While the talking heads on financial TV continue to spout the idea that the economy is improving, the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey reveals that Americans are suffering, with 80% saying the economy is poor.
People are worried about unemployment first and foremost because while the headline unemployment rate is 9%, the real unemployment rate, including discouraged workers and part-time is double that. Hearing Hampton Pearson announce that non-farm payrolls increased 244,000 in April doesn’t give solace to the one in five that can’t find work.
The budget deficit has people concerned along with $4 a gallon gas, taxes, and the cost of housing.
More than half say it’s George W. Bush’s fault and a third pin the blame on the current president.
Ben Bernanke and the Fed are not cited in the CNNMoney.com report as being mentioned by the disgruntled 80%.
Neither the late Osama bin Laden or Muammar Gaddafi were blamed either.
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That’s “Gaddafi” or thereabouts, but definitely not “Gaffafi”
It appears the Greek Government are thinking the same way. Dump the Euro, then print money.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,761201,00.html
I’m sure the 1 in 7 people in the US on food stamps will be comforted to know that there is no inflation. After all, rising food prices don’t count.
The NFP figures are pretty much bullshit anyway once you account for births/deaths and McDonalds own contribution.
If government hadn’t attacked the private sector so fundamentally, there would be no more signs of recession today.
Our owners will generate just enough jobs to prevent a revolution.
Conscription?
DON’T GIVE THEM IDEAS.
Don’t encourage bw, he carries an adversarial view of society which does not allow him to see past his prejudices
Bill, go read Mises’s The Clash of Group Interests already, it’s like, super short
Since Keynes is dead in the long-run but we are alive, it follows logically that we can blame Keynes!
At least Americans believe that it is someone in Government who is to blame, even if they don’t realise that 80% of their malaise is the fault of the Federal Reserve Bank, 15% the fault of the politicians and 5% their own fault for voting for the clowns who then let Gloss-over Greenspam and Breaker Ben Bernanke do what they please for their Banking and other vested interest mates!
Well, I feel justified in blaming the Bush Jr. Administration as a whole – all they were was just a figure head for Corporate America. Just take a long, hard look at Dick Cheney’s stock holdings some time.
But really, someone in that Administration had to have done something seriously wrong to take a record-breaking surplus – a TRUE surplus! – and turn it into a record-breaking deficit.
It’s amazing when tv programs or articles have Alan greenspan on and treat him as this “expert” even when the subject is the housing crisis that he created.
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