From the Wall Street Journal:
Orders for long-lasting goods sank 13.2% in August to a seasonally adjusted $198.49 billion as commercial-aircraft purchases tumbled and demand for other items tailed off, the latest sign of a weakening manufacturing sector.
Meanwhile, U.S. economic output grew at an annual rate of 1.3% between April and June, down from the previously reported 1.7% gain.
How many years ago was the “recovery summer“. From a June 17, 2010 White House press release:
The Administration today kicks off “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long focus on the surge in Recovery Act infrastructure projects that will be underway across the country in the coming months – and the jobs they’ll create well into the fall and through the end of the year. The Recovery Act has already funded tens of thousands of projects and put about 2.5 million Americans to work, but summer 2010 is actually poised to be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with tens of thousands of projects underway across the country that will help to create jobs for American workers and economic growth for businesses, large and small. For example:
* Highway Projects: There will be six times as many highway projects underway in July 2010 as in July 2009 – projects will surge from 1,750 last summer to over 10,000 this summer.
* Clean and Drinking Water: This summer over 2,800 clean and drinking water projects will be underway versus just over 100 last summer – more than 20 times as many.
* Home Weatherization: This summer, 82,000 homes will be weatherized versus 3,000 last summer – 27 times as many homes this summer as last.
* National Parks: This July, nearly 800 projects will be underway at national parks versus just over 100 last July – 8 times as many this summer.As part of Recovery Summer, President Obama, Vice President Biden and other Administration officials will travel to more than two dozen Recovery Act project sites in the coming weeks, highlighting the surge in project activity and the Recovery Act’s steady climb to 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.
All good projects, for sure….but certainly not the engine that drives our economy. As John Merline notes for Investors Business Daily, unemployment as of Aug. 18 was up in 44 of our states.
“As a result, more than three years after the economic recovery officially started under President Obama, 10 states still have jobless rates of 9% or higher.”
The president’s focus has been on his pet projects, not on getting America working again.
Update: Mitt Romney today in Springfield, VA
“We have to have a strong economy. Right now, Russia’s economy is growing at about 4 percent per year. That’s their GDP growth. Ours was just revised last quarter down to 1.3 percent per year—about a quarter or a fifth the rate of Russia’s. This is a real challenge for us. And this is not just one quarter. This has been going on now for years. China’s growing much faster than we. Russia’s growing faster than we. Our economy needs to be reinvigorated. And the President has laid out his plan. It’s a continuation of the old plan. We can’t afford four more years of the last four years, all right?”
