Friday, November 02, 2012

Is the election over...?

The final pre-election jobs report just came in. Over 171,000 jobs added in October, and unemployment remains below 8 percent, although it ticked up a point.

Yeah, there are plenty of arguments against these numbers; I know them as well as you do. The 7.9 percent unemployment number isn't the real figure, because it does not count discouraged workers. 171,000 new jobs must be measured against population growth, and includes a lot of people "downgraded" by circumstances to working crummy retail jobs.

Still, these are probably the best numbers Obama could reasonably have expected at this time. If the new jobs number had been below 100,000, we would all have to get used to saying "President Romney." Now...

Even if Obama wins, I don't expect the (more or less) good economic news to continue. Europe is a cock-up of epic proportions; the people will soon rebel against austerity. After that? God knows.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If people elect candidates based on that random number generator then they are fools.

wxyz said...

An interesting tale of Romney connections...

ANonOMouse said...

I think you're right on the rebellion in Europe over the austerity programs. I feel like Obama is the only thing standing between American citizens and a GOP/TP austerity budget. Still, many of us worry that the austerity solution is being pushed so hard in the MSM with the fiscal cliff meme, that we may see it here, even though Europe is living testament to the failure of austerity solutions that prey on the working class and poor.

These are times that try our souls.

snug.bug said...


Step 1: Hold your nose, vote for Obama.

Step 2: Impeach Obama for war crimes.

Problem solved! Wasn't that easy?

Anonymous said...

this is unrelated but you'll want to take a look at this

bain tied to iran-contra

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2012/11/mitt_romneys_tie_to_iran_contr.php