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Weekly initial claims for unemployment have not increased at all in the past five weeks, and the much-touted 4-week moving average has fallen for the past three weeks. Claims today are about as high as they were at the peak of the last recession, which was the mildest on record. This confirms what the GDP data are telling us: to date the economy has experienced only a modest slowdown.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Unemployment claims have stabilized
Weekly initial claims for unemployment have not increased at all in the past five weeks, and the much-touted 4-week moving average has fallen for the past three weeks. Claims today are about as high as they were at the peak of the last recession, which was the mildest on record. This confirms what the GDP data are telling us: to date the economy has experienced only a modest slowdown.
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I think this recesssion will be deeper than the two most recentn ones [(2001) and [(1990-1991)] because the Democrats are going to make certain of it.
I can't imagine how the Union Card Check legislation could do anything except slow the economy down further. Add in the tax increase (even if this only is the result of the Bush tax cuts expiring) and a health insurance employer mandate on businesses, this is probably enough to sink the economy into negative growth for quite some time.
We never got their during the Clinton administration because the Democrat Congress never even held a vote on the Clinton health care plan and the November 1994 elections resulted in the first Republican Congress in 40 years. Clinton ended up having a more conservative Congress than any president in the last 50 years.
The Republicans are unlikely to regain the US Senate in 2010, even if you account for the normal mid-term congressional election victories that opposition parties enjoy. The US House could go majority Republican by 2010 however.
Still, it looks to me like the news media is pessimistic about the economy right now, but that same media will probably be selling 0.2 percent economic growth an 8 percent unemployment as "a booming economy" within a few years.
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