As the Washington Post has noted this morning of US economic data:
Friday's job numbers brought evidence suggesting that the gloomy types accurately saw weakness in the economy that the official numbers obscured. The latest release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a loss of 92,000 jobs in February, with downward revisions for the two months before that. Employers added just 181,000 jobs in 2025, around 70 percent fewer than BLS's initial estimate of 584,000, and the revised numbers are getting worse, not better. Hiring Lab, the economic research arm of the jobs site Indeed, has concluded that “the labor market has averaged essentially zero net job creation over the past six months.”
They added:
Keep in mind, in August, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis calculated that the U.S. economy needs to add between 32,000 and 82,000 jobs per month to keep the unemployment rate stable.
Why does this matter? There are three reasons.
First of all, Trump is not delivering an economic miracle for the USA. In fact, he is delivering an economy that is much weaker than the one Biden delivered after Covid. The facts speak for themselves. If anything, the USA is now in an effective decline. So much for tariffs. So much for a booming stock market. The person on Main Street, rather than on Wall Street, is not feeling the effect.
Second, this is going to get worse. Trump has started a war he does not know how to end, and the cost will be very high. That cost will divert resources from investment in the US infrastructure and support for US social care and education programmes. Let's not pretend there are no consequences of this, because there clearly are.
Third, the reason why a failing president is desperate for a war is now very apparent. Anything that will distract from his failing domestic agenda, or provide a reason for cancelling elections, is what Trump is looking for now.
The one thing that we can be sure of is that hope is right out of stock in the USA at present. Trump is seeking to destroy any reason for it, and in this task alone, he is succeeding. Fascism, corruption, and the resulting destruction do not pay. The sad fact is that this is a lesson that the world seemingly needs to learn again and again because it never remembers.
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On the other hand, arms manufacturers and their investors have a twinkle in their eye. Energy companies are doing OK. And investors are getting themselves ready to buy plenty of US Treasury Bonds to finance an extended conflict. All of that might be sufficient to keep Trump on track and motivated and clinging to power. Money rules.
I think the mid-term elections are going to shock a lot of people.
When MAGA Podcast Media turns against Trump endorsed Republican candidates, which it has oand/r is currently doing, it is time for “The Fat Lady” to sing.
🙂
It seems to me that for Trump to start this war (having promised no more foreign wars) means he has no intention of allowing the mid-term elections to proceed. Only someone who has no need to fear the wrath of their voters would start this war.
I am looking forward to her encore.
Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the data weren’t in his favour and everyone thought the numbers would be rigged. At least that doesn’t appear to be happening. Or am I clutching at straws? Could the jobs situation be much worse than a loss of 92,000 last month?
I think the general feeling is that the data is now becoming reliable. The last couple of months were restated downwards at the same time as the February result was released.
The world of Trump is in for a very nasty shock triggered by his Gulf war.
The economic consequences of the supply cessation of refined oil, gas and chemicals are going to be felt shortly world wide. Take Japan, it imports the vast majority of its oil, gas and chemicals.
World wide food production is at risk if the war keeps going for as long as Trump boasts.
Plus Iran is targeting the tech bros data centres, offices in the Gulf. This will hurt them and the Gulf states. Expect Iran to hit these sites hard and multiple times.
Perhaps this will be the pin that bursts the tech price bubble?
The just in time economic model may collapse.
The immediate and most horrible consequences of war are the ones we are shielded from.
Death, and horrific injury, as human bodies are burned or blasted into pieces by destructive munitions, including illegal ones like white phosphorus, cluster bombs, and booby-trapped toys, or bunker-busting, tower-block-collapsing, mass-murdering missiles.
Humans screaming in pain or trembling with fear, mostly civilians, women, and children, including babies, and deliberately targeted children shot in the head or chest by snipers.
Patients shot by snipers as they flee from bombarded hospitals, or murdered in their beds if they do not flee. Doctors and nurses and paramedics targeted for assassination or capture, torture, rape, and murder while in underground cells.
Human beings slowly starving to death, or dying of thirst or wound infections.
Human beings trapped under rubble and never being rescued.
The vulnerable being denied medical care and pain relief.
Families suffering bereavement and becoming destitute.
Young children losing homes and parents, becoming physically and mentally vulnerable, being abused, kidnapped, trafficked. Entire communities destroyed, then abandoned to disease and death because nothing, nothing is functioning.
These are all predictable, intended, deliberate consequences of modern warfare. Our leaders know about this, but they do not care. Hypocritically they pretend that they care. They are lying. They remain in office, as the courts that might call them to account are threatened, smeared, and sanctioned by the perpetrators of the war crimes.
Enormous effort is expended keeping this off our screens, or discrediting it when it does trickle through.
The videos and the verbs are laundered. The victims are dehumanised. The protesters are criminalised.
War crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are normalised, no longer anomalies or atrocities, but deliberate strategies.
The offence is not to commit war crimes, but to accuse someone of them.
Rogue states are our allies, so their crimes are ignored.
These are some of the consequences of warfare, as fought by us and our so-called allies.
Very well said Robertj
A few months ago Trump was boasting how he was going to save the people of Iran and help them rise up against the regime there. Now he’s mindlessly murdering them. I doubt many Iranians are thanking him for the US / Israeli intervention now. Isn’t it time that the US people rose up against their tyrannical leader?
Good question.