Slashdot Mirror
Last Pre-Election Jobs Report Released
September's jobs report notes a gain of 96,000 jobs, and a downward revision for August from 144,000 to 128,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.4% (about even to Nixon's and Clinton's when they were reelected), while another 236,000 jobs were added in a periodic revision to the total, leaving Bush at a deficit of 585,000 jobs from where he started. If he averages 150,000 jobs for the last four months of his term, he will net positive job growth. The effects of the recent hurricanes were not possible to determine at this point, the report said. This will surely be featured prominently in tonight's second Presidential debate (starting at 9 p.m. Eastern).
Economists have predicted the economy will continue to get better despite who is elected.
The entire economy problem can be traced back to the Dot-Coms. There is no 'quick fix' after a bubble bursts. If you don't have an economics degree, don't start spouting crap.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
The basic theory of how Bush is ruining the economy is that the budget deficits & the growing international disdain for America (generated by the President) are deflating the economy by discouraging international investment in America. You might not think that international investment is very important to the American economy, but you just have to consider the trade deficit to know that it is. Afer all, by definition the trade deficit means that there is net a outflow of money in the form of direct commerce. If the trade deficit alone defined the financial landscape, America would spend itself into oblivion.
Fortunatly, that is not the case, foreign investment in the United States takes many forms (not just the purchase of American hard assets, but also of American securities, and currency), and often more than offsets the trade imbalance. One of the better theories on the 90's boom was that a weak international economy (compared to the US) + international respect for the only remaining Superpower + Clinton's fiscal responsibility all mixed together to create a bonanza of investment (so much, that we ended up with a crisis of bad investments, but that's another story).
That this flow of foreign money has been greatly reduced is, no doubt related to 9/11, but many would argue that the reduction is because of how we reacted, not because of the event itself. Our response was the beginning of an internatational disillusionment that continues to this day. The high rate of exchange between the Euro and the Dollar is a quick way to see the effect. The exchange is where it's at because of the balance of people who would rather hold their investments in the Euro vs people who want to hold their investments in dollars. There's even some evidence that Bush is actually directly pushing for this imbalance because he mistakenly believes that manufacturing is the core of the economy and is trying to boost that sector. To many, it would just be another example of how he's out of touch with reality. Anyway, I'm Am Not An Economist, but I am a Democrat, so take my analysis with the usual grain of salt.