It’s the end of the third quarter of 2012, which is a decent time to look back and see where we are. Economic news has been incredibly mixed lately, which following our mantra that good news is bad news means that we really don’t know what to think. So let’s not try to think too hard and look ahead as we look backward at a strange quarter all around.
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Tag Archives: Election
The Big Fight
The conventions are over and the election is less than two months away. That can only mean one thing – voters in Florida and Ohio would be better off not watching any teevee. Who is likely to win? The race is shaping up to be Obama’s to lose, although it’s unclear how the US House or other key races will come out.
It’s time to make a few predictions as to how it will go – and what we should be watching for. That way you can make fun of me later. Here are what I consider to be the key points. Ready?
Tale of Two Reports
It was the best of reports, it was the worst of reports. The story of jobs in the USofA continues to wind down like a Dickens novel, crammed of details and well defined moments lush with feeling and energy but lacking a strong, driving plot. We know when it ends, of course – somewhere many pages from now in the election in November. Exactly how it goes down is entirely another question.
But for August we have two job reports. The ADP report showed a private employment gain of 200k, a wonderfully robust gain that suggests a strong economy is really turning the corner. The official household survey from the Department of Labor came in with an incredibly weak 96k jobs gained, a number that is not really treading water. Why the discrepancy? What is the real state of jobs? How will this play in the election?
Keep reading. This novel is far from done.
Labor Day – Holding On
This Labor Day is more important than most. It signals the start of the endgame of the election, the time when everything starts to count even more because everyone is paying attention. And this year, what people are paying attention to more than anything is labor itself – the state of jobs.
Barataria has dealt with the job market many times over the summer. While there is a net gain in jobs over the Obama administration the growth in jobs barely absorbs the young people entering the workforce. It’s not exactly the material for a strong re-election. But that’s not all there is to the jobs picture.
Convention(al) Wisdom
Why do we still have political conventions? There is a legal requirement that they actually sit down and have the formal vote on who their nominee will be, but that does not take days of speechifying and pageantry. If another political party like the Greens or Libertarians tried to get their conventions on prime-time teevee night after night they’d be laughed at. So why do the two parties get so much unfiltered airtime?
Because people watch it.
About 40M Americans watched Obama’s acceptance speech in 2008, and nearly 2/3 of all Americans watch at least some of the conventions. That’s about the same as the Olympics, generally speaking. People actually want to hear the candidates speak without filters, and they want the party to tell the world what it stands for.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 