robertreich.blogspot.com — Barack Obama is trying once again for balance. No president in modern times walks a tightrope as exquisitely as this one. His balance is a thing of beauty. But when it comes to this economy right now — an economy fundamentally out of balance — we need a federal government that moves boldly and swiftly to counter-balance the huge recessionary forces still at large.
dailykos.com — With the market up and the recession over for nearly a quarter, it sometimes seems that what we call the economy is impossibly detached from the lives of the people who live and work in that economy. It is. The question becomes, by measuring GDP are we measuring anything of worth? Are we measuring something that accurately reflects the economy? A growing number of economists think we need to change. Instead of measuring consumption as the mark of a strong economy, why not measure the quantity and quality of employment?
news.newamericamedia.org — The bad news is that the more than one out of three young blacks out of work matches the figure for joblessness at the peak of the 1930s Great Depression. The worse news is that the jobless figure for young blacks, especially young black males, is not much different from what it was even before the economic meltdown. During the Clinton era economic boom, the unemployment rate for young black males was double — and in some parts of the country — triple that of white males.
thenation.com — President Obama has always been too scattered and unfocused when it comes to addressing the primary social, economic and political challenge of his presidency: high unemployment. But he is starting to "get it," as is evidenced by a series of job creation proposals released by the White House. It is especially significant that he has picked up on the calls by labor unions and grassroots groups for using at least some of the $200 billion in left over Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money to encourage small businesses to expand and to promote hiring.
House of Representatives staffers who take the District's subway system to work are now confronted with a host of scary images as they exit the station: A forlorn Uncle Sam panhandling to pay off a $12 trillion debt; a stopwatch with the message that it would take 31,000 years for that stopwatch to tick off one trillion seconds, a poster with 16 digits symbolizing the debt, down to the penny, stre more »
A federal program of direct job funding, even at a time when unemployment is expected to exceed 10 percent for the next several months, is the third rail of any discussion about reducing unemployment. more »
On a conference call today with economists who blog and folks who blog on the economy, Speaker Pelosi sought to bridge the gap between progressive proponents of public investment to create jobs, and right-leaning Democrats touting austerity for immediate deficit reduction, by saying: "We will never have deficit reduction without job creation." more »
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