ANOTHER ECONOMIC SETBACK – AT 8:48 A.M. ET:  The government jobs report issued a few minutes ago confirms the gloomy stories reported earlier in the week.  From The New York Times:

After several months of strong job growth, hiring slowed sharply in May, raising concerns once again about the underlying strength of the economic recovery.

The Labor Department reported on Friday that the United States added 54,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last month, following an increase of 232,000 jobs in April. The unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent from 9.0 percent in April.

While any job gains at all are welcome, the pace of job growth thus far has been too slow to reverse much of the damage wrought by the Great Recession, which has left more than 13 million unemployed workers in its wake. For the last few months economists had been predicting that the economy was finally gathering steam and that a sharper bounce-back was imminent, only to be disappointed again and again.

COMMENT:  The economy is in trouble, and the president is in trouble.  Often, in circumstances like this, the federal government starts spending a lot of money, hoping to "prime the pump," to get the economy moving again.  But there is no money.  We are deeply in debt.

Has the U.S. run out of options?  Will this mess become the new normal, with years of unemployment and underemployment ahead of us? 

I can't claim to know the answers, but I do know this:  Look around the world.  The countries that grow are the countries that make things, that create things.  But manufacturing in America has become almost a backwater.  I'm not sure we can revive unless we dramatically reverse that trend. 

But I've seen precious little interest in a revival of American muscle in the Obama administration.  They are obsessed with dubious, and unproved, environmental schemes and a piling on of regulations.

Our situation goes beyond partisanship.  We are in serious trouble, and we're not getting out of it.  The opportunities for the Republican Party to regain control and contribute to economic growth are vast...with the right candidate and program.  That means an innovative, creative economic policy, free of crony capitalism and Wall Street cover-ups, where Main Street counts and factories hum. 

June 3, 2011