Goldman Sachs: Jobs Crisis Will Continue for Foreseeable Future - FDL

[WillyT]

Goldman Sachs: Jobs Crisis Will Continue for Foreseeable Future
By: David Dayen - FDL
Saturday July 16, 2011 10:25 am

<snip>

Goldman Sachs may be a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money, but as macroeconomic analysts they’re usually pretty solid. Which makes sense, because macroeconomics smells a lot like money. But if you look retrospectively at their forecasts, they generally get things right. Which is why everyone should be pretty frightened by their most recent analysis:

We have cut our estimates for real GDP growth in the second and third quarter of 2011 to 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively, from 2% and 3.25%.

Even excluding any further changes we now expect the unemployment rate to come down only modestly to 8.75% at the end of 2012.

High-frequency information on overall economic activity has continued to fall substantially short of our expectations. Some of this weakness is undoubtedly related to temporary factors, namely supply chain disruptions and (the temporary part of) the oil shock. But the slowdown of recent months goes well beyond this.

Goldman even goes so far as to say there’s a possiblity of a second recession.

If you’re a political reporter, particularly a right-leaning one like Jim Pethokoukis, you chuckle and marvel at what good news this is for Republicans. If you have an ounce of actual humanity, you see this as an unmitigated catastrophe. By the end of 2012, we will be five years on from the start of the Great Recession. And unemployment will still be at the unacceptably high level of 8.75%, according to this forecast.

<snip>

Much More: http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/16/goldman-sachs-jobs-crisis-will-continue-for-foreseeable-future/

:nuke:

:kick:

[21st Century FDR]

1. Predicting the reactions to this thread

Given some of the more ridiculous threads I've seen this week, I'll guess that Firedoglake is bashed in this one far more than the criminal economic terrorists of Goldman Sachs.

[dkf]

3. Those are just the messengers.

But you are right that the messenger seems to be of more importance than the data presented in many cases.

[Lorien]

12. They only attack the messengers when the data is true

and they don't want the truth out there.

[dkf]

2. Infrastructure jobs are too slow to fix this too.

Now what?

[TheWraith]

4. Did they "expect" the economy to implode a couple years ago? No?

Then I'll put a shitload of salt on whatever they're expecting.

[grasswire]

7. now now

Obama just said that we should leave the worrying to professional politicians, because we have too much on our plate to be informed about economics.

[somone]

5. Recommended

[tularetom]

6. Recommended to counter the expected anti-FDL bombardment

[somone]

8. Recommended

[nashville_brook]

9. k and r

[Imajika]

10. If the unemployment rate is really 8.75% in November 2012...

...Obama very well may lose.

That will just be unacceptably high to the American public. An 8.75% unemployment rate would make it higher than the 8.1% it was when President Obama took office.

We really have to hope the economy gets going or we risk the right wing holding the House and taking over both the White House and Senate. There is time left to prevent this, but that is exactly what is sitting on the horizon if we can't get this economy at least noticably moving in the right direction.

[banned from Kos]

11. Well, get ready for 16 month of the following GOP lies:

1- "too many regulations"
2- "Obama is anti-business"
3- "Obamacare won't let businesses hire"
4- "businesses don't know where taxes are going"

These lies are not handled well by Dems for the most part - unfortunately. And that is sad because they are old lies repackaged.