RUSH: ‘Unemployment likely will remain high for the next several years because the economic recovery won’t be strong enough to spur robust hiring, Federal Reserve officials warned [today]. Problems in commercial real estate,’ and that’s just around the corner, by the way, ‘and small business could hinder recovery. The cautionary note struck by the presidents of regional Fed banks in San Francisco and Atlanta were the first public remarks of Fed officials since the government reported last week that the nation’s jobless rate bolted to 10.2 percent in October.’ Now, that’s what I needed to print out here, because that 10.2% rate is not accurate. It is always calculated low. I have talked to many economists who claim that to calculate the actual US unemployment rate you multiply whatever the government says by one-and-a-half. During a recession you multiply it by two.
So 10.5% unemployment reported by government would equal 21% out in the real world. And there are all kinds of factors of people that are not working, there are people trying to work, and there are people who are still working who are being overworked by people who refuse to hire anybody new but they’re making them work longer hours. There are also people in jobs that they hate but they can’t leave ’cause there’s nowhere else to go. So that doesn’t add to productivity. When people hate their work, productivity is way, way down. But the bottom line is this — and the reason why this weak recovery won’t spur job creation? There’s no recovery! There’s no recovery. Now, you can look at Wall Street and it’s gone through the roof. It’s skyrocketing.
People ask, ‘Why is that happening?’ It’s because there’s no place in the real economy to put your money. So you go buy equities and munis or whatever else. Some people are selling short, some are selling long, but the equity market is the one place that people feel confident putting their money. One of the problems here, folks — and I know a lot of you in this audience understand this. The problem with so much bloated government… I mean, there’s a story in the stack here about how banks are going to tighten credit card restrictions. In other words, they’re going to crack down on lending. Now, what was TARP all about a year ago? What was it all about? It was all about expanding the credit markets, getting liquidity into the banks so they could loan money to people so they could invest and grow and so forth.
That’s not happening ’cause the government is sucking it all up. The government is sucking up all of the money in the private sector. The government borrowing, government printing. I mean, there’s not an infinite supply of dollars. There’s a finite supply. The money supply is what it is and when government takes more and more of those dollars to finance its own operations, there’s less and less out there in the private sector for people to borrow for whatever reason: Credit cards, go to the bank, get a loan, or what have you. So it really boils down to the fact that all of this unemployment is caused by bloated government sucking up all available credit. And now they’re also regulating banks into restricting credit. There’s two things going on.
This is why I continue to say — and this is causing some Republicans to say that I am not inclusive (ahem) but it’s got to be on purpose. At this point, there’s enough evidence to show that the political solution here that’s being tried does not and is not working. And now we’ve got the Fed… I mean, how does this make you feel? You talk about… There’s a genuine hopelessness out there. Contrary to all this hope and change, there is a hopelessness from people who are out of work, people who are in jobs they don’t like, people who have given up trying to find jobs — and now here we get the official 
word from the Federal Reserve: ‘Unemployment likely will remain high for the next several years…’
And they’re not the first people to talk about it. The administration has said that it is going to go up to 11%, which it’s really close to 20 when you get down to brass tacks. This story says, ‘Small businesses which held up reasonably well in the 2001 recession have been clobbered by the downturn, accounting for about 45% of net job losses through the end of 2008.’ Why is that? There’s no money in the private sector for them to expand. With people out of work, they don’t have as much money to consume things. I mean, the government cannot provide private sector economic growth. All the government can do is make itself grow. But the government cannot grow the place where you are: The private sector where your jobs are. It’s common sense.
And the AP, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, State-Controlled Media, they’re continuing now to report on the math behind all those jobs Obama has ‘saved or created.’ ‘The AP found that a pay raise for 508 employees was counted as 935 jobs saved. The New York Times discovered that $1,047 for a rider mower for a cemetery in Arkansas was credited with saving or creating 50 jobs.’ You talk about minimum wage? Divide 50 jobs into one thousand bucks? What are these people being paid to ride a lawn mower? ‘The Chicago Tribune found that $4.7 million sent to schools in North Chicago was credited with saving 473 jobs in a district that only employs 290 teachers.’ Now, that’s math we can believe in, the kind of math being taught in the school system today. ‘USA Today reported that a $26,174 grant to fix a fence and repair roofs in Texas was reported to have created 450 jobs. Actual number of jobs involved: 6.’
It’s total fraud. Sixty-five thousand construction jobs were lost in the last reporting period that gave us the 10.2% unemployment. So the economy is what it is. It’s not getting worse, and it’s being caused by bloated government. All the stimulus, all the TARP, all the expansion of entitlements, all of the extended unemployment benefits, all of this is just… In fact, there’s a story today confirming, confirming what I have said, a little editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Some big ranking Democrat went somewhere and let the cat out of the bag of the purpose of health care: Redistribution. The purpose of health care is not to get people insured, not to get them health care. This is the Democrat Incumbency Forever Act.
It is to create so much transference of wealth. It is to create so much dependence on the middle class on government that Democrats will never lose power. That’s the objective here, to make so many of you dependent on your very existence for government subsidies, handouts, and checks that you think only the Democrat Party will provide those for you; that everybody knows, ‘The Republicans, if they ever get in power, are going to cut that back.’ So this is the long-term goal.