White House begins excuse making for upcoming bad February jobless figures

The job numbers for February to be released on Friday are expected to be bad. Some reports (though not verified) say as much as 100,000+ jobs may have been lost during the shortest month of the year. Regardless of what the numbers end up being, the Obama adminstration already has its excuses ready. According to Reuters, White House economic adviser Larry Summers said on Monday winter blizzards were likely to distort U.S. February jobless figures, which are due to be released on Friday.

“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,” Summers said in an interview with CNBC, according to a transcript.

Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, also said the United States was closely monitoring Greece’s debt problems and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was encouraged by what he had heard from European officials about the issue.

“With respect to Europe, I am obviously very concerned about what’s happening in Greece and Portugal, in Spain, in Italy, on the European continent,” Summers said.

“I think there have been increasing signs of recognition both in Greece and in the major countries of Europe that this is a situation that has to be managed; that combination of getting the Greek budget under better control and providing more support is necessary to stabilize this situation.”

Summers brushed aside speculation that he was interested in changing jobs.

No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)

March 1, 2010 · Filed Under General Politics


Comments