Tag Archives: GDP

9 reasons why the economy is not moving “forward” under Barack Obama

From the American Enterprise Institute.

Here’s the summary of the list of 9 items:

  1. Unemployment rate
  2. Declining U.S. labor force (structural unemployment/government dependency)
  3. Labor force participation rate
  4. Unemployment/population ratio
  5. Average hourly earnings of workers
  6. GDP growth
  7. Economic competitiveness
  8. Federal debt crisis
  9. Risk of renewed recession

And here’s the detail of one that I haven’t mentioned much before on this blog:

5. Average hourly earnings were unchanged in the August jobs report, and are up just 1.7% over the past year. Not only does that match the slowest pace on record, but one you account for inflation, wages are flat to down.

The graph:

Average hourly earnings for American workers down under Obama
Average hourly earnings for workers way down under Obama

According to Forbes magazine: (H/T Gateway Pundit)

New income data from the Census Bureau reveal what a great job Barack Obama has done for the middle class as President. During his entire tenure in the oval office, median household income has declined by 7.3%.

In January, 2009, the month he entered office, median household income was $54,983. By June, 2012, it had spiraled down to $50,964. That’s a loss of $4,019 per family, the equivalent of losing a little less than one month’s income a year, every year. And on our current course that is only going to get worse not better…

[…]Three years into the Obama recovery, median family income had declined nearly 5% by June, 2012 as compared to June, 2009. That is nearly twice the decline of 2.6% that occurred during the recession from December, 2007 until June, 2009. As the Wall Street Journal summarized in its August 25-26 weekend edition, “For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession.”

[…]Obama has failed the poor as well as the middle class. Last year, the Census Bureau reported more Americans in poverty than ever before in the more than 50 years that Census has been tracking poverty. Now The Huffington Post reports that the poverty rate is on track to rise to the highest level since 1965, before the War on Poverty began. A July 22 story by Hope Yen reports that when the new poverty rates are released in September, “even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.”

Gateway Pundit adds:

Barack Obama is not just the food stamp president.
A record one in seven Americans is on food stamps today thanks to Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is also the poverty and pain president.
Under Obama, 6.4 million Americans are living below the poverty line and there is a record number of Americans living in deep poverty.

Meanwhile, Moody’s is threatening a credit downgrade:

Moody’s Investors Service said Tuesday that it would probably cut its triple-A rating on U.S. government debt by a notch unless congressional leaders can strike a budget deal in the coming months to bring down the deficit.

“If those negotiations lead to specific policies that produce a stabilization and then downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to GDP over the medium term, the rating will likely be affirmed,” Moody’s said in a press release Tuesday. “If those negotiations fail to produce such policies, however, Moody’s would expect to lower the rating, probably to Aa1.”

The threat comes after one of the other big three ratings firms, Standard & Poor’s, downgraded the U.S. last year following the brawl in Washington over the debt ceiling.

This would be the second credit downgrade – both occurred because of Obama’s Marxist policies of “spreading the wealth around” to punish job creators and their employees.

Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Wall Street slashes GDP growth forecasts: recession on the horizon?

The Democrats took over the House and Senate in 2007
The Democrats took over the House and Senate in 2007

James Pethokoukis says we’re doomed. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

 In the seven quarters since [August 2010], the U.S. economy has grown at an average annual clip of just 2.1%, including just 1.7% last year.

And right now, 2012 looks like more of the same. GDP expanded at a mere 1.9% pace in the first quarter.

And after a weak retail sales number today, Wall Street economists have been slashing their second-quarter GDP forecasts:

  • Goldman Sachs cut its forecast to 1.6% from 1.8%.
  • Bank of America/Merrill Lynch cut its forecast to 1.9% from 2.4%.
  • Macroeconomic Advisers cut its forecast to 1.8% from 2.0%.
  • CIBC World Markets cut its forecast to 2.0% from 2.3%.
  • Barclays Capital cut its forecast to 1.8% from 2.1%
  • Action Economics cut its forecast to 1.8% from 2.0%.

This analysis from JPMorgan provides a good summary:

After today’s retail sales report our best estimate is that second quarter real GDP is currently tracking a 2.0% annual growth rate, lower than our prior projection of 2.5%. Moreover, we see some downside risk to our new forecast. The largest reason for the downward revision is today’s retail sales report, which lowers our tracking of real consumer spending growth from 2.8% to 2.2%. … In addition, first quarter GDP, which currently prints at 1.9%, looks to be tracking closer to 1.7%. Given the weaker momentum in first half growth, achieving our second half outlook for 2% growth will require more things to go right than wrong, which hasn’t been the case recently.

The current White House forecast of 3% GDP growth this year looks hopelessly out of reach. And growth this anemic is probably not fast enough to generate enough sustained job growth to bring down the unemployment rate.

At this rate, I would say that we will be back in a recession within 12 months. Obama simply isn’t doing anything to stop the bleeding.

Obama lied, the economy died: comparing GDP forecasts to actual results

2011: (click for larger image)

Obama's broken promises of GDP growth in 2011
Obama’s broken promises of GDP growth in 2011

2012: (click for larger image)

Obama's broken promises of GDP growth in 2012
Obama’s broken promises of GDP growth in 2012

Story from James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute. (H/T Arthur Brooks)

Excerpt:

After every jobs report, I update the jobs forecast and chart Team Obama put out in January 2009 that projected the future unemployment rate if Congress passed his stimulus plan. It shows the unemployment rate far higher today than what Obama economists predicted back then, 8.2% vs. 5.7%.

[…][T]his White House has continually overestimated the strength of the recovery — as the charts above and below indicate (based on official White House forecasts). This says to me the problem isn’t the data going into the forecast model, the problem is the forecast model built on Keynesian assumptions about the impact of government spending and temporary tax hikes. Obama simply has the wrong model for growth.

It seems to me that the Obama approach to the economy is not to encourage the private sector to create jobs in a sustainable way by lowering corporate taxes from their 35% (highest in the world!) rate and by reducing the regulatory burden. Their plan for the last 4 years was to basically borrow money from private sector job creators to give it to their campaign donors and union supporters. Does cronyism and corruption produce produce private sector job growth? I think not. And, in fact, this is what happened.

Obama was always a drug-taking, affirmative action fraud – even before the election in 2008. That’s why he can’t release his transcripts, and why he’s never run so much as a lemonade stand in the private sector. The man is a buffoon and he has made us into a laughingstock. The only question now is whether people pay attention to charts and figures this time, instead of watch TV ads and teleprompter-assisted emotional rhetoric. It’s your choice America.