Nearly a year ago, the White House officially kicked off its “groundbreaking” recovery summer with various public works projects which were supposed to set the economy sailing off in the right direction.
But one year later the economy is still in the doldrums, at least based on current economic data. Talker Rush Limbaugh asked how many more of these seasonal recoveries it is going to take for the U.S. economy to recover?
“The Memorial Day weekend is over ladies and gentlemen, which means we are now officially in our third summer of recovery,” Limbaugh said. “And the question is – how many more recovery summers can our economy stand before it all goes kaput? I mean, I hate starting out this way. There is no good news out there. The economic news is just — folks, is just bottom barrel.”
Limbaugh read a few headlines from major newspapers, including USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune story he cited, “Positive signs in an anemic U.S. recovery,” listed the Republican attitude toward the debt ceiling and that prompted the conservative talker to offer a dose of media criticism.
“Even in the Chicago Tribune, the positive thing going on in the economy is the Republican attitude on debt ceiling,” Limbaugh said. “But beneath the surface some key factors contributing to the anemic recovery are actually positive.’ So anemic is positive? And they said that that guy predicting the end of the world was nuts.”
Today’s Case-Shiller Housing Index report has the housing market officially entering into double-dip recession territory. That combined with the anticipated lackluster jobs data set to come out at the end of the week has Limbaugh less-than optimistic.
“You remember when ‘double-dip’ was actually a good thing, like a double-dip ice cream cone?” Limbaugh said. “Double-dip now, you know you run for the tall grass and you get out of the way. We got unemployment numbers coming this week. ADP, the payroll firm estimating 175,000 jobs. Challenger, Gray & Christmas not a looking at a whole lot of job creation – initial claims numbers estimated to be from the Labor Department at 413,000 on Thursday and on Friday, we get the official May jobs report. The estimate today is that 185,000 new jobs will have been created. Sorry folks, that ain’t going to cut it.”