As a follow on to this post, there's this report about the US economy, showing that it's contracted at an annual rate of 1% during the first quarter.
If you're not clued in about economics, this is a Bad ThingTM.
On top of that there's the decreasing job participation rate and the U6 unemployment holding somewhere around 12 to 14%. (The U3 unemployment rate falling is a false signal that things are getting better. All it does is show that more people are falling off the unemployment roles not because they've gotten jobs but because their unemployment benefits ran out.) Any of these things by themselves signal that our economy is not recovering. Taken all together along with the falling retails sales numbers it means our economy is stagnant at best and falling back into recession at worst. (Not that we every really exited the Great Recession. It only paused for a while.)
If these aren't indicators that the Obama Administration has done everything it can to make sure our economy remains weak, I don't know what is. It appears to me that it's pulling every trick out of a jar labeled “DOESN'T WORK” and giving it another try rather than using programs and methods that have worked well in the past. One would think that even committed socialists like those presently in the administration would be able to see that everything they've done so far has only made things worse. Then again history shows they won't. That's certainly been the case in Cuba and Venezuela.
If the Obama Administration doesn't stop trying the same old failed economic policies soon, there won't be much of an economy left to save.
