Marking the anniversary of the $787 billion stimulus bill, Obama said last week, “One year later, thanks to the Recovery Act, we can stand here again and say that a second depression is no longer a possibility.”
A second depression is no longer a possibility? I wonder how much longer Americans are actually letting their government lie to them straight into their faces…
Let’s have a look how the past year went after the first stimulus bill was signed. The first, $787 billion stimulus package was signed in order to “lift the US out of the recession”. Shortly afterward, another $50 billion was poured out for American homeowners who were facing foreclosure. Just last December 2009, Congress passed an additional package of $155 billion. However, after all that spending, for some reason, claims of job creation and economic growth does still sound very unbelievable. How many jobs are actually created from all stimulus money? Recovery.gov reports a shockingly low number of jobs created based on zip codes.
Ever since the recession began, the US has lost more than 8 million jobs and in January 2010 alone, 20,000 more jobs are lost. According to the White House, 95,000 jobs per month will be created in 2010. With 20k jobs lost in the first month alone, it doesn’t look like the year is off to a good start. Even more horrifying, just last week, the US Labor Department recorded 473,000 new jobless claims. That is an increase of 51,000 claims from only the previous week!
Now let’s take a look at the mortgage industry. 4.6% of all mortgage loans are in foreclosure, 5.1% of all mortgages are more than 90 days delinquent and a whooping 50% of $1.4 trillion in commercial loans are under water.
Don’t forget that America is facing a national debt of $12.4 trillion, yet Obama signed a law just this month to increase the limit of public debt to $14.3 trillion. Obama’s budget deficit is $1.6 trillion this year and despite this number, the administration are still planning to add to the burden all kinds of costs such as the environmental agenda, military commitments, health care costs and all those Obama-inspired social initiatives. The best way right now to stem the growth of the national debt and budget deficit is to massively cut spending, but with all the agendas above, it is highly unlikely that the administration is going to do that.
With all this lying heavily in the economy gloom, when Obama said that “a second depression is impossible”, it is difficult for me to see that this is not BS.
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