Bad jobs numbers:
The pace of job losses quickened in June after slowing just a month earlier, casting a shadow over the Obama administration’s attempts to stanch months of declines in the labor market.
The American economy shed 467,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Job losses were widespread among the construction, manufacturing and business and professional services sectors.
The losses were sharply higher than economists’ expectations of 365,000 lost jobs.
Economists said a decline of 322,000 jobs in May had raised expectations that the market was bottoming out as the economy struggled to right itself, but the numbers on Friday dashed some of those hopes.
The figures also raised questions about whether the Obama administration, which has already passed a $787 billion stimulus plan, needed to step in again to shore up the American worker.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street gangs are posting record profits and handing out record bonuses, all because the American taxpayer spent trillions to shore up their recklessness. And since it cost so much, we are now being told we can’t pass another stimulus or do anything about health care. But hey- Matt Taibbi wrote a tough article and Jake DeSantis was stared at rudely once, so it all evens out.
If the Democrats can not pass regulation of Wall Street in this climate, we should just give up.
And while we’re at it- at the same time the economy is tanking an unemployment is skyrocketing, states are hammering social services.
cleek
i gave up weeks ago.
Irrelevant,YetPoignant
This is excellent news! ! ! For Matt Taibbi! ! !
Hunter Gathers
Now is not the time to quit. In four years, when The Great White Majority roars and installs the Wingnut from Wasilla as President/Queen, then it’ll be time to give up.
GRreynoldsCT00
WTF with the comments thingy, it’s acting weird
GRreynoldsCT00
@Hunter Gathers:
Then it will be time to install your own personal bomb shelter
gex
Hey, where’s gbear? First Fort Worth, then the San Diego thing, now Camp Pendleton
tc125231
It is not time to quit. Because, when it
Some people are going to start practicing “asymetrical warfare”. It’s as inevitable as gas pressure theory.
No one in their right mind should want that. Let’s get this country on track while we still can.
D-Chance.
Well, thank God, Obama got that stimulus bill passed way back when and avoided that “economic catastrophe”. The creation (and/or the saving) of
millionshundreds of thousandsmaybe a few dozen jobs has prevented this month’s numbers from testing that dreaded 9.50000001% ceiling…gex
California is the canary in the coal mine, you realize. They’ve had the benefit of Reaganomics for longer than the rest of the nation.
bago
Given the evisceration of the rule of law we have witnessed, the total dismissal constitutional rules in order to aid and abet the people in power…. It might be handy to enforce and work within a more static framework. Implementation requires impetus. Constrain the impetus, and you need less systemic boundaries on the implementation.
Punchy
These fuckers never bother to read Barry and/or CR, do they? Cuz if they did, and were being honest, there’s an Ice Cube’s chance at the CMAs that the economy was bottoming out.
Hell, I’m a fucking idiot
savantwhen it comes to economics, and even I understand that loss of jobs begets loss of house that begets loss of retail sales that begets loss of tax revenue that…….simple shit, eh?Johnny B. Guud
Good luck with that.
The implicit assumption in this statement is flawed. How do we expect Democrats to “regulate” (ie curb profits of, limit “innovation” of (which involves risk a la CDOs, MBS, et al.) Wall Street when Democrats, probably more so than the Republicans one could argue, are so beholden to the industry.
Virtually any Democratic senator—hell ALL senators from the Northeast are bought and paid for by Wall Street, the private equity firms, hedge funds, etc. Name em: Kerry, Dodd, Lautenberg, Kennedy, etc. etc.
Not to mention that Goldman Sachs, which is probably the most powerful private institution in the country, is entrenched in Democratic politics. Rubin, Summers, Geithner and their minions have a stranglehold on the Democratic party.
The notion that the Republicans are the party of Wall Street bankers, greedy white men in $5000 suits, bilking the taxpayer is no longer a truism. As the GOP fades from relevance, the smart money has ditched them and, naturally, began funnelling cash to where the power is—-the Democrats.
In that respect, both establishment Democrats and Republicans are the roadblocks to any meanginful change.
Johnny B. Guud
Not a green shoot?
Face
So if I read this right, 9.5% of Americans are lazy?
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
James H. Kunstler coined the perfect term for the era that we’ve entered: The Long Emergency. I’m afraid we’re in it.
No doubt, but I’m afraid that Obama is way too cozy with Wall Street.
PeakVT
9 years of job growth gone.
The Moar You Know
California will start issuing IOUs this month.
HilarityArmageddon ensues.peach flavored shampoo
@The Moar You Know: I’m sure landloards and mortgage companies will appreciate being paid with California IOUs. Like a new form of currency, natch.
Wonder how long it’ll take to counterfeit these notices.
geg6
Well, I never fell for that “optimistic” May numbers meme anyway. I may not be an economist, but I do remember my undergrad economics classes well enough to know that it will be months or years before the unemployment figures tell us anything good. I will say, in defense of the stimulus, that public works projects are springing up in places and numbers around here in the last month. Not only state DOT projects, but several small local municipalities have, in recent weeks, announced approval of projects to upgrade local roads and bridges and to mitigate congestion issues. Most of these are quite large and much needed. My personal favorite is a new roundabout they will be starting that will change the traffic pattern and take out the traffic light at the world’s longest red light, through which I must travel every day on my way home from work. Just to give an idea how ridiculous this light is, I don’t have to go through it in the morning as there is a ramp from that direction that goes directly onto the bridge I need to cross to get to work. Unfortunately, there is no option to bypass the intersection (a 5-way) in the opposite direction. It takes me 10-15 minutes max to get to work, a six mile trip through several small municipalities. It takes me 30 minutes to get home. On a good day.
inthewoods
Amazing that, as far as I can see, there is nothing about the rating agencies in any of the new regulations. Thus, the major loophole that, imho, caused a lot of the issues we’re dealing with, will remain open for business. And the GS bonuses are really just the final fuck from them on the American people.
Napoleon
I personally think that you are going to see layoffs pick up in the next few months. The slight slow down was just a hickup.
gopher2b
You think the Democrats aren’t in the pocket of Wall Street….whoa…ha…aha..ha…..LOL…..hahahhahahahah (rolling over)……..OH MY GOD STOP…..haha..ahahalahahalahalhalha……..Oh, Jesus…..oh….see Chuck Schumer……..ahahahahahahahlllll……sweeet baby …..jesus…..(rolling over again…..hahahaha.,
slag
To me, this is the worst abdication of responsibility. The government needs to be a stabilizing force in all this. That’s part of what we pay them for–stability. Our system is so messed up.
Davis X. Machina
Washington (AP) In a joint press availability today President Collins and President Nelson called for a second stimulus package today, this one focused on immediate employment and assistance to states wracked by declining tax revenues and soaring demand for social programs.
“Hey, so we fucked up the last time,” President Nelson said, “every dog gets two bites.” President Collins’ spokesman said “We knew everyone from Krugman to the guy who parks my car said the first package was too small by a factor of two, and not enough of it went to unemployment and food stamps and such. But $800 billion is such a nice round number, and who knew the states were in such trouble?”
It is not yet sure out of which ass will be pulled the arbitrary round number down to which the secont package will be whittled to make Senators feel useful.
The Moar You Know
@peach flavored shampoo: I cringe to say this, but it’s not the first time; I think we did vouchers in 1994 as well. The banks took them as cash.
I don’t think that’s going to happen this time. In 1994, California’s credit was golden. Now it’s not, not by a longshot (we actually stand a reasonably good chance of default if we don’t get this budget mess sorted out quickly) and the banks will want some money if they take IOUs. Probably from both the state and the customer.
Instant pay cut for workers, instant added debt burden for the state.
Lose-lose.
peach flavored shampoo
@The Moar You Know: If banks wont accept them, how does the issuance of this Maybe, Someday This Will Be Money in lieu of Actual Money not exponentially accelerate the foreclosure of private and commercial real estate ownership? This seems like adding gasoline to a fire, just at the time that the fire seemed to be spreading less rapidly than before….
The Moar You Know
@peach flavored shampoo: More info here on the state IOU issue. It looks as though Wells Fargo and BofA may not accept them – they quite rightfully point out that the last time, when they did, it gave the Legislature far more time to continue to be stupid.
peach flavored shampoo
@The Moar You Know: Scary stuff. Cant redeem them until October? That’s quite a long time to float if you’re behind on loans, payroll, etc.
And something tells me that when late Sept. rolls around, there’ll be some strong pressure to extend the cash-in date to sometime around March 2010 or so. What a freakin disaster.
OriGuy
For the moment, they are paying state workers in actual money. The IOUs are going to creditors; vendors, contractors, etc. So those people have to worry about how they’ll pay their workers and creditors.
Davis X. Machina
Yeah, but you save all that money when you register your car now. Not like under Gray Davis…..
Dennis-SGMM
Here in sunny California only one bank has so far stated that they’ll treat the warrants as cash. The others are staying mum. Meanwhile, my wife, who works for the UC system, is now officially furloughed every other Friday – along with most other State employees. That’s a ten percent pay cut and there’s no end in sight.
Most two earner households are paying 9.3% state income tax plus (In LA County) a 9.75% sales tax. It’s hard to collect much of either when unemployment in the state is above ten per cent.
It gets better. Our town of 50,000 just pink slipped thirty teachers and they are going to be doing the same for administrators and Classified staff. We’re closing one of four Elementary school and one of two Middle Schools.
Me? I’m taking up piracy on the high seas. If you’re going to live in a third world country then you may as well act the part.
Keith
We needed a break from oil companies posting record profits while people stay home during summer due to $4 gas.
Alan
Have you ever read the Washington Post’s article on the Oval Office’s Working Group on Financial Markets otherwise known as the Plunge Protection Team? I’ve often wondered how much it’s responsible for our economic mess.
Gus
I’m with the people who say that the Democrats not passing strict regulation isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
Xanthippas
Don’t mean to pile on here, but I do seem to recall some promises that the stimulus package would keep numbers at around 8%. So does David Leonhardt.
John Hamilton Farr
I shouldn’t say anything about this so early in the morning. It usually ruins my day and pushes me into a grinding, soul-obliterating depression: I start worrying about my wife’s pension, my credit card debt, and then it’s all over.
But that then drives me to find some kind of psychic balance. For instance, the news is so bad on all counts that we must be overlooking something: after all, the universe is NOT fucked up. The universe IS balanced. Everything IS “perfect” if we adopt the widest possible view. So what balances the fact that we’re now a dysfunctional country in a dysfunctional world? Hmmm???
I don’t know, but it helps to realize that even if everything collapses, if we all end up dead before our time and trash blows unnoticed through the empty streets of our deserted cities, somewhere on a planet in the Arcturan system a child or a butterfly will wake up one morning after we’re gone and won’t notice a goddamned thing…
Dennis-SGMM
It’s looking more and more like something that a Vogon would write a poem about.
Et Tu Brutus?
Depression: slump; recession; decline; downturn; fall; slide into despair; sadness; gloominess; misery; hopelessness.
And I was just goin’ sell my 22 mag rifle to buy more toys for my motorsickle, perhaps I better hang on to it in case of need for emergency poaching.
Brian J
The other night, for the first time in a long time, I spoke to a friend who is in Korea teaching middle school students. He’s an unusually negative guy when it comes to the future, and he mentioned how worried he was that he wouldn’t be able to make it when he came back to the country in October. It’s certainly not easy out there, especially for someone with his high level of student loan debt, but it’s definitely possible to establish a life, even if you have to work two jobs, one as something to pay the bills and another to get your foot in the door at something long term.
That’s what I kept telling him, even if it was overly optimistic. But each time I see numbers like this, it makes me think I’m not being the realistic one.
jcricket
WA state will soon follow California if Tim Eyman’s new initiative passes (it’s basically a modified version of Prop 13).
I blame the dishonest initiative peddlers, the vitriolic anti-tax GOP, but I also blame the Democrats for failing, time and again, to articulate the affirmative case for progressive taxation.
This lets all the “mushy middle” have their cake (services provided by Democrats) and eat it too (low taxes via initiative/voting for the GOP).
The fact that CA is about to decimate the poor and middle class is a direct result of this dynamic.
Tsulagi
Sort of on topic. One thing I haven’t seen written up or on programs is the stress levels job losses, home foreclosures, and the general financial mess is causing on kids. I didn’t really think about it until my son’s birthday three months ago.
Before his birthday he presented me with a cost-benefit analysis for a Wii. Cracked me up. Then acting all serious I did the parent scolds thing busting him with “Do you know how much that really costs?”, “Don’t you know times are hard?” and all that stuff. Usually he’s pretty good at telling when I’m kidding with a straight face. But that time he seemed almost scared. Told me he didn’t need a Wii and really he was okay with not getting any presents.
Talking with him seems a lot of kids at his school were stressed. They know everything going on. They knew which kids were no longer there because their parents had to sell their homes. Which kids were now on the school’s free breakfast and lunch program. Problems and fights at homes due to finances. Etc.
Told the son we were good and I’d let him know when it was time to worry. That seemed like a weight I didn’t know was there lifted off his shoulders.
Got boatloads of sympathy for the kids; piss on Sanford.
Dork
@Tsulagi: Yup. The free meals program is a dead giveaway that that kid’s family’s finances are DOA. Kids dont miss a clue when it comes to trying to elucidate, and whenever possible rearrange, the pecking order, and real and/or percieved poverty sends those “poor” kids to the bottom of that list.
Unless they’re really good in sports. Buy every one of your sons a football.
D-Chance.
Stocks must be tanking today… Drudge is posting charts, again.
Elie
Jcricket @ 40 —
CA has the leadership to assure that it is in for hard hard times ahead and I agree — its the belweather. The Governator just wants to cut programs — like there will be no consequence for that. But what does he care? He will soon be out of office and be living as a fat rich cat while all the people who didnt get their oxygen delivered, or their Medicaid for horrible medical conditions can just go f—- themselves…
No mercy but there will be justice some day — some day. We are watching something horrible happen and I don’t think that there was any avoiding this time given the set up you mention — proposition 13 and weak unprincipled governance for way too long.
Dennis-SGMM
This just in from the Golden State: the governator is calling for a third furlough day per month for State employees. This brings their effective wage cuts to 14%. C’mon, Arnie; one more furlough day. You know you want to.
Robertdsc-iphone
Geithner & Summers should join the unemployed by the end of the week. Their entire economic viewpoint is wrong by several orders of magnitude.
If Obama can’t crack them off and hire people with any kind of progressive outlook, i fear for the country’s future, and I’m not just talking about the Wasilla Wingnut.
Elie
@ 46 —
And Robertdsc — this should all be FIXED by now, right? Not that I am defending them, but how is it that someone else in those positions would have everything be presumably better by now? Is that what you are saying? If so, who and how much better would it be and why?
We are plain out of luck. We are going to have to really hurt because there is no way to eventually fix this without pain — unfortunately. And the “good outcome” may require a zig zag through a minefield of mixed decisions and possibly some mistakes. Mistakes. Why? The scale and complexity and the politics are not easy or likely to lead to clean, pleasant outcomes…
So firings may end up being necessary. But firings won’t fix this alone.
ksmiami
I think my SO figured it out – he actually is a financial wizard and basically it comes down to completely restructuring the ratings agencies and trust busting the big banks…
I humbly submit his idea… though he did say and I agree that there will always be greed and stupidity and there will always be people who take advantage of said greed and stupidity.
Barry
Et Tu Brutus?
“And I was just goin’ sell my 22 mag rifle to buy more toys for my motorsickle, perhaps I better hang on to it in case of need for emergency poaching.”
Don’t sell it – how much could you get for it, $100 if you’re lucky?
Wile E. Quixote
@jcricket
If it weren’t for the Democratic politicians in Washington State Tim Eyman never would have gotten any traction. Back during the 90s’ the fucking worthless Seattle Mariners went crying to the Washington State Legislature, then dominated by the Democratic party, and said “Boo hoo, we’re losing money and can’t afford to pay our players millions of dollars because the stadium we’re playing in (the Kingdome) isn’t any good. Our low attendance figures have nothing to do with our poor performance over the last twenty years. If we don’t get a shiny new stadium we’re going to have to sell the team and they’ll be moved to Bumfuck, North Dakota and renamed as the ‘Hogwallopers’ and then Seattle will no longer be a ‘world-class’ city”.
Now, the legislature, being a bunch of worthless cowards, figured that passing a sales tax increase to pay for a new stadium for the Mariners wasn’t going to fly. So, like the cowards they are, they punted the issue to the voters of King County and put an referendum on the ballot to raise sales taxes in King County to pay for the new super duper baseball stadium for the Mariners. Despite massive lobbying the referendum went down to defeat by a few thousand votes, but then the Mariners had a somewhat decent season, better than they had in years and all of a sudden it became an emergency to keep this shitty fucking baseball team in town because God knows why anyone would want to come to Seattle if we didn’t have a third rate American League baseball team here.
So all of a sudden the legislature is in a panic “Oh noes” they say, “the Mariners might leave, whatever will we do without them?” So they decide to pass a sales tax increase in King County to pay for an expensive new stadium for the Mariners, because after all since our schools, public health, roads, parks and libraries were fully funded and just overflowing with cash it was obvious that we had the money to build a half billion dollar stadium for a third rate baseball team. So they rammed this tax increase down our throats and then told us that the original referendum wasn’t about voting whether or not we were going to vote for a stadium, it was merely a vote on the specific tax mechanism we were going to use to pay for the new stadium. Then, to rub some salt into the wounds of the taxpayers they fucked over, the legislature invoked an emergency clause in the state constitution that allows a law to go into effect immediately without being challenged by a citizen’s referendum.
Total cost for the Mariners stadium, including the fancy retractable roof (because we can’t let baseball fans or players get wet because they’re a bunch of useless, whining fucking human crapsacks): 518 million dollars.
The emergency clause for the Mariners stadium was challenged, but the Washington State Supreme Court was on the take as well and said that an emergency was anything the legislature said it was.
Now, around this time Paul Allen was purchasing the Seattle Seahawks and he decided that if the Mariners could get a new stadium at the expense of taxpayers that there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to either. I mean sure, Paul Allen is one of the richest people on Earth, and could easily have built his own stadium without making a dent in his fortune, but hey, you don’t stay rich by buying your own football stadium, that’s crazy talk. So Paul lobbied the legislature and got them to put an initiative on the ballot to build a new stadium for the Seahawks. Allen offered to put up 130 million of his own money to pay for the stadium (the stadium cost was 430 million dollars) and offered to pay for the special election. So in 1997 the legislature, controlled by the Democrats, and our Democratic governor, Gary “Hey, have I told you that I’m America’s first Chinese-American governor?” Locke put another referendum on the ballot, which, despite heavy lobbying by all of the local media outlets only managed to pass with 50.8% of the vote.
So in a period of two years the Washington State and King County governments, which were both run by Democrats, managed to cough up over 800 million dollars in taxpayer money to build two new stadiums. Oh, and we also tore down the Kingdome, which hadn’t been fully paid for yet because we needed someplace to put Paul Allen’s new stadium. Of course the voters were told what a great deal this was, these were public/private partnerships, you know, the public pays the bills and the private enterprises get all of the money, and despite legal challenges the Washington Supreme Court said “Yep, passing regressive taxes, adding new lottery games and getting down on your knees to suck the cocks of the richest people in Washington State is A-OK.”
So Washington sports fans (who are fucking pathetic, I mean really, what kind of fucking retard can have any identification with any professional sports team? Identifying with the Mariners or the Seahawks or any other professional sports franchise is like identifying with AIG or Goldman Sachs) had two shiny new stadiums where they could go and sit on their fat and credulous asses and watch a bunch of overpaid shitbags toss balls around and hit them with sticks.
Now, where does Tim Eyman come into all of this? Well Washington State used to levy an excise tax on the value of motor vehicles. The MVET was levied at 2.2 percent of the vehicle’s MSRP. In the second year the tax dropped to 95 percent of the vehicle’s MSRP, in the third year, 89% and continued to drop until the 13th year when it stabilized at 10 percent of the vehicle’s MSRP. Now, this was a rip off, don’t believe me? Then try to sell your two year old car for 89 percent of its MSRP. Everyone hated the MVET because it was such an obvious rip-off.
So Tim Eyman comes along and in 1999 collects enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot to reduce the MVET to 30 dollars. It was a great campaign slogan, 30 dollar car tabs. Eyman gets tons of signatures because voters are pissed off because our governor and legislature (and remember, this was a Democratic governor and Democratic legislature) are obviously on the take.
Now at the time Washington’s Democrats whined and cried and pissed themselves and said “Oh noes! Whatever will we do without the MVET? If you voters repeal it the entire state will collapse into a black hole, the schools will close and all of the poor people and children will die.” The voters weren’t buying it though, figuring, rightly, that if the legislature could somehow find 800 million dollars for Paul Allen and the Mariners ownership group that they could figure out how to get by without the MVET.
So initiative 695 passes in 1999 and is immediately challenged on constitutional grounds and is eventually overturned by the Washington State Supreme Court. Unfortunately the credibility gauge for the State Supreme Court is stuck on empty because of their decision that the invocation of the emergency clause in the Mariners stadium vote, and their overturning of the challenge to the referendum to finance the Seahawks stadium. The State Supreme Court is widely seen as being every bit as much on the take as Gary Locke and the legislature.
So Initiative 695 should be dead and gone, right? Well no, because the legislature realized in 2000 that they had fucked up real, real bad. Voters were pissed off that the legislature could find it in their hearts to raise taxes and hand out all sorts of money to rich sports team owners but then turned around and said “Oh no, we can’t afford to cut taxes for you little people”. So the legislature passes a bill that enacts the most popular part of I-695, the 30 dollar car tabs and it’s signed into law by Gary Locke (you know, Gary Locke, Democrat, America’s first Chinese American governor).
Now, if Locke had had a backbone he could have vetoed the bill the legislature sent him, but Locke really wanted to win re-election in 2000 and for once the Republicans hadn’t selected someone who was completely and totally fucking insane (Ellen Craswell, the 1996 Republican gubernatorial candidate could have given Michelle Bachmann a run for her money) as their candidate, right wing talk show host John Carlson. So the legislature, controlled by Democrats, which only a year earlier had been saying “No, we can’t afford to repeal the MVET” goes ahead and repeals the MVET and Gary Locke, who only a year before had been saying “No, we can’t afford to repeal the MVET”, and who really wanted to be re-elected, signs the repeal into law.
Now, if the Democratic Party wants to regain some credibility in Washington State here’s what they need to do: Gary Locke, who as King County executive who pushed for the Mariners give-away and as governor who pushed for the Seahawks giveaway, L. Ron Sims, the county executive who pushed for the Seahawks giveaway, Mike Lowry, the governor who pushed for the Mariners giveaway, Margarita Prentice, the puta grande who pushed for the Mariners giveaway, the Seahawks giveaway and tried to get us to give a bunch of money to the Sonics to keep them in town (and who is owned and operated by MoneyTree) and all of the other Democratic politicians who passed a regressive tax to subsidize the salaries of a bunch of overpaid millionaires need to be taken out into a cornfield and beaten to death like Joe Pesci was at the end of Casino. Seriously, I want to see Gary Locke crying in a ditch on top of Mike Lowry’s corpse and coughing up blood and chunks of lung tissue as he’s buried alive by members of the Washington State Democratic Party.
But until the Washington State Democrats take that step, until they start acting like progressives and stop being a bunch of useless fucking corporate whores they need to shut the fuck up about Tim Eyman, because passing regressive taxes to build stadiums for billionaires and to subsidize the salaries of millionaires and turning around and pissing and moaning about someone who is attempting, for reasons good or ill, to reduce taxes that regular people have to pay, is just as disgustingly and transparently hypocritical as any of the shit that the Republican party engages in.