"Guilty as charged!"... Friday morning, the Labor
Department's unemployment report indicted the "Greenspan
recovery" on 21,000 counts of feeble job growth. The most
serious charges were as follows:
a) Pathetic payroll growth of 21,000, which fell woefully
short of Wall Street's expectation that 130,000 new jobs
would show up in February.
b) The net new jobs number was a mere 279,000 jobs LESS
than the White House's projection that payrolls would grow
by 300,000 per month for 2004.
c) January's payroll gain was revised down to 97,000 from
112,000... 76,000 of which were a seasonally adjusted
mirage.
d) The average duration of unemployment rose to 20.3 weeks,
the highest in 20 years.
e) The manufacturing sector lost jobs for the 43rd straight
month.
So you see, acquittal was simply not an option. |
