12,000,000 New Jobs-- No Matter Who Wins

"Most forecasts for employment growth are very close to 12 million over the next four years regardless of who wins the presidency," Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Analytics, told The Hill.

 --Needham, 2012

I've got a policy for the future and agenda for the future. And when it comes to our economy here at home, I know what it takes to create 12 million new jobs and rising take-home pay. And what we've seen over the last four years is something I don't want to see over the next four years.

 -- Mitt Romney in Third Presidential Debate, 2012

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney claimed twice in the third presidential debate (and elsewhere) that he will  create 12,00,00 jobs if elected president. He conveniently doesn't say how, but he does say he knows what it takes.

He does know what it will take-- a four-year wait.

Romney knows (but isn't telling the American public) that Moody's and other economic forecasters have predicted the addition of 12,000,000 new jobs in the next four years regardless of who is elected President.

So Romney's big promise to America that he'll create jobs? Smoke and mirrors.

Romney wants the American people to believe he knows how to create jobs. The truth is, he does't. What he does have experience with is the acquisition and exploitation of companies-- sometimes by hostile takeover-- and the maximization of profit for himself and his buddies at Bain Capitol with absolute disinterest in what happens to the workers, the company's products, and the companies themselves. Sometimes Bain's control of companies created jobs, and sometimes it caused massive job losses-- think thousands of people-- and those who were lucky enough to keep jobs were stripped of their benefits and pensions and their salaries were reduced-- but that's fodder for another post. I digress. But read here for the fates of workers at four Bain-controlled companies.

What I do want to talk about is the amazing turnaround of an economy that was absolutely going down the toilet.

Romney says he doesn't want what happened over the last four years to happen in the next four-- but what happened was a dramatic rescue of the American economy.

When Barack Obama began his term the U.S. was losing more than 600,000 jobs PER MONTH. Check out this chart:

The chart comes from CRGraphs, a respected blog about finances and economics.

Here's another chart, this one from Penisto Review. Looks familiar, doesn't it?

And here are the data turned upside down by The Sagamore Journal.

These data are a bit different because they show only job losses and not new jobs. But the stories told by the dozens of graphs I found on the internet are the same: every one shows precipitous and increasing losses during the second Bush administration and a rapid stop to those losses shortly after Barack Obama became President.

Has the American economy completely recovered? No, of course not-- it's going to be a long grind no matter who is President. But to blame President Obama for going from a loss of 500,000 jobs per month to a net job gain is madness. Nevertheless, Republicans, including Romney, are hammering him for not doing better. That is, not to put too fine a point on it, just shitty.

I should probably add that the New York Stock Exchange has made a dramatic recovery since Obama took office.

I was unable to find a Dow Jones chart that covered more recent years. It was difficult to draw the black line exactly on January 2009, but it's clear the Dow, which had dropped precipitiously during the last year of George W. Bush's presidency and was still plummeting, began a recovery shortly after Barack Obama's inauguration. The Dow fell from more than 14,000 in late 2006 to less than 7000 in late 2007, where it stood when Obama came into office. On Friday the Dow stood at 13,107.

And they say Obama's bad for business?

Let's not forget why the economy was losing those jobs in the first place. The crash came about because of an unregulated housing market that was wildly loaning money to unqualified home buyers and then spinning the mortages off as derivatives. And which party has been against and continues to argue against regulation of banks?

You guessed it.

Sources

Needham, Vicki. (2012, 2 September). Experts say economy should grow no matter who wins White House in Nov. On the Money: The Hill's Finance & Economy Blog. Read it here.

Transcript: Third presidential debate. (2012, 22 October). CNNPolitics. Read it here.