Jobs.  They ain’t comin’ back.  Summit all you want; they ain’t comin’ back.

Corporate America has learned to squeeze blood from a stone, getting stunningly large productivity increases from Americans desperate to keep the jobs they have.  Whether it’s GE or IBM or AOL, they’re not about to give back their profit margins with new hirings.

Construction jobs aren’t coming back; not with the excess dwelling and office capacity that currently exists.  And the only source of funding for new, future oriented industries like solar panel production is…..CHINA.  So unless the Chinese want to build more than a few isolated solar plants in this country, the displaced auto and construction workers, among others, have to hope for unemployment benefit extensions to keep food on their tables.

And the big O decides to commit money we don’t have, and blood we don’t need to spill, to a war in a country that isn’t a country at all, as far as its own inhabitants are concerned.  Aside from Kabul and the surrounding region, what we call Afghanistan is tribes and warlords spread out on a land mass whose borders are figments of our imagination, not their reality.

If O was as courageous as he is articulate, he’d take the advice of an enlightened and farsighted friend of mine who advocates mining on the moon as well as capturing and beaming solar energy to earth from space, and immediately make that the prime  military directive.  And instead of outsourcing work to Blackwater (now “Xe”) and Halliburton, let’s go to the UAW, get the names and numbers of laid off factory workers, and give them first dibs.

Now there’s a new national defense initiative.

Otherwise, count on 8+% unemployment as the new normal/best case scenario for at least a decade, and expect a bit of organized civil insurrection and/or individuals going postal with increasing frequency.

P.S.  Decreasing jobless claims and fewer monthly job losses aren’t a positive sign.  The only positive sign will be substantial hiring numbers.  The rest is spin meant to placate the populace.