Trump's Economy

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Icarus
Bishop
Posts: 492
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2020 12:15 pm

Trump's Economy

Post by Icarus »

So I woke up early this morning and turned on the tube and FOX Business channel was hyping the wonderful news on the jobs numbers for November. Trump's economic advisor was hyping this as the fastest recovery in American history.

My first thought about it being the fastest recovery is that such claims are disingenuous because the COVID recession wasn't caused by natural economic forces. It was a self-imposed recession as businesses furloughed millions of employees temporarily. They key word here is temporarily, so we'd expect huge increases to happen shortly after the pandemic hysteria and fear had subsided. However unemployment stands at 6.7%, down from 6.9%, and the 240,000 added jobs for November was interpreted as a huge win for Trumplandia over at FOX.

Then I flip over to CNN where several economists are pointing out that job growth was expected to be over 400,000 and that the rate of recovery has slowed down dramatically over the past few months which is disconcerting. They also highlighted that 500,000 workers left the labor force so that causes the unemployment rate to look better than what it is. That .2% drop was easily accounted for by the change in Labor Participation Rate.

This reminded me of the Obama years when Conservatives dismissed the unemployment rates as they dropped precipitously for years, because, as the argument went, these were fake numbers because everyone was leaving the labor force. Really? Was there ever a month during Obama's second term when a half million people decided they didn't want to work anymore?

Where is Ajax and his faux outrage at the notion that people would leave the labor force during the so called greatest economy in the history of the world?

In related news, it looks like Mnuchin is illegally withholding nearly a half trillion in Congressionally approved funding for COVID relief. He said he is putting it back into the general fund now that Trump has lost, and this is seen as Trump's way of hamstringing the incoming administration out of sheer vindictiveness. This is probably accurate. We also see Mitch McConnell playing his usual game of "block the Democrats at all costs" by nixing the bipartisan bill that would provide over $900 billion in COVID relief. Weird how he had no qualms about signing off on $2.7 trillion just six months ago to help artificially prop up Trump's weakening economy, but now that everything from here on out will be interpreted as being on Biden's administration, suddenly $900 billion is just a bridge too far as the GOP has suddenly reverted back to pretending to care about deficits. I truly believe they're hoping for a massive recession so they can blame it on Democrats. This is why the Georgia runoff elections are so crucial, as they'll literally decide whether or not electing Biden is going to have any meaningful impact on the country aside from just having a grown adult occupy the White House.
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