The Blue Board

No. It isn't.

Any realistic look at the economy wouldn't be described as in the tank or in a recession or anything like that.

What we are facing and what Leppy should have mentioned is stagnant growth, a lost decade.

You wanna give someone blame for the moment? Blame congress who could be reaching a deal right now that would give businesses long-term confidence. No one wants to hire because of the fiscal cliff.

Even worse, if they don't reach a deal, we could see this entire last year's gains gone to shit because of it.

Guys guys guys, the unemployment rate going up means we are headed in the right direction!
/bamalivesfootball

The report, entitled “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” was released on Jan. 9, 2009. It was put out by the office of the president-elect was written by economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein. Romer would become chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Obama. Bernstein was Vice President Biden’s chief economic advisor.

Page four of the report features a chart projecting the unemployment levels with and without the stimulus. With the stimulus, the Romer and Bernstein predicted that unemployment would never rise past 8 percent, and would peak just under that in the third quarter of 2009 before steadily declining to around 5.6 percent by today. Without the stimulus, they predicted that unemployment would peak around 9 percent in the third quarter of 2010 before declining to around 6 percent today.

The then-Democrat majority Congress passed the $819 billion stimulus bill later that month. The projection turned out to be one of the few things connected to it that was shovel-ready. The unemployment rate reached 10.1 percent in late 2009

Regardless of any numbers, it feels unstable and therefore it is unstable. Now it is much better than where we were headed under bush, but it isn't reality to say we're good now. While the bleeding slowed under obama, we're still bleeding

Sadly, romney seems worse than bush.

Damn. 5 trillion added to the deficit and we managed to reduce total unemployment by .7%!

30 trillion more should do the trick!

It doesn't matter which unemployment rate you use, it's all comparative. As long as you use the same one across the board to compare it over time, you'll see the same patterns. If you want to use the 15% rate, fine, but that means when the U3 rate is at 7.8% at the time Obama took office, it was really 14.2%. And that was before all the jobs lost in his first term jumped it up to 17%. My point is its all relative.

But that doesn't negate the fact that confidence is improving in the job market among those looking for a job. That was shown when 500,000+ entered the job market in October. That is a good sign right now. It remains to be seen if that confidence will continue, but it's a step in the right direction.

Obama and his crack staff were terribly wrong. Not just a little off, they were not even in the same ballpark.

Actually they weren't if you read the entire report:

"It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error," the report states. "There is the more fundamental uncertainty that comes with any estimate of the effects of a program. Our estimates of economic relationships and rules of thumb are derived from historical experience and so will not apply exactly in any given episode. Furthermore, the uncertainty is surely higher than normal now because the current recession is unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity."

There's also a footnote that goes along with the chart that states: "Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially. Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11% in the absence of action."

LOL, your poly sci professor would be so proud of you. You must be his favorite student.

But it's fun to blame the less fortunate for our problems

Wait. So you are saying they weren't wrong about the economy as a whole?

Do you think unemployment would have peaked at 9% in 2010 without the stimulus?

Or it could mean people are starving and desperate.