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WASHINGTON (AFP) - American businesses added a meager 21,000 jobs in February, the government said, stunning analysts and shattering short-lived hopes for an end to the three-year jobs drought.

Reuters
The Labor Department report was the latest to dash hopes that employment was following the rest of the economy higher, leaving some economists to warn that robust hiring may still be some way off.

"The job market is stuck in a cycle of inertia," said John Challenger, head of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "The fact is, we are going to have to get used to slow job creation in this country."

Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, described it as an "unambiguously ugly report". Wall Street firms had forecast a February gain of 125,000 jobs and the market reaction was swift and sharp

Experts Date It to Bush; Bush Says It Was Clinton's

By Dana Milbank
Friday, March 5, 2004; Page A05 - Washington Post

The Bush administration, irked that the official arbiter of recessions continues to say the current downturn began on President Bush's watch, has unilaterally changed the official start of the recession to the last months of the Clinton administration.

A new Bush campaign ad released this week proclaims: "January 2001. The challenge: an economy in recession." This backs up the claim often made by Bush and top aides that they "inherited" an economic recession.

The only trouble with this assertion is the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, which does the official dating of recessions, says the downturn began in March 2001 -- early in Bush's presidency. NBER is examining revised economic statistics to see if the official date should be moved earlier, but spokeswoman Donna Zerwitz said there is "nothing imminent."

Gee, is anybody stupid enough to beleive that ANY President could have a major effect on the economy in just two to three months? It took most of Reagans eight years for the economy to start picking up, and the recovery was in full swing by the time Clinton took office, It took him seven years to chill it (look at Enron, they got caught on Bushs watch, but they made hay during the Clinton administartion) And now we're quibbling over Jan 20, 2001 to March???? Does anyone remember the Democrats accusing Bush of "talking down the economy"?????? They knew six months before the election that it was going to crater, and they wanted to blame it on someone who hadn't even got elected yet! Give me a break!

Lets see DMV, CW, I quote mainline news sources like Wastington Post, Reuters, AFP and you give me all the sites that either cater to Republican business executives or specialize in right wing propaganda kool-aid (which I'm guessing your are addicted to judging from the crap I see dissemintated on this board). Heck I was about to throw in a quote from Fox (aka Faux) News but felt the post was getting a bit long).

Also the statement that a president has little influence on the economy is such a trash and shows complete lack of common sense and economic knowledge. (the Bush Kool-aid must be strong these days..) The mere fact that all administrations engage in budget and tax proposals is fundamentally clear evidence of a concept called fiscal policy, a concept that every living breathing economist knows has major impact on the economy especially over a time period longer than a year. To deny this fact shows the effects of total and complete brainwashing on your part. IMHO the Bushes and their associates are simply morons when it comes to the economy and have now proven it twice, both father and son.

But why let facts get in the way of a good polotical position. In fact this administration and its pseudo news surrogates that you commonly read has gone so far in the direction of covering up facts and refusing to be accountable for their actions and obviously they done a great job of selling you on it. Especially through those surrogates like you list on those sites. Of course you could look at sources like AP, CNN, ABC, CBS, AFP, NPR, BBC, NBC (MSNBC) and major newspapers which are predominantly owned and influenced by right wing or right leaning corporate executives but at least try to look like they are objective.

Amazing how reactionary you get when presented with the truth. Can't you just accect the truth for what it is ..... under 30,000 new jobs in February. Bush was promising over 200,000.

At this point, the Dot-com bubble and 9-11's impact on the economy is ancient history and what we now have is the most lame recovery in American economic history. It's the molasses speed of this recovery that is directly attributable to Bush administration fiscal policy. Wall Street may be doing marginally ok but Main street is not. And no one mentions the millions that are no longer unemployed because their benefits have run out and their search for work is so futile that they've given up and hence by definition no longer unemployed. I challenge you to find any Bush administration economic report that documents these people. But it's pretty obvious this is happening when you reconcile jobs available with unemployment rates.

They foretold what was going to happen. Don't be bitter because you didn't listen and protect yourself.

CNN a rightwing soapbox? I don't think so.

You just don't want to admit facts.

You think it's the President's job to create a job or to ensure your investments are safe? You're the one that needs to wake up. I don't want any government that far up my ass!

dbguru,
The constant harping from the left about "tax cuts for the rich and corporations" ignores one basic fact. Corporations are NOT people. Let me repeat. Corporations are NOT people. Corporations are OWNED by people, but they aren't people. Very large corporations are owned by very large numbers of people. Some people own pieces of corporations directly in their stock portfolios. Some people own pieces of corporations through their stock mutual funds. HOwever, the largest owners of corporations are PENSION FUNDS, and the largest of those are STATE GOVERNMENT and UNION pension funds. So, when you complain about tax cuts benefiting corporations, you are really complaining that retirees are getting another tax break. Is this something that you really considered? Are you really against putting more money in grandma's pocket? Are you really against giving the retired Teamster more money in his golden years? I don't think you are against either one of those things, but you complain about lower corporate taxes that's exactly what you are complaining about.

dbguru,
I own 30% of a small business corporation. At the end of every year we owners face a dilemma. If we carry our profit - by profit I mean what's left after paying salaries and operating expenses - over into the next year it is taxed at the corporate rate of 30% In effect we pay a 30% penalty for being successful. If we pay bonuses to ourselves we reduce our corporate liability to zero and the effective income tax rate to something like 19% If we could keep the money in the company without paying a penalty we would do it and use the money to hire another salesman, or maybe two. If we could keep the money in the company without paying a penalty we could offer the salesmen a salary instead of straight commission. But, alas, we can't. Keeping the money in the company costs too much. Lower corporate taxes would help my company grow.

economics is a man-SPLINTERed thing. ba dum dum.

it truly has way too many twists and turns for me to even imagine keeping track of. it seems that virtually ANYTHING can and does influence the economy.

hell, many firms are just now starting to recover from the Y2k fears -- remember that? the biz i was in at the time took a veritable beatin' because of Y2K fears -- folks thought that at midnight, the world would grind to a screaching halt, so why invest more money into consulting, into employees, into product, into marketing, into hardware, etc., if it's all going to be useless when ****** drops his ball down at times square?

9/11 affected the economy.
Y2K affected the economy.

even janet jackson's erstwhile boob has an impact on the economy (ask folks who are in the business of producing equipment for those seven second delays; ask screenwriters; ask radio station owners; ask anyone in the music and entertainment industry)!

TR: i worked for an international consulting firm, mainly doing IT stuff, software and engineering consulting for biggie companies like ford, daimler-chrysler, boeing, ConEd, etc.

things just came to a screeching halt as far as anyone wanting to take on new projects or expand existing projects; lotta guys sat on the bench for a good long time until folks figured out that the world didn't end on 1 jan 2000.

00Camper,
you present clear evidence about what is wrong with current tax policy. It doesn't encourage job building coprorate growth. It simply encourages business owners to pocket whatever they can can stuff in their pockets to avoid taxes and still keep in business.

Robby
its evidence like this and a lot of other things that allow me to repeat what I said ealier in this thread

At this point, the Dot-com bubble and 9-11's impact on the economy is ancient history (why are you thinking I'm raising an issue about the 2001 economy??)
and what we now have is the most lame recovery in American economic history (now in 2003-4).
It's the molasses speed of this recovery that is directly attributable to Bush administration
fiscal policy. (as clearly evidenced by a lot of things including 00Campers post)

I'm not talking about what was happenning in 2001, I am clearly attributing job growth failure in late 2003 and 2004 to failures in Bush's fiscal and tax policy. These are unavoidable facts and unfortunately very avoidable failure (avoidable if we had the right economic leadership)

Only 21,000 new jobs in February, wonder how many of those are the new manufacturing jobs created by the Bush administration Department of Labor in the Burger flipping sector, a vital new manufacturing industry about to thrive in support of new and much more glowing economic reports. Aren't real issues and facts a bear to deal with... But perhaps there is hope for the RNC yet as the Ketchup industy is demonized as Theresa Kerry sends jobs overseas to support overseas burger manufacturing in foreign countries all over the world. Watch out... McDonalds may be hazardous to your political health!!.

Here's a funny one (don't take this too serious)
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i1946

On the list of news bureaus.. I said predominantly predominantly predominantly owned by right wing .....
OK

You Cite CNN
Heres a link
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners.asp#Concentrationofownershipiswheretheproblemlargelylies

And here is an excerpt from that link


Political bias can also creep in too. Media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) did a study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in the year 2001 in which they found that "92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican." While of course this is not a complete study of the mainstream media, it does show that there can be heavy political biases on even the most popular mainstream media outlets.

A year-long study by FAIR, of CNN's media show, Reliable Sources showed a large bias in sources used, and as their article is titled, CNN's show had Reliably Narrow Sources. They pointed out for example, "Covering one year of weekly programs [December 1, 2001 to November 30, 2002] with 203 guests, the FAIR study found Reliable Sources' guestlist strongly favored mainstream media insiders and right-leaning pundits. In addition, female critics were significantly underrepresented, ethnic minority voices were almost non-existent and progressive voices were far outnumbered by their conservative counterparts."

OK let me review your scenario 00Camper. If you report your companies profits as earned, keeping the money in the company over time to lay the foundation of financial resources to hire somebody help grow your company, you essentially have to pay a tax penalty as opposed to paying yourself a bonus. I believe that is what you said.

I'm concerned about tax policy as a whole and am really concerned when at the small business level that owners are incentivized to pay themselves rather than build resources to grow the business and productivity by expanding jobs. It's not just about tax cuts, its about tax policy for a whole. In this area I really believe Kerry will do better for our economy in providing incentives for small businesses, themselves to grow, much moreso to the benefit of our economy and community, rather than focus on growing the personal wealth of small business owners as Bush does.

This is a complex issue where IMHO simple solutions are not always right. We haven't even gotten into the health care situation which also contribute huge disincentives to hire people. I think we need innovative ideas which go to the core of incentivizing small business growth and small business employment growth. I guess we'll just disagree on the point that simple cross the board corporate tax cuts are the answer. Sometimes the simple solution is not always the best solution. From what I've heard in Kerry's speeches and positions I think he is much more likely to embrace some of these innovative and more effective answers to situations like yours.

(Nice discussion!!)

DB

I would like to add the following :

http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0903/sehrgrosse/large-smiley-030.gif

Really Robby... I do respect your opinion but you make some extreme assertions that seem to be quite fearful in their motivation. Listen, Democratic administrations have been good for the economy and good for business, except for Carter. During Carter's administration I felt his economic and foreign policy sucked and even supported Reagan and Dole for a while. Heck I even caucused for my county Republican convention for Dole in '88. But the Bushes have made me a Democrat, pure and simple.

I'm not a bleeding heart liberal. I'm a left leaning moderate. I even voted for a Republican senator (Slade Gorton) in the last election. I just think the Bushes and especially W. have really gone way too radically right on the economy, social issues and reckless in foreign policy to support. That's what scares me.

Very specifically.... George W. Bush, his inner circle and operatives really really scare me.

I made a killin the last couple years...

I only got to claim one child from the divorce out of 3... then found out the ex had claimed her also... well I wont go into details but you get bonuses from the IRS for turning in Frauders.... :0)~~~

Hog