Bloomberg on U.S. Economy: “Free-Fall”
January 10th, 2009Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. lost more jobs in 2008 than any year since 1945 as employers fired another 524,000 people in December, indicating a free-fall in the economy just days before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.
“Consumers are now going to get more and more scared at the prospect of losing their job,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. Obama’s proposed fiscal stimulus “needs to be big, needs to be bold, needs to be swift. If they can do something quickly we can limit the hemorrhage by mid-year.”
The Labor Department reported that the nation lost 2.589 million jobs in 2008, with the unemployment rate climbing more than economists forecast, to a 15-year high of 7.2 percent in December.
Today’s figures will intensify pressure on U.S. lawmakers to speed Obama’s recovery program, which may exceed $775 billion, through Congress in an effort to save or create 3 million jobs. They also underscore the urgency of the Federal Reserve’s $200 billion initiative to restart consumer financing markets that’s scheduled to begin next month.
The outlook for jobs this year is no brighter as retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to Macy’s Inc. slash profit forecasts and manufacturers including Alcoa Inc. cut output and staff.
Things must be bad for a mainstream media source to stop just short of admitting that we’re in a depression. But I guess there’s not much point in denying it when the economy has been losing almost a half-million jobs a month for a few months running.