The bell tolls for the Eurozone

The situation there is grim, and the financial and social systems there are buckling:

The worst nightmares of [...] Euroskeptics have been exceeded. The United States carried the luxury-goods industries of France and Italy and the engineered-products industries of Germany on its back for decades, but it will not and cannot do it anymore. Decline is reversible; more complicated is a death wish as thoroughly installed in the attitudes and practices of whole peoples as that of most of Europe.

If Europe cannot spark a demographic renewal, with a work force comprising fully half the people, flexible labor markets, tax rates that encourage savings and investment, an end to stealthily galloping inflation, and a reactivation of the economic and military muscle that alone confer credibility, it will quietly perish.

These are the results of cradle-to-grave statism, and Euro-socialist economic policies.  There is no reason why this cannot happen here in the United States, in fact it probably already is happening.  The laws of economics and common sense apply in our country as well as in Europe.

Priebus sticks it to clueless Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the Democrats and President Obama

His name definitely isn’t Michael Steele:

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus mocked President Barack Obama’s 2008 election slogan Sunday, arguing it won’t pass the smell test with voters in 2012.

“It sounds like the new slogan is no longer ‘hope and change’,” Priebus said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”  “It’s, ‘Hey, it could’ve been worse’. Great bumper sticker, Debbie. I hope it works for you.”

Priebus was speaking to his counterpart at the Democratic National Committee, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was with him in the joint interview.

An aggressive Priebus also said that Wasserman Schultz’s talking points had already been proven false, referencing the recent GOP victory in New York’s special House election.

“This has already been tested in a Democratic district. These talking points have been tested, and they’re losing.  They’re imploding,” he said during their animated exchange.

The exchange begins at about 4:15 in the following clip, but the whole thing is worth watching.

Notice how the Democrat plan of attack seems to have fallen back to blame Bush, then blame Bush some more.  With a disastrous three years of Democrats running the federal government, this is all they have–there is no positive record to speak of, a fact that Priebus is willing to point out. 

Keep in mind, Mrs. Shultz also said this earlier this year, which Republicans should be repeating over and over.

Moreover, its good to see some in the Republican party finally have the guts strike back at Democrats and their lame talking points, and go on the offensive.

Housing market looking for a bottom. Still.

No end in sight for the decline in the housing market:

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 4 percent from April 2010, the biggest drop since November 2009, the group said today in New York. From March to April, prices fell 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, the smallest decline since July 2010.

A backlog of foreclosures and falling sales raise the risk that prices will decline further, discouraging builders from taking on new projects. The drop in property values and a jobless rate hovering around 9 percent are holding back consumer sentiment and spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

“There’s no sign of any real recovery in housing yet,” Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global Inc. in New York, said before the report. “There won’t be a significant turn until the labor market shows sustained improvement. The level of foreclosures is still high and a lot of people are delinquent on their mortgages.”

Anyone needing to sell their home right now is in a world of hurt.

ADP employment report not so good for the economy

Obamanomics in action:

Employment increased by 38,000 last month, the smallest increase since September, from a revised 177,000 in April, according to figures from ADP Employer Services. The median estimate in the Bloomberg News survey called for a 175,000 advance for May.

Such gains in employment are insufficient to help the world’s largest economy accelerate after a surge in food and fuel costs earlier this year. Businesses added 207,000 jobs last month after a 268,000 gain in April and the jobless rate dipped to 8.9 percent from 9 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show in two days.

“It is a warning shot across the bow that job growth is also weakening along with the other high frequency numbers,” Eric Green, chief market economist at TD Securities Inc. in New York, said in an e-mailed note to clients. “The weakness reflects a general slowdown and turn in sentiment that set in with the sharp rise in energy prices, disruptions from Japan, and to a lesser extent risk aversion stemming from the Greek fiasco.”

It’s almost as if the Obama administration has no clue how to deal with the economy or something.

In other news,  Republican presidential hopefuls Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney are wasting time dueling over ethanol subsidies in Iowa.

Democrats’ Christmas gift to us

A reminder of what happens when Democrats have control:

Payrolls decreased in 28 U.S. states and the unemployment rate climbed in 21, showing most parts of the world’s largest economy took part in the November labor- market setback.

North Carolina led the nation with 12,500 job cuts last month, followed by Massachusetts with 8,600 dismissals, and Ohio with 7,800, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Joblessness increased most in Georgia and Idaho, while workers in Nevada faced the highest rate in the country at 14.3 percent.

The report is consistent with figures on Dec. 3 that showed unemployment increased last month for the first time since August. The Federal Reserve’s pledge to buy an additional $600 billion of Treasuries by June and the $858 billion bill passed by Congress extending all Bush-era tax cuts for two years may help boost growth and cut unemployment.

Let’s keep in mind that the Pelosi/Reid Democrats have controlled Congress for the better part of four years.  And let’s not forget that tax-cuts for the middle class was bitterly held back in the name of Democratic class-warfare.  These facts need to be remembered and screamed from the rooftops by every so-called conservative Republican over the next two years.  How many conservatives Republicans will be willing to do that on our side?

Holiday greetings from the Federal Reserve

That is to say, if by “holiday greetings” you mean some rancid turkey and a serious case of heartburn:

Unemployment is set to remain higher for longer than previously thought, according to new projections from the Federal Reserve that would mean more than 10 million Americans remain jobless through the 2012 elections – even as a separate report shows corporate profits reaching their highest levels ever.

Top Federal Reserve officials project that the unemployment rate, now 9.6 percent, will fall only to about 9 percent at the end of 2011 and about 8 percent when the next presidential election arrives, in late 2012. The central bankers had envisioned a more rapid decline in joblessness in their previous forecasts, prepared in June.

The sober economic forecast comes despite signs that the recovery is picking up slightly. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that gross domestic product rose at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the three months ending in September, not 2 percent as earlier estimated. And there have been solid readings in recent weeks on job creation, manufacturing and retail.

But wait, there’s more:

It was these diminished expectations for growth that led Fed officials this month to announce plans to buy $600 billion in Treasury bonds in a bid to drive down long-term interest rates and pump up growth.

[...]

But most Fed officials expected the results of bond purchases “to help promote a somewhat stronger recovery in output and employment while also helping return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with the Committee’s mandate.” Some also thought the action would offer insurance against a further drop in inflation or against the “small probability” of persistent deflation.

But the [minutes of the last Federal Reserve meeting] also leaves little doubt that several Fed officials remain uneasy with the action. Some anticipated that they would have only a “limited” effect on the pace of recovery, arguing the action should only be taken if the odds of deflation “increased materially.”

And several “noted concern” that the action “could put unwanted downward pressure on the dollar’s value in foreign exchange markets” or “an undesirably large increase inflation.”

So not only are Fed officials implicitly acknowledging that nearly two years of Obamanomics are a complete failure, but that their fiscal policy, as encapsulated in Quantitative Easings I and II, are doing little, if  nothing to help it as well.

We’re in the best of hands, folks.

But you know who must really be feeling like an idiot this really hurts?  Jeff Sommer.

We Americans, of little faith

Despite constant harping by Democrats that the economy is being lifted from the doldrums, the message from the real world is a little more, um…real:

Consumer gloom in July reached its highest level since the recession was near the bottom amid fears that the expansion remains too weak to create many jobs, according to the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index out Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a gauge of small-business confidence retreated in June to a level typical of a “weak or recession-mired economy” as the sales outlook deteriorated sharply, the National Federation of Independent Business said Tuesday.

Political success owes a lot to perception and right now the perception by average Americans is that economically speaking, things are just as bad as they were when Obama took office.

In other words, trillions in dollars of new spending, billions in stimulus and a shiny new healthcare entitlement is not filling us with any sense of optimism.   And that shouldn’t be good is not good for Democrats.

Of course the stimulus was a bust

So much for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009:

Last Friday’s Department of Labor jobs report, which showed private sector job creation fell by 190,000 between April and May of this year [...]

In total the U.S. economy has now lost a net of 2.2 million jobs since President Barack Obama signed his stimulus bill, and his administration is now 7.2 million jobs short of what he promised his $862 billion stimulus would help create by 2010.

This morning on MSNBC, former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL) pressed prominent Keynesian economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University Jeffrey Sachs on whether it was too early to declare President Obama’s stimulus a failure. Scarborough had to ask the question twice, but Sachs finally relented: “It did fail.”

The one thing that sticks out in the early days of the Obama administration and its push for the stimulus bill was the focus on jobs.  Remember all the talk of “shovel ready” jobs that were part of public works projects that just needed that boost of Federal cash to get them off the ground?

Remember the Vice-President running around the country lying about the number of jobs “created or saved” on such-and-such project?

Meanwhile, the most glaring aspect of this bogus “recovery” is the lack of any job creation at all.   And they continue to lie about job creation and the “success” of the stimulus.

Smoke and mirrors, people.  Smoke and mirrors.