Chairman of Obama Council of Economic Advisers Austin Goolsbee: "Get used to high unemployment"

Hotair ^ | 09/13/2010 | Ed Morrissey

[SeekAndFind]

It’s a darned good thing that Austan Goolsbee is “young, energetic, and looks good on TV,” because otherwise this would look a lot like Jimmy Carter’s “Malaise” speech. Chris Wallace tries to get Goolsbee to discuss what kind of changes have been made to White House economic forecasts in 2010, while Goolsbee wants to talk about how difficult it was … in 2007, in Europe, or anywhere else than the US after almost two years of the Obama administration policies. The big takeaway is that Goolsbee and the White House expect no appreciable decline in the unemployment rate for the foreseeable future:

GOOLSBEE: But I don’t think the unemployment rate will be coming down significantly anytime in the near future.

WALLACE: Do you think it will — you’ll be — it’s now 9.6 percent. End of this year?

GOOLSBEE: I don’t — look, I try to stay out of the specific forecasting games other than our official forecast. I think it’s clear that the labor market is significantly weakened, has been for some time. We have to do everything we can to try to create jobs and get people back to work.

WALLACE: Could it be 10 percent by the end of the year?

GOOLSBEE: Look, as I say, I’m not going to speculate. We have official forecasts and we’ll release them when they come out.

WALLACE: But you don’t expect…

GOOLSBEE: We need to do everything…

WALLACE: … it to go down appreciably from…

GOOLSBEE: I don’t expect it to go down appreciably. That’s what — our forecast, and most of the private forecasts say the same thing.

Neither does anyone else, but it’s not because of 2007 or “headwinds” from Europe’s debt crisis. It’s because Obama and Goolsbee didn’t learn any lessons from Europe’s debt crisis, and continue to run up huge deficits and push for tax hikes instead of spending cuts. One of the authors of Porkulus, Goolsbee and his team want a watered-down sequel to Porkulus despite the program’s utter failure to produce results. Goolsbee now says it’s because they underestimated the depth of the economic crisis, but they also vastly overestimated the stimulating power of road construction, too.

The main headwinds in this economy come from Obamanomics and ObamaCare. Until those are reversed, we will not experience any kind of serious growth. It’s a recipe for malaise, not recovery, and the economic forecasts clearly show that direction for the US under current leadership.

[silverleaf]

It is too d@mn bad “austan” (what were his parents thinking) can’t get used to unemployment by personally entering the ranks

[ilovesarah2012]

Every republican should use this in campaign ads, but they won’t.