lilpeepers wrote:

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dawn9476 wrote:

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lilpeepers wrote:

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Spin.

This bill had to be approved before anyone had time to read it and Sherrod Brown was flown in at midnight after his mother's wake to make the final vote.

At the time we were told we had to act NOW in order to save us from economic disaster. Without this bill, we would see unemployment rates rise to over 8%.

Funny...with this bill passed unemployment is at 9.4%. Where are these shovel-ready jobs?

Unemployment is soon to rise even more as profitable car dealerships are forced to close, against their will, as this administration picks winners and losers.

Winners are those who donated to BO's campaign. Losers are those who didn't.

And if we had gone with McCain's plan which was to do nothing. unemployment would probably be well into the double digits. And all those dealerships would probably have gone out of business months ago because McCain would have done nothing to help the auto industry. He would have just let them go under. GM and Chrysler wouldn't even exist right now.

Perhaps they shouldn't exist as they do today. The economy is cyclical and always comes back. The weak dealerships would fail and the healthy ones would thrive. Instead, healthy dealerships are getting pink slips because they didn't support and donate to the Dems.

I haven't heard much about this, but caught a bit on Fox & Friends this morning. Gretchen Carlson's parents own a dealership that has been in the family for 80+ years and is profitable. They got the notice that their dealership will be closed. It's the Administration picking winners and losers.

As for the unemployment rate....we were told that if we didn't pass this Stimulus bill NOW, unemployment would reach 8%. Guess what.....we're now at 9.4%

God Bless Joe Biden for being honest....."Some of the money has been wasted".

US jobless claims, retail sales signal slow recovery

US reports on jobless claims and retail sales suggest the world's biggest economy remains on a path toward stabilisation. But a sustained recovery appears months away.

Retail sales increased 0.5 per cent last month, the Commerce Department said, largely in line with Wall Street expectations. But much of the increase was due to petrol prices, which are up about 28 per cent over the past six weeks. When that price effect is excluded, sales barely rose.

"A meaningful consumer recovery remains some way off," said Paul Dales, economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

Still, the retail sales data suggest that, at a minimum, the recession is moderating.
GDP plunged 6.1 per cent in the first quarter and 6.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Economists generally expect GDP to decline in the 1 per cent to 3 per cent range this quarter before growing again in the second half of the year.

Automobile sales, a key barometer of the willingness of consumers to make big-ticket purchases, climbed 0.5 per cent last month. But otherwise spending seemed concentrated in essential areas like food and clothing. Sales fell at electronic, furniture, general merchandise and sporting goods stores.

And a robust consumer-led recovery seems unlikely anytime soon. The economy continues to shed jobs, weekly jobless claims figures suggest, albeit at a less rapid clip than at the start of the year. That should in turn keep a lid on consumer spending, a vital source of growth for both the US and global economies.

Initial claims for jobless benefits slid 24,000 to 601,000 in the week ended June 6, the Labour Department said in its weekly report. Jobless claims have fallen by more than 40,000 in the last four weeks and are now at their lowest level since January.

"It is evident that initial claims are slowly declining, a development that typically comes near the end of a recession," said Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase.

However, total claims -- those drawn by workers for more than one week in the week ended May 30 -- jumped 59,000 to 6,816,000, the 19th-straight record high and an indication of how hard it is for laid-off workers to find new jobs.

Including extended benefit and other federal programs, the total number of people collecting jobless benefits was almost 8.5 million in the May 23 week. That number isn't adjusted for seasonal fluctuations.

Last week, the government reported that the US lost 345,000 non-farm payroll jobs last month, the smallest decline since September. However, the unemployment rate climbed 0.5 percentage point to 9.4 per cent, a quarter-century high.

"The takeaway (for the jobless claims report) is that we should continue to see payroll losses moderate but unemployment keep rising, though the pace of increase in unemployment may start to abate," Mr Reinhart said.

Meanwhile, businesses continue to cut inventories aggressively in April, a Commerce Department report showed. Inventories fell 1.1 per cent, a slightly larger drop than expected. Business sales slid by 0.3 per cent in April, and were down 17 per cent year over year.

The inventory-to-sales ratio fell slightly, an indication that inventory levels are getting leaner. That, said Ken Mayland of ClearView Economics, suggests there could be spot shortages by year-end if demand returns more quickly than firms are able to ramp up output.

"By year-end, I foresee a scramble to get production higher," he said.