Double-Speak

The rate of badness in the economy is not as bad as we thought, but it is worse than what they told us two months ago when it was only dismal and not quite disastrous. Fortunately Joe Biden, VP of the formerly United States, told us that the recession is over, the stimulus worked and the Messiah will be distributing five loaves and two fishes to the first hundred million voters to bring their plates forward.

Double Talk on Jobless "Recovery"

The great leap forward in employment of the first three months was fueled largely by temporary federal hiring for the census. When the count is over, so are the jobs.

Non-farm payrolls fell 131,000, the Labor Department said on Friday as temporary jobs to conduct the decennial census dropped by 143,000. Private employment, considered a better gauge of labor market health, rose 71,000 after increasing 31,000 in June.

Let me see if I can do the math: 131,000 lost jobs in non-farm category, 143,000 census jobs gone. That's 274,000 down. Boy, oh boy, we increased 71,000 for a net difference of -201,000. Stimulus is working!

The state of the labor market is one of the factors that will determine the timing of the Federal Reserve's first interest rate rise since reducing overnight lending rates to near zero in December 2008.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the U.S. central bank could take steps to further ease monetary policy if the recovery were to falter.

Wait a second! If the labor market might trigger an interest rate rise from the totally incomprehensible policy of free money at zero interest, how then does Bernanke further ease monetary policy? Do we get paid to take money from the Fed?

The public sector, AKA government bureaucracy, is the "bright" spot in the jobs recovery picture and that slice of the economy experienced less decline than other segments. State/local government jobs which are the beneficiaries of most of the Porkulus Bill handouts are contracting as well. With typical government inefficiency, state/local governments are leaping headlong into bankruptcies despite handouts of billions from the federal treasury.

Such a recovery we can do without. My momma warned me about stuff like this.