Obama Returns Focus To The War On Jobs; Unemployment Rate 10.1%

President Obama Pivots To Jobs As Key Theme


President Barack Obama on Friday is making his promised hard pivot to Jobs, following up the morning’s release of December Unemployment figures with an East Room announcement at 2:40 p.m. ET about stimulus dollars going to clean-tech jobs.

A White House official said: “The President will announce new Recovery Act funding for clean technology manufacturing jobs. The funds will be awarded to deserving projects that will support tens of thousands of high quality clean energy jobs and the domestic manufacturing of advanced clean energy technologies including solar, wind and efficiency and energy management technologies.”

Also, the White House is expected to focus on events on the economy next week.

The president will be pushing Congress to pass several new jobs measures that he’ll be rolling out in the run-up to his State of the Union address, likely in early February.

The key elements were foreshadowed in a Dec. 8 speech at the Brookings Institution: Infrastructure improvements, green jobs and small-business incentives for hiring and investment. All that will fit into a middle-class agenda that is designed to boost Democratic congressional candidates in a dicey political environment.

As the second part of a one-two administration economic punch, Attorney General Eric Holder has chosen Palm Beach — ground zero for Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme – for a major speech at lunchtime today setting out a marker that financial security will be a priority, in addition to national security.

This is the most specific the attorney general been about his determination to target mortgage, security, and bailout and stimulus fraud.

From the attorney general’s prepared remarks, to be delivered at 12:15 p.m. in West Palm Beach, to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches:

“In times of recession, when every dollar counts and each dollar is counted, financial wrongdoing comes to light. Unbalanced books are revealed. Pyramid schemes collapse. We need a bold strategy equal to the challenge – a comprehensive, coordinated plan of action that strikes at the core of financial fraud schemes wherever they may be found.

This is precisely what our new, national effort will accomplish. The Department of Justice, working in concert with the White House and a network of government agencies, will use every tool at our disposal – including new resources, advanced technologies and communications capabilities, and the very best talent we have – to prevent, prosecute, and punish financial fraud.

“The cornerstone of this work is a new, Interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. This Task Force was established by Executive Order of the President. It was launched in December and is led by the Department of Justice.

At the core of the Task Force’s mission is a more robust and strategic law enforcement effort. Through this effort, critical information will be shared in real time across the federal government – and with our state and local law enforcement partners – so that we can stop fraud schemes in their tracks.

We will focus on four key types of financial crime:

Mortgage Fraud) — from the simplest of ‘flip’ schemes to systematic lending fraud in our nationwide housing market;

Securities Fraud) – from traditional insider trading,

Ponzi Schemes):, Ex: Accounting fraud, to misrepresentations to investors;

Recovery Act and Rescue Fraud) – including the theft of federal stimulus funds and the illegal use of taxpayer dollars intended to shore up our financial institutions; and Financial discrimination – including predatory lending practices in minority communities and the sale of financial products that exploit the elderly and disadvantaged.”



December 2009 Unemployment Rate 10.1% ;Economy Sheds More Jobs Than Expected


The economy lost more jobs than expected in December while the unemployment rate held steady at 10 percent, as a sluggish economic recovery has yet to revive hiring among the nation's employers.

The Labor Department said Friday that employers cut 85,000 jobs last month, worse than the 8,000 drop analysts expected.

A sharp drop in the labor force, a sign more of the jobless are giving up on their search for work, kept the unemployment rate at the same rate as in November. Once people stop looking for jobs, they are no longer counted among the unemployed.

When discouraged workers and part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs are included, the so-called "underemployment" rate in December rose to 17.3 percent, from 17.2 percent in October. That's just below a revised figure of 17.4 percent in October, the highest on records dating from 1994.

Revisions to the previous two months' data showed the economy actually generated 4,000 jobs in November, the first gain in nearly two years. But the revisions showed it also lost 16,000 more jobs than previously estimated in October.

The report caps a disastrous year for U.S. workers. Employers cut 4.2 million jobs in 2009, and the unemployment rate averaged 9.3 percent. That's compared to an average of 5.8 percent in 2008 and 4.6 percent in 2007. The economy has lost more than 8 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

Most economists worry that 2010 won't be much better. Federal Reserve officials, in a meeting last month, anticipated that unemployment will decline "only gradually," according to minutes of the meeting released earlier this week. The Fed and most private economists expect the unemployment rate will remain above 9 percent through the end of this year.


Sources: Politico, MSNBC