Slate Editorial: Jobs Are on the Way! The pessimists are wrong.

Slate ^ | 12/15/2009 | Daniel Gross

[SeekAndFind]

For most of 2009, pundits on both the left and right have insisted that the programs enacted to bring the financial system back from the brink wouldn't—and couldn't—work. And they have been wrong. They said the TARP would throw good money after bad, but now Bank of America, recently a basket case, is paying back $45 billion in TARP funds—with interest. They said the stimulus passed in February was way too small to halt the economic decline. Actually, it has short-circuited the recession. The economy shifted from shrinking at a 6.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter to expanding at a 2.8 percent rate in the third quarter. "This growth has been better and stronger than we expected, than anyone expected," says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Skeptics are now focused on the next big economic problem we face: unemployment. The numbers have been dismal. America has lost 7.2 million jobs, and the unemployment rate in November was 10 percent. For African-Americans, the rate was 15.6 percent, and more than one in four teens are out of work. Economists believe the unemployment rate will persist at 10 percent through 2010.

But jobs are on the way, and sooner than you think. Not enough to make everybody happy, of course, or to reach anything approaching full employment. But the data suggest that the economy, now growing at a rate above its historical trend, may be creating more jobs than are being lost.

[GOP_Resurrected]

I’m loath to say it, but this cretin is basically correct in his forecast, just mistaken about the causes.

Not even the most ardent supply sider ever argued it was impossible to create a single job with the stimulus. Just one government contract to refurbish a bridge can create some construction jobs. The argument was, and even the Keynesians concede, that stimulus effects effectively “borrow” from future growth, as well as imposing the interest expense for the debt incurred. Fidelity did an analysis of the stimulus and found roughly half of it to not have any immediate impact.
We’re recovering, but the best thing the government could have done aside from the banking aspects of TARP is nothing.

[jersey117]

Yep. ACORN should be at full temporary employmemt come census time.

[familyop]

I doubt that “jobs are on the way,” because we (the lowly “consumers”) aren’t going to be buying much of anything for a very long time. Instead, we’ll have fun while working at our little, backyard production hobbies (like designing things, casting steel parts, etc.). See y’all on the other side of the big default. ;-)

[familyop]

"Jobs are on the way all right—we will need people to re-build Houston and Chicago when the terrorist attacks blow them up."

Sure. Simply add the costs to the deficit and hasten the big default. After the default, we'll have a chance for better business, political and academic leadership instead of the business-political-academic families ruling over us now.