Hard to believe that a renowned conservative journal would suggest that the Obama administration didn’t spend enough to stimulate the economy and create new jobs, but that’s what this article from The Economist seems to be saying about our jobless recovery:
Most troubling of all is the continued failure of economic growth to benefit the labour market. Employment fell by over 300,000 jobs during the last three months of 2009, despite strong expansion in GDP. The first quarter of 2010 is unlikely to show as big an output gain, suggesting that the pace of improvement in employment may be slowing, even as regular job growth has yet to return. And the situation may be more dire still; initial jobless claims have grown in recent weeks, indicating that what momentum there was in labour markets has been lost. […]
[W]ith the revelation that labour markets early last year were far weaker than expected and the growing indications that the recovery will be jobless, the country’s leaders may be wishing they had done more to boost the economy sooner. The longer it takes to achieve steady job creation, the more uncertain recovery will become.
Well, I suppose Real Conservatives will claim The Economist was never a “real” conservative journal, just like they claimed that Bush hadn’t been a “real” conservative, too. Denial is so easy to do when the alternative is admitting that maybe you were wrong –about everything.