Unemployment horror: When bad is good
Today's Financial News - Posted December 5, 2008
The nation was forced to digest a horrifying jobs report this morning. Just when we thought the economic news could not get much worse, it does. What impact will the news have on our nation’s politicians? I say it can only help.
By Andrew Snyder, TodaysFinancialNews.com
Baltimore – (TFN): Today’s horrific jobs report may be just what Detroit needs to win over Washington. During yesterday’s grilling on Capitol Hill, the Big Three CEOs found few sympathetic ears. But now that the nation is reeling from the news of more than half a million additional job losses, it will be tough for Congress to effectively slash even more jobs.
In case you have not heard the news, the nation’s employers canned 533,000 works in November. The figure is drastically worse than the 300,000 or so jobs we expected to read about. In fact, if each of those recently unemployed stood in a single line, it would stretch more than 100 miles.
The news is evidence that the economy is worse off than most expected. At the very least, it proves executives have a dim outlook for a quick turnaround. The higher the unemployment rate goes, now at 6.7%, the worse the outlook will be. It is no wonder the Dow is once again threatening to drop below the 7,000 level.
When bad is good
But some investors are arguing that today’s dismal figures are actually good news. In many ways, they are right.
First off, it will kick Congress into high gear. Going beyond the Detroit bailout debacle, today’s news is almost certainly going to renew talks of yet another major fiscal stimulus. Hopefully, a mile-long line of unemployment applicants will get our elected officials thinking of a plan that will actually help their constituents, instead of creating useless political fodder.
I remain hopeful we will see a strong infrastructure-based package come out of Washington by the end of January. We must stop focusing on a broken system and concentrate on creating a new system.
Not only am I not sure how many more times my truck can handle getting swallowed by a giant pothole, but I truly believe construction spending is the way to get the economy back on track. New roads, bridges and buildings require laborers, tools, vehicles, fuel, engineers, architects, surveyors, caterers, you name it.
From a philosophical and psychological level, news of huge layoffs may be what this country needs to jolt it into action. As millions of workers search for new jobs, the economy will shaken into an entirely new look. Just as we shake an Etch-a-Sketch to erase an ugly old picture, we need to shake the country to engage in a new economic mentality.
Think about what we have learned already. Copious amounts of debt are bad. Unions are evil. And the government is filled with selfish nitwits. Sadly, it took serious pain to point out or errors, but as the old saying goes, “no pain, no gain.”
The country is on its knees, but with time, we will grow into something stronger and leaner. That is, of course, if our politicians do not screw it up first.
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