Another Possible Reason For Enthusiasm Gap?

A lot has been made of the “enthusiasm gap” that might or might not exist between Republican Teabaggers eager to take our country back to the 1750′s and the Democrats who would prefer to keep moving forward into the 2000′s.  To some extent, I think the enthusiasm gap does exist.  I have provided brief examples in the past few weeks that could help in deciding whether the gap exists and whether it should exist.

Here is the latest:

Mortgage companies enrolled in the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure-prevention initiative may be receiving taxpayer funds despite not having a legal right to the home or to the mortgage, a top Treasury Department official revealed Wednesday.

But despite faulty or missing paperwork, the Obama administration allows mortgage companies to boot homeowners from the program, sticking the borrowers with massive bills that often leave them worse off.

Call me a wild-eyed liberal, but when a Democratic President who campaigned on fixing the economic disaster we were hurtling towards does more to help out those who set us on the course for disaster instead of the rest of us who, for the most part, were simply trying to lead our lives, well, I think you might be able to guess what the result is.  How enthusiastic should those homeowners be toward the President or his administration?  Obama has been riding the campaign trail for fellow Democrats pretty hard since Labor Day, telling crowds that his administration stopped the U.S. from going into another Great Depression; telling crowds that his administration fights for the little person; telling crowds that the bankers should be held accountable for their actions.

Stump speeches are all well and good, President Obama.  But when the banks who first offered loans to people who they didn’t check to ensure could afford them then bundled them up (without the requisite paperwork) and sold them to make a profit, then bought insurance policies on the loans, bundled those up and sold them to make more of a profit, then bet short on the packages because they knew they were worthless to make even more of a profit, then got taxpayer money to bail them out from the mess they created now get more taxpayer money to illegally kick people out of their homes, how much support can you really expect from those homeowners and taxpayers?

Especially when your administration hasn’t forced the banks to actually unravel those packages and see how worthless they really are?  Those bad mortgage default swaps should be fully accounted for on the banks’ ledgers.  Yet your administration has allowed the banks to play accounting games so the losses don’t show up.  Are we really to believe that the only entities who didn’t suffer as a result of the mortgage crisis were the banks?  They didn’t turn unprofitable in the past 3 years; they’ve continued to set record profits.  How glad are American voters supposed to be about that?  By the way, those bad packages will have to come due sometime.  And if your administration continues to kick that can down the road, like you have to so many other cans in the past two years, the result when they do come due will be many times more painful and devastating to the American economy than if they had been handled in the past 2 years.

But by all means, keep campaigning and telling Americans that everything will be alright with you and your buddies in charge.  You didn’t create this mess, but by not taking responsibility for it during your term (much like Afghanistan), the mess will become defined as yours in the annals of history.  Perhaps taking care of the multiple crises you face can take a higher priority in the next two years than you chasing down non-existent Republican Teabaggers who will compromise with you.  They’ve told you there will be absolutely no compromise.  Believe them at their word and start moving this country forward again, Mr. President.

Thanks For The Awesome Job Market, Cons

Any Con worth their salt will tell you that the “free-market” will fix everything!  Their zeal to cram their fake religion down everybody’s throats led to the collapse of the U.S. economy in this first decade of the 21st century.  But there is a huge disconnect.  Thanks to both Cons and Democrats looking out for their Wall St. benefactors, most Americans haven’t and won’t feel anything close to a recovery for a long, long time.  While Wall St. has posted stunning gains since their lows earlier this year, millions more Americans have continued to lose their jobs and their livlihoods.

How bad have things gotten for the real average American?  How about a look at a paper published last month by Advance Realty and Rutgers: America’s New Post-Recession Employment Arithmetic.  Here are some choice figures for you to chew on [emphasis mine]:

• The combination of a weak economic expansion sandwiched between two recessions (2001, and 2007–2009) produced what will be a lost employment decade. As of August 2009, the nation had 1.3 million (1,256,000) fewer private sector jobs than in December 1999. This is the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s that America will have an absolute loss of jobs over the course of a decade.

• To put this new millennium experience into perspective, during the final two decades of the twentieth century, the nation gained a total of 35.5 million private-sector jobs. During the current decade, America appears destined to lose more than 1.7 million private-sector jobs.

• This 1.3 million annual increase in the labor force means that in terms of private-sector payroll employment, the nation has to create an estimated 920,000 jobs per year.  Adding this to the actual private-sector job losses accumulated during the 20 months (to date) of recession equates to an August 2009 employment deficit of 8.6 million jobs. Given conservative estimates of further employment declines (even if the recession ends in the third quarter of 2009) and the continued increase in the labor force, the nation’s employment deficit could approach 9.4 million private-sector jobs by December 2009.

• Erasing this deficit will require substantial and sustained employment growth. Even if the nation could add 2.15 million private-sector jobs per year starting in January 2010, it would need to maintain this pace for more than 7 straight years (7.63 years), or until August 2017, to eliminate the jobs deficit! This is approximately 50 percent greater than the length of the average post–World War II expansion (58 months).

The “free-market” cannot and never will fix this.  It’s going to take the concentrated effort of the federal government working with the private sector to pull us out of this disaster.  Thanks again, Cons!

[h/t MB]