We are a full year removed from the September 15, 2008, bankruptcy
of Lehman Brothers, which sent the global financial system into a
tailspin, and yet just 10 days removed from one of the most dismal
unemployment reports in 80 years.
On the one hand, this is no
kind of celebratory one-year "anniversary," if you want to call it
that, and it was certainly no kind of Labor Day either. And they are
related.
Federal government purchases make up about 20% of the U.S. economy, yet the United States is almost alone among the major developed nations and China in not having a significant "buy domestic" government procurement program.
No single economic stimulus initiative would do more in the short and long term to resuscitate U.S. employment, especially manufacturing employment, and to materially reduce our economy-zapping massive trade deficit than a fair "buy American" program.
This past Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor reported an unemployment rate of
9.4% for May. But while this better-than-expected number raised the hopes
slightly of some economists, a new paper from New America Foundation's
Economic Growth Program suggests that unemployment is more severe than
reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics-and that the economy is in the early
stages of a "jobless recovery."
Leo Hindery, the chair of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation, and former Michigan Senator Donald Riegle, a Democrats who ...
