Jobs

Bit behind on economic data, obviously, but as I said at the time the relatively "good" (though still actually bad) jobs number from last month was probably the worst thing which could have happened as it kind of took the wind out of the sails of the doing something ship, letting doing nothing coast to another easy victory.

With another "bad" number this month, which really isn't much worse than last month's but, hey, it's all about perception baby, on one hand we have Romer saying, "The sense that we need to do more is overwhelming," but on the other hand we have Obama saying:

In fact, in November, we saw the first gain in jobs in nearly two years. Last month, however, we slipped back, losing more jobs than we gained, though the overall trend of job loss is still pointing in the right direction.

Which is just another way of saying we aren't losing jobs as fast as we used to!! The employment situation doesn't start to improve until job gains start exceeding 100-140K per month. Inflection points aren't worth throwing a party over.