GRIM JOB PICTURE CONTINUES – AT 9:48 A.M. ET:  If we cannot solve our unemployment problem, this economy will go nowhere.  Consider this chilling report:

Putting pressure on an already lousy job market, the mass layoff is making a comeback. In the past week, Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts.

Those announcements follow 41,432 in planned cuts in June, up 11.6% from May and 5.3% vs. a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, The WSJ reports, and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.

If these trends continue, we may soon be talking about losses in the monthly employment data -- not just disappointing growth, says Howard Davidowitz, CEO of Davidowitz & Associates.

"Everything in business is confidence," Davidowitz says. "You lose confidence and businesses can't deal with that [and] who could have confidence with what's going on in Washington?"

Davidowitz is bipartisan in his criticism, calling the U.S. political system "dysfunctional and deranged."

COMMENT:  One of the things not emphasized enough in reporting the budget and debt talks in Washington is that our economic problems will be much reduced if our economy started to roar again.  It is not roaring, however.  It is whining, at best.  A strong, growing economy is the best antidote to the current mess, that and sizable cuts in bloating government spending.

And yet, some economists say that our unemployment crisis may become a permanent fixture.  In that case, America will become like too much of Europe.  The sad fact is, though, that there are some in the "intellectual" world who think that would be just fine.

I've lost all confidence in this president's ability to create jobs, because all he creates is apprehension and uncertainty.  We need to change the captain so the liner can avoid the iceberg.

July 25, 2011