STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Jobless Claims Down. Things Are Brighter?
By Staff News & Analysis - November 15, 2011

Obama Prospects Brighten as Economic Recovery Moves to Expansion … Less than 12 months from the presidential election, the U.S. economy has moved from recovery to expansion, prompting similar shifts in President Barack Obama's political prospects. The unemployment rate moved downward last month, to 9 percent. The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in seven months two weeks ago, a sign the recovery may be encouraging companies to limit cuts in headcount. And a private outplacement company is predicting that jobs losses in the government sector, a drag on U.S. employment, may be leveling off.Bloomberg

Dominant Social Theme: The economy is turning around just in time!

Free-Market Analysis: This is a fairly obvious dominant social theme: President Barack Obama has the economy starting to hum just before election time. We would offer the perspective that this is yet more "directed history." The idea is to gradually build up the "successes" of the administration in order to make Obama electable for a second term.

But the numbers that US statisticians use to explain the economy are basically manufactured from whole cloth. The unemployment rate in the US is far higher than nine percent, according to such websites as Shadowstats.

That won't stop this meme from percolating, however. The idea, we believe, is that Obama is to be turned into an FDR clone – someone who saved the US from the Next Great Depression. It's being prepared. Here's some more from the article:

Gains in household spending, the biggest part of the economy, last quarter led economists to raise their growth forecasts for the remainder of this year and for 2012, the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey showed last week. The services industry and manufacturing both continue to expand, according to figures this month from the Institute for Supply Management.

Vowing to be a "warrior for the middle class" Obama has struck a populist message on job creation this fall that seems to be breaking through with voters. His job-approval rating has climbed by five points in one survey and he's seen his daily Gallup Poll tracking numbers approach 50 percent.

Meanwhile, there are other voices. About a week ago, Bloomberg reported on Pacific Investment Management Co.'s Bill Gross, who explained that "the U.S. is in an anemic, jobless recovery where there is little real wage growth after a government report showed employment rose at the slowest pace in four months."

Gross explained that the US needs 200,000 jobs basically a month, "and we are not seeing that, to reduce unemployment." Gross said "the 9 percent number" would likely be part of the economic scenario for a long time to come. Strangely, a week later, Bloomberg is reporting a quickening economic recovery. Here's some more from Gross at Pimco:

Fed policy makers said this week that the economy has picked up while "significant downside risks" remain, and they refrained from taking any additional steps to ease monetary policy. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues left unchanged their pledge to keep the benchmark interest rate near zero through at least mid-2013 as long as unemployment remains high and the inflation outlook stays "subdued" at the completion of their regular rate setting meeting on Nov. 2.

"The bad news is that we are still in this unemployment crisis," said Pimco Chief Executive Officer Mohamed El-Erian in a separate interview on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop" with Betty Liu. "It doesn't do enough to remove the risk of stall speed. There is growth, but not fast enough growth."

Fed officials also lowered their economic-growth projections compared with June and said the unemployment rate will decline at a slower pace. Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, will rise by 2.5 percent to 2.9 percent next year, compared with a range of 3.3 percent to 3.7 percent from the prior projections in June, according to the median range of economic projections from the 17 governors and regional Fed presidents. Growth in 2013 will be 3 percent to 3.5 percent, lower than the prior range of 3.5 percent to 4.2 percent.

After Thoughts

For one reason or another, the larger power elite seems to want Obama to win another term. They will arrange, through the manipulation of numbers and in other ways, a formidable surge for Obama that will feature him as a kind of FDR who has "saved the day." This is the way the elite works as it manufactures both an economic crisis and a political solution. Next on deck: World government.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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