It is the most common adverb of the Obama years: “unexpectedly.”
● “Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July,” reported Bloomberg.
● “Manufacturing in the Philadelphia region unexpectedly contracted in August by the most in more than two years as orders plunged and factories shed workers,”reported Bloomberg Businessweek.
● “Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June,” reported Reuters.
● “Dismal economic data on Thursday pointed to an unexpectedly abrupt slowdown in manufacturing and a pickup in inflation,” reported the New York Times’ business page.
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This is just in the past week; hundreds of articles each month note that some new bit of economic data is contrary to the expectations of experts. But the term is starting to become an object of ridicule within the conservative blogosphere as the country endures its third year of hard economic times under President Obama.
Three years after a financial crisis, unemployment has hit painful highs, GDP growth has been sluggish at best, and some predict a “double dip” recession. During this period, the Obama administration and its allies have repeatedly made bold promises about imminent prosperity — from an infamous chart that projected that the stimulus would keep unemployment rate below 8 percent, to the administration’s “Recovery Summer” tour of 2010, to Nancy Pelosi’s prediction that passing Obamacare would create 400,000 jobs “almost immediately,” to the president’s prediction that we would enjoy 3.1 percent growth this year and 4.1 percent growth in 2012 and beyond.
For about three years now, conservative bloggers have chuckled at how frequently the unveiling of bad economic news comes with the adverb “unexpectedly” in media reports. As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, Michael Barone, and others have often asked, unexpected to whom?
“I think it’s a combination of cognitive dissonance, the terra nova nature of the post-bubble economy, and a healthy dose of partisanship,” suggests Ed Morrissey, who has blogged about the ubiquitous adverb regularly at HotAir.com.
Perhaps the perpetual surprise reflects a media desire to focus on pockets of growth or prosperity — at least with a Democrat in the White House. In a widely diversified $14 trillion economy, one can almost always find some areas of economic improvement.
Certainly, a media that wanted to paint a more dire portrait of the economy would have no shortage of material to work with. There’s considerable evidence that America’s problems in job creation are much worse than the most widely cited numbers would indicate.
For example, President Obama spent much of the past year touting the number of consecutive months of private-sector job growth that the country had enjoyed. But that boast comes with some asterisks. Traditionally, the population of American workers grows each month, and while economists differ a bit on precisely how many new jobs are needed each month just to keep the unemployment rate stable, it’s often more than the figure Obama cites. The Heritage Foundation puts the figure at 100,000 to 125,000; some argue that any serious reduction of the unemployment rate will require adding 200,000 jobs per month. Only four months out of the past 17 have seen at least 200,000 jobs added; some months of growth have been minimal, such as January 2010, when the economy added 16,000 private-sector jobs,. Nonetheless, like a bloop single keeping a batter’s hitting streak going in baseball, meager months of job growth permit Obama to keep bragging about how many consecutive months he has presided over private-sector job growth.
Obama is lucky that these months of sluggish growth have occurred while a staggering number of Americans have “helped” keep the unemployment rate down by leaving the work force. From February 2001 to February 2009, the American work force grew from 143.7 million people to 154.4 million, an increase of about 10.7 million, or about 89,000 per month. In July 2011, the work force was back down to 153.2 million. For the entirety of the Bush years, the civilian labor-force-participation rate was never lower than 65.8 percent and remained between 66 and 67 percent for almost every month of the two terms. For Obama’s presidency, it debuted at 65.7 percent and has dropped to 63.9 percent, the lowest since July 1983.
Of course, bad news is unexpected during the presidency of the man who would heal the planet. Barack Obama, the One, the Messiah, the Great Black Hope of the Left, is a political illusion the media created, and so effective was the illusion, they forgot it wasn't real. In fact, even Barack Obama was surprised to learn he's not faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
I disagree. I think they fully expect this contraction and by calling it 'unexpected' like it's some kind of unforeseen act of God, it removes Obama's culpability.
It's like the Soviet Union which after having nationalized the farms in the Ukraine, then had year after year of unexpected shortfalls in the wheat harvests in the Ukraine because of unexpectedly bad weather.
It's too bad they always come out with these unexpected results in the morning. It would make a better drinking game than watching the Bob Newhart show.
The watch word for Nov 2012 is unexpected. The synonym is unprepared. If Obama has run a candy store a vanishing vendor not making chocolate bars any more would have been unexpected.
Well Bush's fault used to be the expected. The Bush fault caused the eastern seaboard quake. When Bush bad boy and Tea party doesn't work anymore then scapegoat is labeled "bad luck" and "unexpected".
These results are truly unexpected by the Left.
They have made assumptions based on our prosperity and strength for decades, never noticing the drop, however small, in that prosperity, or in the additional work required to balance it.
Their policies have been compensated for by business and ingenuity for so long, and their dogma driven in to so many from such an early age - they really believed in it. Over generations however, the knowledge of where the ability to put such lavish programs in place was either lost or hidden.
So now, "unexpectedly", they still can not make the connection between their killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs and the disappearance of the golden eggs.
Is it really too much to believe that the media really are willing mouthpieces for whatever propaganda Obama and his minions spew forth? The whole enterprise of the most Leftist/Socialist regime ever to take power in Washington is to direct as rapid a decline and fall of freedom as possible -- an agenda to which the Leftist media only too eagerly subscribe. The whole Obama Presidency is about bringing America to its knees, on purpose, for the sake of the Socialist ideal, in which the State is "all in all," to borrow St. Paul's phrase regarding Christ. The concentration of absolute power in Washington, D.C., these last 2+ years is breath-taking for the brash hubris with which it has occurred --- and quite a lot of it totally unremarked upon by the State-worshiping media. At the root of this animus towards America itself is, indeed, a hatred for all things truly free, whose origin is, in fact, Christ. If Obama isn't brought to heel by November of 2012, there will be only tyranny of the sort now ruling in Communist China, brought to America's shores by the likes of Obama and his sycophant/fool of a Vice President.
Jim, this is one talking point I really wish our side would just drop.
I'm as big a believer in liberal media bias as anyone, but the repeated use of the word, "unexpectedly" in economic reporting is not an example of it, despite what Limbaugh would have us believe. The financial press covers these reports through the premise of a consensus survey among economists prior to the release. Being in my industry, I see both the forecast and the actual numbers. Hence, unless the reading comes in on the money with the consensus, the reporter is going to say any given stat "unexpectedly" fell, or "unexpectedly" rose.
And yes, there was no less frequent use of this word during the Bush years, and I've yet to see it deployed in any way to suggest political bias. It's just a fixture of financial reporting, and it's rooted in this forecast, not the reporter coming from a subtext of "Well aren't Obama's policies in place? How UNEXPECTED it is that this number came in weak."
I remember constant mentions of a "jobless recovery" during the Bush years. I don't recall all of the "unexpected" comments. If we have a bunch of economists in this country who blow their forecasts each month, maybe we aren't educating economists well. Maybe we should drop Keynesian economics from college textbooks.
I'm not buying it. You can see the sadness on the faces of these reporters when they are forced to cough up bad news. These people are crestfallen when the "expected" miracle does not occur.
It is trite, but only because it is true. If a Republican were in the White House, the news would be full of Studs Terkel stories. In the early Reagan years, the news was nothing but stories of misery brought on by Reaganomics.
I was recently watching some "classic" comedy bits on HBO Comedy channel. There was a very young Bill Maher circa 1985. His entire act was lambasting the misery and inequality brought on by the failure of Reaganomics. This was literally only 5 years after EVERYONE was waiting hours in gas lines. I remember my Dad having to get up at 3:30 AM so he could get a spot on line to fill up to go to the 1st of his 2 jobs. By 1985 the US economy was expanding unstopped for 3 years. Yet the left was only interested in the couple of % that were left behind. Never mind that they were there under Carter as well.
Yup, I graduated from college and had my first real job during the mid-1980s. Times were great, and everyone I knew including my fellow alumni had a decent job. I wish we could have more of the Reagan "misery" now!
Nonsense. The results are unexpected because a majority of economists are married to the Keynesian model heart and soul. Thier expectations are always disappointed when their prescriptions fail to remedy what they believe is a straight forward cure for the economy. So they are left with - "the stimulus was too small" and "we need an infrastructure bank" because they believe government spending is the only thing that will cure economic malaise.
Moreover, the stimulus basically went into government union pension coffers and prevented state and local governments from feeling any recession pain - no shovel ready jobs, you see. I don't see how they ever thought this would create any new, permanent jobs anyway.
The idea of incentivizing private investment and fostering a more business friendly environment never crossed their myopic minds.
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