So the US Labor Department’s latest figures indicate that we’ve risen to 9.8% unemployment here in America.
During the Depression we reached over 20%.
When Ronald Reagan took office the Oval Office away from Jimmy Carter it continued to climb to around 11% before dramatically starting back down.
Economies don’t shift for the good very quickly. Like steering a huge ship or sending corrective signals to a satellite millions of miles away, you make adjustments, and you wait, and you wait some more for the anticipated results.
George Bush had unemployment running at 4.5% and some were bemoaning a lack of “good” jobs. Amazing how quiet those same people are now. The silence is deafening.
In any event, we have to ride the current situation out and not lose our heads. The President is not God, or even a magician. Eventually things will turn around. They may even get a little worse before they get better.
But honestly, we need to learn from our experience and never again forget to appreciate the good times when we’re swimming in the midst of them. What we had from 2000 to 2008 was unspeakably better than some allowed us to believe. How tragically hollow their rhetoric sounds now.
Recessions are bad enough. Willfully distorting public perception may be worse.
BillKeane Perceptions 