Mort Zuckerman, chairman of Boston Properties and editor in chief of US News is out today with a piece in the Financial Times called "America's jobless picture is alarmingly bleak". Here is a sample:
" We are drifting. We take comfort in bits of good news, but we are in dangerous waters; the Great Recession is being starkly revealed as a global crisis with the US, the traditional engine of recovery, sputtering on every cylinder. The US government responded with dramatic financial support by transferring money to the household sector. But outside of these transfers the personal income of Americans is still declining; the residential market remains stagnant at best; consumer growth is nominal. The only real energy in the economy has come from the cessation of inventory liquidation, which is now the main factor in rising industrial output and any modest improvement in the economy.
The mood of US households is despondent. In May only 11.3 per cent believed they would see their income rise in the following six months, while 16.6 per cent thought they would see it decline. This is the first time in over four decades that more people believe they will be worse off than better. Any massive fiscal and monetary stimulus that might reverse the trend is likely to be politically unsustainable given the growing concern over the exploding national deficit."
Zuckerman goes on to point out that the economy is not creating the jobs one would expect and that no effective policy to promote job growth has yet been undertaken.
As the oil slick spreads and destroys still more jobs, the prognosis is not a good one. There has to be a change in Washington to accomodate growth. Otherwise we will become a society where the majority live as wards of the state who gather handouts funded by an ever shrinking portion of the population. That is a prescription for disaster and the end of America as we know it.
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