“Saved Or Created”: Obama’s Made-Up Economics

Good news, all- apparently our Dear Leader has already managed to “save or create” 150,000 jobs! Is there no end to his magical powers? If you’re a member of the mainstream media, the answer seems to be “no”, as they’ve already taken this bit of “news” and regurgitated it ad nauseum.

During the campaign, Obama’s mantra of “saving or creating” jobs (the number of which trended down as the economy worsened) went largely unchallenged as a measurable feat. 3.5-4 million was the amount Barry eventually settled on, using voodoo unemployment expectations he pulled out of his, er, hat. Problem is, no one – not the Department of Labor, nor the Treasury, or even the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures “jobs saved.”

The New York Times declares that “Mr. Obama’s jobs claims are “based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs.” As if an “actual counting of jobs” were an arcane exercise not applicable to this administration. Bush would have been eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner if he tried to sell this snake-oil… the Wall Street Journal points out it is:

Nice work if you can get away with it.

And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula “save or create” allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a “non-measurable metric.” And on his blog, he acknowledges the political attraction.

“The expression ‘create or save,’ which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius,” writes Mr. Mankiw. “You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus.”

Mr. Obama’s comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and — presto! — you have the president claiming he has “saved or created” 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

Obama will continue to skate with this crap until the press and Congress find a backbone to challenge him. Meanwhile, government can crank out nonsense jobs that last only as long as the borrowed money that pays for them, along with nonsense statistics to justify them. No matter how much you polish a turd… it is still, always, a turd.

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