Barack Obama’s economic adviser blames Winter storms for the poor jobless numbers

  The latest jobs numbers are due out on Friday and apparently the news must not be very good– and in fact the news is  probably worse than the White House had expected– because Barack Obama’s economic adviser, Larry Summers, is already making excuses for the numbers and claiming that we need to “look past” the latest numbers.

  Larry Summers is actually claiming that the jobs numbers are “distorted” because of all of the storms that we have had over the last month.

The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. So it’s going to be very important … to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends

  There you have it, Larry Summers is actually blaming the fact that we have had Winter storms in the Winter for the fact that there were not as many jobs created as the administration has hoped.

   The theory goes like this; construction had to be put on hold because of the storms, so construction jobs were not created. (Apparently the fact that there is no new construction happening in the first place is secondary to the fact that if there were actually construction jobs the storms would have prevented the hiring of construction workers.)

  The theory continues with the claim that because restaurants and stores had to close for a few days that they were forced to either delay hiring employees or temporarily lay off employees until the storms blew over.

   This has got to be one of the most asinine and transparent arguments that I have heard in a long time. This is a blatant attempt to defer the blame for this administration’s failed economic policies, and because the administration can no longer talk about the problems that it “inherited” it has to look elsewhere. But there is nowhere to turn because this administration– with the passage of the stimulus bill– now owns this economy, so the administration is lamely trying to blame nature for the failings of Barack Obama.

  Nobody really believes this line of bullshit, do they? Sooner or later Barack Obama is going to have to look in the mirror, man up, and admit that he and his policies bear the responsibility for the state of the American economy. The first step in recovery is admitting that you have a problem.