The U. S. economy: a problem of Titanic proportions

On the economic front, there’s bad news, and there’s bad news

Cal Thomas compares our fiscal predicament with the sinking Titanic:

“President Obama's attempt to spin the latest discouraging unemployment numbers as "a step in the right direction" is like telling passengers aboard the Titanic to ignore the sinking vessel and listen to the live music. A Wall Street Journal analysis of the June unemployment figures offers little comfort, nor does it produce confidence that the economy will improve before the election…President Obama has said we "can't afford to go back to the failed policies of the past," implying they didn't work. Those past numbers look a lot better than the ones he's posting…This administration has put America on a path to socialism. It's for Romney to make the case that the administration's "medicine" is actually killing us.” Read more here

The facts say Thomas isn’t exaggerating.  Associated press reporter Christopher Rugaber points out that U.S. manufacturing shrank in June for the first time in nearly three years
 

“U.S. manufacturing shrank in June for the first time in nearly three years, adding to signs that economic growth is weakening…The slowdown comes as U.S. employers have scaled back hiring, consumers have turned more cautious, Europe faces a recession and manufacturing has slowed in big countries like China.  ‘This is not good,’ said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at BTIG, an institutional brokerage.” Read more here

 
And wages have dropped for only the 5^th time IN 33 YEARS    

 “Unemployment ebbs and flows, but one measure of the nation's economic health, average weekly wages, rarely dips. Until now. In the latest demonstration of the struggling economy that threatens President Obama's reelection, average weekly wages fell in 2011, one of only five declines since the category was created in 1978 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics…”  Read more here

 

Can we really afford four more years of Obama?