Earthside Comments: Oh, how these Bushites can distort, mislead and lie. 'No recession' in the U.S. says Bush's Commerce Department.
There are three kinds of lies Mark Twain told us: "Lies, damn lies and statistics."
We're in a recession ... and it is getting worse ... no matter how the Bush bureaucrats massage the numbers.
Take the first report here. The delusion is breathtaking; a mega-transnational corporation like General Motors can lose 3.3 BILLION dollars and the stock speculators buy more GM stock because the loss "beat expectations." Sheesh. No wonder folks are cynical about big business.
More revealing about the sad state to which Bush and the radical Republicans have dragged the economy is the re-introduction of the one-year Treasury bond to finance the record federal government deficit. Besides the lies that sunk us into Iraq, the other great shameful Bush legacy will be the borrow-and-spend ocean of debt his decisions brought upon us and our children and grandchildren.
Finally, what an indication of decline can be more revealing than that government at all levels is the employer of last resort and is hoped to be the cushion for the pain of recession. Well, we got news -- when tax revenues plummet because working folks cut back on purchases or lose their private sectors jobs (they'll keep going to China and India, you know), those government jobs will disappear, too.
It is a fine mess, Bush has got us into.
Link: GM Posts Loss of $3.3 Billion on Weak US Auto Market, Charges | Associated Press/Yahoo! Finance
General Motors Corp. struggled to a $3.3 billion first-quarter loss, due in part to a weak U.S. market, a strike at a major parts supplier and plummeting sales of sport utility vehicles and pickups.
The nation's biggest automaker also cut its industrywide U.S. sales outlook for the year. The company disclosed earlier this week it was cutting production of some of its slow-selling trucks and SUVs.
But its earnings excluding one-time items beat Wall Street expectations, and its shares rose more than 9 percent in morning trading.
Link: Administration Brings Back One-Year Treasury Security | Associated Press/Yahoo! Finance
The Bush administration, moving to cope with soaring budget deficits, says it is bringing back the one-year Treasury bill that it stopped issuing seven years ago when the budget was in surplus.
The administration said Wednesday it would begin selling the one-year bill, also referred to as a 52-week bill, at an initial auction in June. New one-year securities will be auctioned every four weeks.
The government is looking for various ways to borrow the billions of dollars in extra cash it will need to cover a budget deficit that is expected to jump to an all-time high this year, surpassing the old mark of $413 billion set in 2004.
A big part of the increased borrowing reflects the need to pay for economic-stimulus rebates to 130 million households. The government began disbursing the payments on Monday in an effort to give the economy a jump start.
The government stopped issuing the one-year securities in February 2001, a year when the government recorded a surplus of $127 billion. That was the fourth consecutive surplus but was also the last time the government's books were in the black. The budget was pushed back into the red by a recession, increased spending to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and, Democrats contend, by President Bush's first-term tax cuts.
Link: Hiring Leaps in Public Sector | USATODAY.com
Federal, state and local governments are hiring new workers at the fastest pace in six years, helping offset job losses in the private sector.
Governments added 76,800 jobs in the first three months of 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
That's the biggest jump in first-quarter hiring since a boom in 2002 that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. By contrast, private companies collectively shed 286,000 workers in the first three months of 2008. That job loss has led many economists to declare the country is in a recession.
Job numbers for April, out Friday, will show if the trend is continuing. Some economists say a government hiring binge could soften a recession in the short term.
"Government jobs are an important cushion for the economy when the private sector falters," says North Carolina State University economist Michael Walden.
But the job expansion could later cause financial problems for governments that are spending too much.
"More hiring has nothing to do with good government or economic policy," says economist Kenneth Brown, research director at the Rio Grande Foundation in Albuquerque. "It has everything to do with government being slow to react to economic change."
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