Jobs Numbers: Ouch

I am so depressed about the really bad jobs numbers released yesterday. I know that one data point doesn't tell a full picture. But this is one bad data point - or set of data points. The number of jobs added were half what was predicted and previous months numbers were reported down.

If things don’t really speed up in the coming months, there is a good chance Romney will be our next president. And what really depresses me is that Romney has worse, not better plans, to help the economy.

I understand that the economy hasn't gotten better under President Obama, and he deserves his fair share of the blame. He has been silent on monetary policy and extremely meek on fiscal policy. He must know that more fiscal stimulus will help, but he assumes it is unpopular and unlikely to pass and so he won't call for it. So the voters don't know why the economy isn't getting better. 

So the voters will punish the current president - somewhat fairly - but in return get a president who's ideas to help the economy are much worse. Our only hope is that Romney - and other Republicans are more Keynesian than they let on.

There is some evidence of this. Romney said he doesn't want to cut the budget too much too soon and put us back into a recession. And it seems like other Republicans want to prevent stimulus to prevent Obama's re-election. Disgusting as this all is, there is hope that when in power, Republicans might actually do the right thing (as they have in the past). So that is our best case scenario right now. Pretty unfortunate, no?