Economy Still Struggling

I know what’s going to happen soon.  Republicans will, at some point, begin complaining that President Obama’s economic policies aren’t working – if they were, why would we still be in a recession.  That’s why President Obama continues to personally address the American people, explaining his administration’s moves and why they’re being taken.  The American people in turn recognize that recovering from this economic disaster will take time and patience.  Not endless amounts of either, but reasonable doses.  The most recent corporate earnings reports haven’t thrilled Wall St.  Big deal – they shouldn’t thrill Wall St.  The fundamentals are still recovering from decades of economic mismanagement – initiated by Republicans and supported by Democrats.

That’s why it’s no surprise that sales of existing homes in the U.S. fell 3% again last month.  Markets in the West recovered, selling homes at 23% more than last year’s numbers.   That’s a sharp recovery, but I’m not convinced it will be long lived.  Those markets were overpriced for many years before taking a hard tumble in this recession.  Did they fall far enough so that market fundamentals can support their prices?  Or are people still trying to squeeze unsustainable returns from their properties?

Continued economic weakness is the message in this article about additional unemployment news.  The Labor Department reported today that initial claims for unemployment compensation rose to a seasonally adjusted 640,000, up from a revised 613,000 the previous week.  More bad news: 6.1 million people continue to file claims for benefits.  Few companies are hiring – they won’t until the economic outlook improves.  That means we’re a long way away from recovery.  It’s a bad chicken-or-egg problem that more and more Americans are suffering under.  These claims mean that the unemployment figures for April are likely to go higher than March’s (which was over 15%).

Unemployment & Housing Numbers Still Bad

The ranks of the unemployed jumped in the last week, much more than those high-paid economists predicted. How, in this crummy economy, economists can miss all the job layoff announcements by companies in every sector is beyond me. Corporations did well in the 2001-2007 time frame. But they didn’t hire like they did in the past, despite their good fortunes. Which means when the economy headed south late last year and all of this year, those same corporations aren’t going to hire now. Unemployment grew by 34,000 people to 406,000. The unemployment rate remained steady at 5.5%, but is expected to hit 6% by early next year.

The way these numbers are counted and calculated is a joke. It’s not indicative of the real employment situation Americans face. I’ve read estimates that the unemployment rate is probably double what the Labor Department reports. Because after all, 5.5% sounds a lot better than 10%+, doesn’t it? More and more people are looking around their communities and realizing the actual numbers are worse that what’s reported. It’s why more Americans surveyed believe the economy is in worse shape than our elected officials do.

The number of existing homes sold in June fell 2.6% from May’s numbers. Once again, the number was larger than economists expected. The housing crisis is far from over. How are people going to buy new houses when they can’t afford the houses they’re already paying on and thousands are losing their mediocre jobs?

These are but a few of the wonderful things conservative economic policies give us!