The Non Farm Payroll Numbers Sucks

Only 88,000 Jobs were created:

American employers added an estimated 88,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, compared with 268,000 in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. It was the slowest pace of growth since last June, and less than half of what economists had expected.

It also was the start of a third consecutive spring in which employers tapered off their hiring after a healthy start to the year. Slowdowns in the previous two years could be attributed to flare-ups in the European debt crisis, but this time the cause is less obvious. The recent payroll tax increase or other fiscal tightening in Washington could be partly to blame for the sudden retreat in hiring, but neither seems to be showing up much yet in other relevant economic data.

“People were starting to believe the economy was really picking up steam, and desperately wanted this report to be better,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief economist at MFR Inc. “But that didn’t happen.”

Paul Krugman understands what is causing this:

That deficit has declined from 5.6 percent of potential GDP in 2011 to 2.5 percent in 2013 — that’s 3 percent of GDP, which is a lot of austerity. Not all of that cut has even hit yet — the sequester isn’t in the macro numbers yet — but the rise in the payroll tax is very clearly driving the latest bad numbers, which show big declines in retail.

This is Obama policies that we are talking about largely.  Notwithstanding the posturing by Republicans, all they really want is to cut the social safety net and cut taxes for rich guys.

Obama is the one who really wants to cut the deficit in the middle of a recession.

His "Grand Bargain" is all about balancing the budget in the relatively near future while bridging the difference parties. 

It is a dangerous delusion.