Surging U.S. Unemployment Rate Puts Pressure on Obama

By Bob Willis | Bloomberg.com

The jump in the U.S. unemployment rate to the highest level in a quarter century last month suggests the recession is deeper than the Obama administration forecasts and additional measures may be needed to restart growth.

The jobless rate rose to 8.1 percent in February as employers reduced payrolls by 651,000, the Labor Department said yesterday in Washington. Losses have now exceeded 600,000 for three straight months, the first time that’s happened since collection of the data began in 1939.

Unemployment has already reached the average rate the White House projected for the whole year. The administration needs to keep its focus on repairing the banking system and implementing the stimulus rather than get diverted by other goals such as healthcare changes, said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics LLC in New York.

“They should be focused on stabilization” of financial firms “and stimulus — and that should not only be ‘Job one,’ that should be the only job right now,” Ryding said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “The question is, is it recession or is it something worse than recession?”

U.S. stocks posted the biggest weekly decline in three months after American International Group Inc. reported a $61.7 billion loss and billionaire investor Warren Buffett said the economy is in “shambles.” …

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Opinion from News Donkey: Obama recently held a White House summit to facilitate progress on the important issue of health care. An underlying pillar of health care is the economy, which is in a state of major distress that is only going to get worse unless Geithner and the US Treasury Department take swift action. However, Geithner is virtually working alone right now. For a nation with the extensive resources of the United States, we really ought to be able to do better than this. Obama may want to hold a summit to facilitate vetting and confirmation for all the Treasury Department positions. It is alarming that of 15 key positions only one has been filled, despite the fact that it has been over four months since the presidential election. One might have thought priority attention would have been given by Obama’s transition team to staffing for the Treasury. Past administrations may not have filled positions for the Treasury any faster, but then they did not face such huge economic challenges either. Health care is an important issue, but the economy is truly an emergency and needs to be more than just a high priority issue along side other issues. Fielding an incomplete team to tackle our huge economic problems is not putting forth our best foot. Washington needs to spend less time worrying about distractions like Rush Limbaugh and instead work non-stop on solving our economic problems.

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Mileage Tax Gaining Speed in Congress

By Rob Hotakainen | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Despite opposition from the White House , a proposal to tax motorists on the number of miles they drive each year is gathering speed on Capitol Hill .

Its popularity is increasing as Congress searches for alternatives to the federal gasoline tax, which isn’t indexed to inflation and hasn’t been raised since 1993.

Supporters say that a mileage tax would be a more reliable source of funding for the upkeep of the nation’s roads and bridges. Many environmentalists endorse it, saying that it would lead to less driving and less pollution.

However, the proposal is raising privacy concerns — particularly if GPS devices were to monitor mileage — and opponents say that the last thing people need is a new tax, particularly in the middle of a recession. Some critics, moreover, fear that it would have a disproportionate impact in states such as California , which has longer-than-average commutes …

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Vote of No Confidence?

What’s to Blame for Wallstreet Meltdown?

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Are President Obama’s policies to blame for Wallstreet meltdown?

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Both Parties Play the Blame Game for Economic Woes

By LAURIE KELLMAN | Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain deployed heavy sarcasm. Fellow Republican Marsha Blackburn trotted out a chart. A group of conservative House Republicans mocked: “‘Deficit we inherited?’ … Spare us the false outrage.” The war between Republicans and Democrats to frame the blame for the economy erupted in earnest this week.

Republicans pushed back against President Barack Obama’s claim — echoed relentlessly by his Cabinet members and Democrats in Congress — that he didn’t cause the mess and shouldn’t be judged yet on obligating taxpayers for a trillion dollars trying to fix it.

Just how long Democrats can credibly argue that they’re merely responding to — and not responsible for — a crisis created under Republican predecessors depends on which political and economic fortune tellers are doing the predicting.

“Not for too much longer,” says Stanley Renshon, a professor of political psychology at the City University of New York. “People are distracted by the sideshow only for so long, especially when the evidence is all around them. Every day brings a new cash infusion for a new industry, and the stocks drop.” …

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Related News: Hopes of Bipartisanship Have Faded

Obama’s Plan to Hike Taxes Meets Fierce Opposition

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER | Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s call to raise taxes on high earners and greenhouse gas polluters met fierce opposition Tuesday from congressional Republicans and also a few Democrats. “I would never want to adversely affect anything that is charitable or good,” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said of Obama’s call to limit high-income taxpayers’ itemized deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest.

Republicans said the president’s plan to charge fees to industries that spew greenhouse gases amounts to a stealthy tax increase for all Americans that will far exceed the new $400 annual tax cut for workers that he wants to extend beyond 2010.

“The president’s budget increases taxes on every American, and does so during a recession,” said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee …

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Rasmussen Polls Shed Light on Reactions to U.S. Economic Intiatives

Rasmussen Reports

54% Say ‘No’ To All Bailouts

55% Say Government Mortgage Help Rewards Bad Behavior

Confidence in Stimulus Plan Drops Over Past Week

Are We Through the Worst of It?

FoxNews Business

Leuthold Group Chairman Steve Leuthold on the market’s downward spiral

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Obama Unveils $75 Billion Mortgage Relief Plan

By MARK S. SMITH and ALAN ZIBEL | Associated Press

MESA, Ariz. – Seeking to tackle “a crisis unlike any we’ve ever known,” President Barack Obama unveiled an ambitious $75 billion plan Wednesday to keep as many as 9 million Americans from losing their homes to foreclosure.

Announcing the plan in Arizona — a state especially hard hit by the housing crunch — Obama said that turning around the battered economy requires stemming the continuing tide of foreclosures. The housing crisis that began last year set many other factors in motion and helped lead to the current, widening recession.

“In the end, all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis,” Obama said at a high school outside Phoenix. “And all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to deepen.”

But while talking in broad strokes about the importance of the issue to the economy as a whole, the president took care not to miss the pain that the housing problems are causing in individual families

“The American Dream is being tested by a home mortgage crisis that not only threatens the stability of our economy but also the stability of families and neighborhoods,” he said. “While this crisis is vast, it begins just one house and one family at a time.”

More expensive than expected, Obama’s plan aims to keep between 7 million and 9 million people from foreclosure. Of the nearly 52 million U.S. homeowners with a mortgage, about 13.8 million, or nearly 27 percent, owe more on their mortgage than their house is now worth, according to Moody’s Economy.com.

Headlining Obama’s plan is a $75 billion Homeowner Stability Initiative, which would provide a set of incentives to mortgage lenders in an effort to convince them to help up to 4 million borrowers on the verge of foreclosure. The goal: cut monthly mortgage payments to sustainable levels, defined as no more than 31 percent of a homeowners income. Funding would come from the $700 billion financial industry bailout passed by Congress last fall …

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Greenspan: Fix System Before Stimulus

By EAMON JAVERS | Politico

NEW YORK – The famously inscrutable Alan Greenspan used some uncharacteristically candid language to describe the dire plight of the American economy Tuesday night.

“Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, we have been exposed to the most rapid and unremitting set of gloomy statistics that I have ever seen,” the former Fed chairman said at the 401st meeting of the Economic Club of New York.

And later, during a brief question-and-answer session at the New York Hilton, he branded the current economic morass a “once-in-a-century type event.”

As for the current debate in Washington over spending versus tax cuts, Greenspan said he has “little to add” about the question of government stimulus spending, but he asserted the government must fix the financial system as a whole before delivering stimulus spending and tax cuts …

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Time Poll: 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis

Time is conducting a poll on who to blame for the financial crisis. TIME’s picks for the top 25 people to blame for the financial crisis includes everyone from former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and former President George W. Bush to the former CEO of Merrill Lynch and you — the American consumer. Time would like to know who you think deserves the most blame, and the least. After voting on the relative guilt (or innocence) of each person, view the full results here.

In alphabetical order, here are the 25 people Time believes are to blame:

Alan Greenspan
Angelo Monzilo
American Consumer
Bernard Madoff
Bill Clinton
Burton Jablin
Christopher Cox
David Lereah
David Oddson
Dick Fuld
Franklin Raines
Fred Goodwin
George W. Bush
Hank Paulson
Ian McCarthy
Jimmy Cayne
Joe Cassano
John Devaney
Kathleen Corbet
Lew Ranieri
Marion & Herb Sandler
Phil Gramm
Sandy Weill
Stan O’Neal
Wen Jiabao

To cast your votes for rating each person’s level of blame, click here.

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