Monday, November 16, 2009

BARACK OBAMA

Meanwhile, The Economy Still Stinks

Back in July, Obama economic adviser Larry Summers was fishing around for good news on the economic front, and noted that “the number of people searching for the term ‘economic depression’ on Google is down to normal levels.’

Of course, Summers’ measuring stick was just telling us how many people wanted to know about an economic depression at that moment; it didn’t really tell us much about economic growth, job creation, income, business expansion, or any of that other stuff we miss so dearly. And that was back in the good old days when unemployment was only 9.4 percent.

But presumably, we could use Google searches for more relevant data. For example, you find a fascinating indicator when you type "will shut down" in Google News:

A central Florida day care, six Pfizer R&D sites, a newspaper in Arizona, GeoCities (the old web-hosting platform), libraries in the city of Colton, California, a manufacturing site of Red Wing Shoe Co., three paper mills in New York, Virginia, and Louisiana…

I mention this because ABC News is reporting, “The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted unrealistic data.”

The stimulus isn’t working, while the private sector is still looking pretty dismal. Obama wants to move on to health care and climate change, while he hasn't addressed Americans' top concern...

11/16 02:04 PMShare