Second Stimulus

usnews.com — We are now looking at unemployment numbers that undermine any confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. That's bad enough. But here are nine reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5 percent unemployment rate indicates.

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blogs.usatoday.com — The latest job numbers are not good. It is clear that the recession is going to be much deeper than most economists had expected. While Republicans are eager to proclaim President Obama's stimulus program a failure, unless we want double-digit unemployment for years to come, we will need to press ahead with a much bigger dose.

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nytimes.com — ed in a pot of cold water that is gradually heated, never realizes the danger it’s in and is boiled alive. Real frogs will, in fact, jump out of the pot — but never mind. The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep up on you a bit at a time. And creeping disasters are what we mostly face these days.

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robertreich.blogspot.com — The so-called "green shoots" of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed.

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nytimes.com — As soon as the Obama administration-in-waiting announced its stimulus plan — this was before Inauguration Day — some of us worried that the plan would prove inadequate. And we also worried that it might be hard, as a political matter, to come back for another round. Unfortunately, those worries have proved justified.

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truthdig.com — Depending on which state and the sort of triggers that apply to benefits, hundreds of thousands of workers laid off early in the downturn are soon to be left without the basic sustenance of an unemployment check. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. In no contemporary economic crisis — not even those that unfolded on the Republicans’ watch — has Congress left the unemployed completely in the lurch. So some sort of spending package — call it stimulus, call it stopgap emergency aid, whatever works — is going to have to be passed.

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huffingtonpost.com — Several events of the past week should be a wake-up call to the Obama administration. Bottom line: the medicine isn't working. Stronger stuff is needed.

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thenation.com — If current conditions continue, we will head not just toward a jobless, and a manufacturing jobs-less, recovery but also toward an even more weakened economic base that is incapable of sustaining a vibrant middle class. And yet the conditions will continue unless the administration addresses two serious shortcomings in its economic program.

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