"Obama Is The Detroit Lions Of Presidents"

Another lazy late July Monday so I thought I would celebrate the new NFL/Players agreement with the quote above that comes from an internet video interview on Yahoo with one of my favorite economic/political commentators, Howard Davidowitz.

I guess because he's entertaining and engaging - and right - Davidowitz is one of the few economic contrarians who has been given air-time on CNBC, Bloomberg TV etc over the past few years.  In the interview linked below, they discuss how miserably Obama has failed with his policies to revive the economy and, in fact, is seen on tape laughing about it: 

(Davidowitz) We've never been in a situation - that I've ever seen - where in a matter of a couple of years a guy (the President) increases the debt by 40%, GDP growth is on its way down, food stamps are up 40 - and to accomplish this this guy spent $4 trillion.

My other favorite quote is where Davidowitz comments that Obama is "laughing like a hyena [on tape]" over the degree to which his "shovel-ready" stimulus plan failed so miserably.  Davidowitz:  "the people unemployed are not laughing."  How about the people who paid for this?

Here's the link to the comments from Davidowitz, it's a little under five minutes:  LINK

The fact of the matter is that most of the jobs "created" during Obama's Presidency (and, to be sure, Bush's reign as well) have been manufactured by the fictitious accounting used by the bean-counters at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Real unemployment, which includes those not working but want a job plus those working part-time but would prefer to work full-time, is closer to 20%.  This is substantially higher than the 9% number fed to us by Big Brother.  Moreover, the size of the labor force as defined by the Government has declined quite a bit over the past few years.  This is because many people have simply given up looking for a job and instead had joined the growing ranks of food stamp recipients. 

As Davidowitz points out, the monthly Government jobs report will likely go negative again over the next several months.   Just recently companies like Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders have announced big job cuts.  This is real economy stuff - not Government fluff jobs - technology, industrial/defense, retail/consumer industries.  Many big banks and Wall Street firms have also announced big job cuts.

I'm not sure what this country can do to turn itself around other than to let the dollar decline to a level that would make our products, services and labor cost-competitive with that of the rest of the world.  Of course that would entail a substantial reduction in the standard of living to which we've become accustomed since WW2.  That decline is coming sooner or later anyway thanks to globalization.  BUT I do know that the "solutions" implemented, and then later laughed at when they fail by those implementing them, are going to make the eventual fall even more difficult and painful for everyone.