Realistic economic expectations

Posted on | July 9, 2009 | Comments Off

The New York Times reported today that people are growing impatient with how long it’s taking for the Obama Administration’s stimulus money (infrastruction spending) to hit the streets and start creating all those jobs he was talking about:

With unemployment already at 9.5 percent and likely to exceed 10 percent, much higher than White House officials predicted back in February, Mr. Obama has been facing attacks that his $787 billion stimulus program was either too timid or wrong-headed or both. Now, just five months after Congress agreed on the plan, with only a fraction of the money actually out the door, Washington is debating the need for a second round of stimulus amid economic and political crosscurrents.

I suppose it would be politically incorrect of me to suggest that we Americans would do ourselves a big favor by developing a somewhat longer time frame than the average toddler. Federal lawmakers are already engaged in spending ridiculously enormous sums of money that will put our great-great-great grandchildren up to their eyeballs in hock.

Do we really want more of that?

I get that people are in pain but can we at least give the original recovery plan a chance to kick in (money get out the door)?

Of course, the reason that everybody is breathing down the President’s neck about this is because of the fact that a bunch of people have lost their jobs and a bunch more are going to lose their jobs. People want to see the unemployment numbers turn around, and they want to see it yesterday.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out in my article for the OPEN Forum Blog (published yesterday), the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. Those new jobs are not going to materialize until the recovery is well underway.

That sort of stuff is not likely to play well with the nation’s employees but, once again, it pays for business owners (including microbusiness owners) to be aware of the good economic signs that have been coming down the pike.

Never mind what the lagging indicators are doing. The leading indicators have been climbing for the past two month!

I have a feeling that Joe Schmoe, regular working guy, will continue to suffer for some time yet. But I also have a feeling that independents, nonemployers, microbusiness owners — we are all going to start seeing a definite uptick very soon.

That’s for them as hasn’t seen it already.


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