By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The weak May jobs report figures are just the latest sign that the recovery has stalled and that the USA are headed for a serious double-dip recession. Is it time for Washington to intervene?
The May jobs report is a disaster – the weakest reading since September. Non-farm payrolls grew only 54,000 last month, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Private employment rose only 83,000 – the smallest growth since last June. Government payrolls dropped 29,000 and the overall jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent.
Together with plummeting housing prices, falling wages for non-supervisory workers, a paltry 1.8 percent growth in the first quarter, and a precipitous drop in consumer confidence, the picture should be clear to anyone able to see clearly.
The recovery has stalled and while the US are not in a double dip yet, but the odds are increasing.
But is it but the USA that are in such dire straights? I should think not. In Britain things are not better either, despite what the government is trying to tell us with massaged figures.
Heavy job losses in the public sector, pay freezes for at least the next two years, which, in fact, amount to serious drops in pay, with the public sector not taking on those that have lost jobs in the public sector, is just one of the signs.
Prices for everything are on the up, and that relentlessly so, and thus the real value of any pay packet is being reduced more and more almost daily. It is basic food stuff the prices of which are rising more than the costs of luxury items and thus the poor are proportio9nally worse affected and thus worse off.
Consumer confidence is at all all time low and people are not buying, causing the economy to shrink further.
On top of that the Euro zone is in serious trouble and it would appear that, unless the countries of that zone are going to bite the bullet and are prepared to keep bailing out the failing and defaulting nations, the Euro could unravel. This might not, to be very honest, be all that bad a thing and many Germans, for instance, would rather have the Deutsche Mark back today than in a year or never. I can't say that I blame them.
Britain did the best thing by staying out of the Euro and thus the Euro zone. It is just such a shame that we don't have the political will to hit the European Union on the head and leave that club of total madness.
Whatever our politicians may like to tell us, we are still not out of the woods yet, as far as the economy and the recession is concerned and we could go into yet another dip, and a very deep one at that. So let's keep our eyes open and our money with us.
© 2011
