has an extensive story out this morning about how our current "recovery" still looks, feels and smells like a recession. It rattles off some familiar but extremely relative data points about what's happening right now in the country, such as:
At the current rate of job creation, the nation would need nine more years to recapture the jobs lost during the recession. And that doesn’t even account for five million or six million jobs needed in that time to keep pace with an expanding population. Even top Obama officials concede the unemployment rate could climb higher still.
¶Median house prices have dropped 20 percent since 2005. Given an inflation rate of about 2 percent — a common forecast — it would take 13 years for housing prices to climb back to their peak, according to Allen L. Sinai, chief global economist at the consulting firm Decision Economics.
¶Commercial vacancies are soaring, and it could take a decade to absorb the excess in many of the largest cities. The vacancy rate, as of the end of June, stands at 21.4 percent in Phoenix, 19.7 percent in Las Vegas, 18.3 in Dallas/Fort Worth and 17.3 percent in Atlanta, in each case higher than last year, according to the data firm CoStar Group.
Pretty bleak indeed.
Yet throughout the country, and here in Tampa Bay, we keep on hearing from Republicans trying to throw Democrats out of office that it's because of "uncertainty"in Washington that is precluding businesses from hiring, because they're not certain what will come down next from the Obama administration and/or Congress.
Specifically this is said regarding whether or not the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that were passed in 2001 and 2003 will be extended, as well as ramifications from the admittedly extremely complex health care bill. Mike Prendergast, the Republican challenging Kathy Castor in District 11, has been saying this often on the campaign trail.
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2010.