For a political horror show, fast-forward to the summer of 2010: The unemployment rate is stubbornly high, hovering between 9.3 and 9.7 percent. Companies are wary about hiring more workers because the economy remains soft. Small businesses, which normally power a recovery, are caught in a credit squeeze.
In this scenario, the jobs outlook will remain bleak for another year. The unemployment rate will remain well above 8 percent in 2011. And the economy won’t bounce back completely for five years after that.
The Democrats, in our scary 2010 movie, will be heading toward the midterm elections hoping to preserve their 81-seat margin in the House. Vulnerable incumbents will be clamoring for more economic stimulus, but the Obama administration will be constrained by the huge budget deficits needed to bail out the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.
I wish that this economic forecast were just a bad dream after too much Thanksgiving turkey. But it’s drawn from the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s Nov. 3-4 meeting, released last week.
ever think that the folks at the top are holding their collective breath waiting to see what will happen with healthcare? a huge sector of our economy, waving in the political wind?
see Charles Krauthammer’s latest for an excellent run-down on that monstrosity.
Meanwhile, the Republicans will continue to shout NO to everything, and think this excuses them from having to think responsibly about anything.
And meanwhile, President Obama, running afoul of the law of unintended consequences may well continue to turn a year of recession into a decade of depression. Sad. Sad. Sad.
[i]Companies are wary about hiring more workers because the economy remains soft.[/i] Er, not exactly.
Companies, including ours, are wary about hiring more workers because we are faced on the one hand with a Cabinet vastly more lacking in business experience than any in at least a century, and on the other hand with a Congress and President far more profoundly anti-enterprise than any others in American history.
These are the people who have declared on multiple occasions that any corporate profit over 3.3% of sales was “excessive,” “unconscionable,” “greedy,” “intolerable,” and a few other choice adjectives.
I know I speak for many tens of thousands of small and medium businesses when I declare that we are not only cutting back on employee hours, but that we will not hire anyone new, not spend anything on equipment beyond the absolutely essential replacements, and not even consider expanding operations until Democrats no longer have unchallengeable control of Congress.
That is quite specifically and most vigorously partisan in this case, not because I think so very much of the Republicans, but because there are a disturbing number of Democrats who quite openly hate business, entrepreneurship, and people (like us) operating in that world. There is now a huge body of proposed legislation innately (and intentionally) crippling to innovation, profit, entrepreneurship, and success, and it is repeatedly pushed forward by radical Democrats. Until those people are no longer in a position of effective power … we will consider our business to be facing existential danger, and will act accordingly.
The greatest threat to our business is [i]not[/i] a decline in consumer spending as they retrench, repay debt, and build savings. The greatest threat to our business is the current control of Congress by functional socialists wearing the Democrat label.
The job situation will not improve until that threat no longer exists.
Dan, given the current politics that’s all they can do. They could propose the second coming and they have 0, zip, no ability to get it implemented. Quite frankly many politicians oppose what the other party offers simply because it is from the other party.
I don’t disagree at all with what Dan says. Sadly, they are doing exactly what the Democrats in Congress did when in the same situation – who were doing exactly what the Republicans did years before in the same situation. It seems worse to me now than in my early years, but one hears that same statement about politics from every generation, so maybe it just seems that way.
It seems to me the problems we are facing have been caused because too many were unwilling to say NO. It’s time our politicians learned the word. It’s easy, really. Purse your lips and say NNNNNOOOOOO! I could care less what party affilation the candidate carries – What I want to see is their bonafides as a true conservative. I hope we send the whole lot of them home and elect Dave Ramseys in their place. I am deeply saddened that I will need to wait 4 years to have the honor of voting to send Mary Landrieu home.
I agree with #4 – Bart Hall.
A shout out to Bart Hall’s comments.
Business people are holding on to everything that they can and putting it in reserve against the day of the locusts — Congress — enacting Cap and Trade, Healthcare “reform” [sic] and numerous other horrendous activities that will cost businesses muchos money and put more people out of jobs.