White House rejects new measures to stem jobs crisis

[IndianaGreen]

As unemployment claims rise

White House rejects new measures to stem jobs crisis

By Barry Grey
24 October 2009

Even as the Labor Department reported an unexpected rise in initial claims for unemployment benefits, the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders reiterated their opposition to any significant new outlays to address the jobs crisis.

Initial jobless claims jumped by 11,000 to 531,000 last week, reversing a recent downward trend, according to a Labor Department report released Thursday. (Economists say a weekly figure under 325,000 new claims is consistent with a healthy economy). The number of continuing benefit claims by laid off workers for the week ended October 10 hit 5.9 million.

The Labor Department reported that unemployment rose last month in 23 states. It further noted that recipients filing for aid under extended benefit programs dropped by 50,000 to 8.8 million in the week ended October 3. Economists say this drop is not the result of people finding new jobs, but rather the result of people exhausting their jobless benefits.

For all the official talk of an economic recovery, layoffs are mounting, unemployment is rising, and tens of thousands of Americans are running out of jobless benefits and falling into homelessness and destitution.

In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee last month, Beth Shulman of the National Employment Law Project summed up the situation as follows:

“Never in the history of the nation’s unemployment insurance program have more workers been unemployed for such prolonged periods of time. A total of five million Americans have been unemployed for six months or more (a record since data started being recorded in 1948). That represents an unprecedented 33.3 percent of all unemployed workers, a share that has never been reached before in any post-war recession. There are now a whopping 5 million Americans who have been out of work for six months, up from just 1.31 million before the recession began in December 2007.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/jobs-o24.shtml

[mbperrin]

1. Jobs? We don't need no stinkin' JOBS!

Get into credit derivative swaps, and when you've fucked that up completely, get the taxpayers to bail you out.

Then schedule some cushy retreats.

Simple as 1,2,3.

It's what the big boys do.

[DJ13]

2. Our party needs to stop trying to wait for maximum benefit in the midterms

And recognize this is people's lives they're dealing with.

[endless october]

3. end NAFTA for starters.

Clinton was a good President, but his gift to the repubs has really screwed up our economy.

Perot was laughed at for his "big sucking sound" comment, but he was dead on about that one issue.

[RKP5637]

5. Exactly Right in my book too! n/t

[ThomCat]

4. The administration is mostly concerned about investors

and corporate health. Corporations LIKE high unemployment.

While we are all considering this a crisis, corporations are basking in this high unemployment as it drives down salaries, allows them to break unions by making everyone easily replaceable, and makes every employee terrified of losing their job.

This administration is clearly taking the corporate view that unemployment is a good thing. They are mostly investing government resources in helping big investment industries. It is Corporate health that appears to matter to them. :(

This administration has put a very small amount of government resources small things like extending unemployment benefits, and making some mortgage relieve available to a tiny fraction of people who need it. But it was clearly intended to be token efforts, and that is all it was.

Can you imagine the effect if they took unemployment as seriously as they took wall street? Can you imagine if they put as much effort into helping all of us as they put into helping Goldman Sachs, CitiCorp, JP Morgan - Chase and the surviving banks on Wall Street?

Can you imagine if they were releasing all that capital, all those loan guarantees, not for banks to sit on but directly to small businesses and mortgage holders?

Can you imagine what would have happened if this administration had really taken the idea of regulation seriously, rather than dishonestly claiming it was a goal just as a PR move to calm people? If Obama had seriously unleashed regulators on wall street through the DoJ so that they had some teeth, with a mandate to actually accomplish something can you imagine that the banking industry would still be the monster running so much of our government right now through the Goldman Sachs Dept of the Treasury?

Can you imagine what would happen if they stopped pumping endless money into these useless wars that nobody can justify, and used that money to rebuild our economy?

How about infrastructure works programs. We're at the point were we really need something like that again. The government could hire millions, and finally get bridges and roads repairs that are decades dangerously past due. That alone could turn the economy around.

But Obama has proven that his focus is at the investor and corporate level, not the blue collar or infrastructure level. His priorities aren't in our world.

[RKP5637]

6. More evidence of who really runs the country - Corporations, Lobbyists ...

and those holding the majority of the wealth of this country and global interests. The country generally runs on contributions and rewards, not what's in the best interest of the populace if it affects the bottom line of corporate strongholds and interests. To me, Obama often has his hands tied... I often think the big picture is to reduce the income for many to what's considered the lowest survivable cost so as to provide cheap labor for global competition and garnishing of more wealth by the greedy. Until we end the corporate and lobbyist strangling of this country for more wealth we will see this repeated over and over.

[amandabeech]

7. Couldn't have said it better. Thanks. n/t