June's woefully underwhelming augment in jobs is a climactic twist in the negotiations between President Obama and congressional Republicans more than federal borrowing, government debt and America's financial future.Best-case scenario, it's a Michael Bay twist: dramatic, explosive, but it all mechanism out in the end.Worst case, we're look at M. Night Shyamalan: quite jarring, and potentially very scary.
The Labor Department's report Friday morning that the financial system added just 18,000 net jobs last month, or roughly six figures under the consensus forecast from economic analysts, immediately hardened conservatives' and liberals' beliefs concerning why the recovery continues to sputter and what it needs to kick into gear. That hardening, and the political pressure with the intention of will ratchet up the length of with it, is the unwelcome twist in the endgame negotiations over raise the federal debt ceiling.
Whether his economic advisers acknowledge it or not, Obama now have got to confront new and persuasive evidence that he has, once again, overestimated the power of the recovery. The White House has said for months that the economy was past the point of needing additional help from the government, even as gas price rose and sapped consumer spending, and Japan's earthquake disrupted global trade. The president has mimicked Republicans in occupation for government belt-tightening, even as the public part steadily sheds jobs, including 39,000 more in June.