benefits, and other remuneration they would have had by contract if they had done their jobs well. Bankruptcy properly terminates such contracts as now have to be honored, though that is clearly unfair to the taxpayers.

The government is clearly incapable of running these companies and should clearly have stayed out of their business. The more healthy companies have learned now just how critical it is to try to get out from under the smothering, oppressive weight of the government. Those that would have squeaked through the banking problems without government help are now likely to fail as they lose all of their best employees. No capable manager will tolerate working under the oppressive, mean-spirited dictatorship of this government.

Legislation applied to prior events is clearly unconstitutional, yet this is not the first time that retroactive laws have been allowed to stand despite that fact. The Supreme Court does not enforce the Constitution's limits on the power of the Federal government and neither the Congress or the President take their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution at all seriously. Our politicians are very rarely men of principle.