The fear economy?

I love reading all of these articles about how the reason the economy isn’t picking up because the American consumer is “afraid.” Like this one from CNN.

What is it that all of these pundits fail to understand? The reason Americans aren’t spending, the reason for the fear about the economy is…well, because in real world terms, the economy sucks. Look, the President can talk all he wants about how the economy could be worse. He can pat himself on the back all for a stimulus package that only stimulated the national debt, but those of us who don’t live in big mansions in the District of Columbia understand one very vital thing: there aren’t any jobs out there. And the few that do exist have more intense competition than ever before. As noted in this article from Daily Finance, the US Department of Labor’s unemployment statistics amount to books-cooking. While the government touts a 9.5% unemployment number (bad enough), the actual unemployment rate looks to be closer to 22%. If you or I tried to pass off that type of accounting, we’d be in prison.

To put it simply: until people start getting hired again, nobody is going to be spending anything beyond what is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, the one thing the current administration has displayed is an absolute disregard for getting folks hired. Why else would they be pushing the largest tax hike in history on the nation? Why would they talk about how wonderful it was to save GM – when GM just offshored another 32,000 jobs? Why would they talk about how they love the technology sector, while Verizon is in the middle of laying off over 24,000? That’s 56,000 jobs gone in 10 days from just 2 corporations, but they’ll never show up in the official DoL statistics.

Until this administration stops putting nonsense like “climate change” on the front burner and starts getting serious about job creation, the economy will continue to free fall. The object lesson in job creation can be found pretty easily, too – if Obama just opens up a history book. In 1962, President Kennedy spurred job creation by reducing income and corporate taxes and reducing regulation. In 1981, President Reagan did the same. And in 1995, President Clinton did the same, again. President Obama should also note that two of those presidents were Democrats – funny how job creation understands only one ideology. It’s not the one the current President espouses, though – so I guess we’re stuck int he “Fear Economy” until 2012.