Posted inPolitics: National

Democrats are stupid

When Barack Obama was elected president, the nation was facing its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. For all its flaws — a too-small-stimulus, lack of enough relief for average mortgage holders, etc. — Obama, with the help of Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve, averted a second Great Depression.

When Obama took office, the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent on its way to 10 percent. Last month it was 5.8 percent…

…The federal deficit was $1.4 trillion or almost 10 percent of gross domestic product. Now it’s about $483 billion or 3.3 percent of GDP. The deficit has fallen faster than any time since the end of World War II…

…America's GDP was $14.4 trillion. In the third quarter of this year it had risen $17.5 trillion, despite the headwinds of a slow recovery. It is the best performance among advanced nations…

…Corporate profits after taxes were about $1 trillion in January 2009. In the second quarter of this year, the most recent data available, they hit a record $1.84 trillion…

…The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 7,949 the day he took office. Today it is above 17,652…

…And the Affordable Care Act extended health insurance to millions of Americans, and would have included millions more if not for the cruel obstruction of Republican governors.

In the hands of Ronald Reagan's ad men, this would have been Morning in America. For Democrats this election, it was something from which to run (hat tip to Emil's comment in the previous post). They deserved the destruction that befell them.

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Posted inPhoenix

Arizona unemployment: Grim reality

Here's a reality based report that won't be discussed by the local viziers of boosterism in Phoenix, much less the editorial pages of the Arizona Republic. The job losses from the recession that began in 2007 are much worse in Arizona than the 10 previous major recessions since the end of World War II.

The Minneapolis Fed crunched data nationally and for 50 states to come up with this fascinating interactive presentation. Although Arizona's unemployment appears to be relatively low compared to some states — for reasons I've previously explored — this comprehensive report puts all the wishful thinking and ideological twisty games to bed. No other downturn comes even close. The "legendary" 1991 recession? Beanbag compared with this labor market bloodbath. The truly nasty 1973 recession? Not even close.

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Posted inPhoenix

Arizona’s mysterious jobless rate

Why is Arizona's unemployment rate relatively low? The national rate in February was 8.1 percent, while Arizona's rate was 7.4 percent. This was 2.9 percentage points higher than in the same month last year, but well below California's 4.3 jump (to 10.5 percent) or Washington's 3.7 increase (to 8.4 percent).

This was the question that the Arizona Republic political columnist Robert Robb claimed to set out to answer in a recent column. I tend not to pay attention to Robb because he pretty much always says the same thing: status quo good, government bad, etc. Robb, the only editorial columnist for the paper, is not a journalist and came out of the "Goldwater" Institute and right-wing/growth machine political world. So one knows where he's coming from.

Not surprisingly, he uses this question to set up a straw-man. He disputes the notion that Arizona is too dependent on real estate, asserts that the state has "a fundamentally solid underlying economy," and deplores "various advocates of various dubious schemes to 'diversify' Arizona's economy." (A graceful stylist, no). So that's it. Move along. Nothing to see here.

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