Putting Lipstick on a Pig

The market cheered today's job report of 223,000 increased nonfarm payrolls.  Whoop-te-doo!  Meanwhile, the revisions blew a 39,000 job hole in February and March numbers.  Net, net: 184,000 new jobs, which is pitiful by any reckoning.  Headline in Reuters:  "Job growth regains steam..."  Really?  I guess compared to the newly revised 85,000 jobs created in March, this number is an improvement -- it's better than zero or perhaps a negative number.

Is this the new normal? What hope does the middle class have when numbers like this are considered  the "successful" outcome of economic policy? Free markets have been known in the past to deliver one million jobs in a month and more and no one was surprised at the time.  Now, we cheer this mediocrity.  Welcome to the fruits of Obamanomics, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and all the other anti free market programs that have reduced the American economic engine to a shell of its former self.

I guess the main message from the Obama White House is that everyone should revise downward their expectations of their own personal economic future.

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