The U.S. has tumbled further down a global ranking of the world's most competitive economies, landing at fifth place because of its huge deficits and declining public faith in government, a global economic group said Wednesday.Something tells me this won't be discussed on "Hardball" (MSNBC) tonight.
The announcement by the World Economic Forum was the latest bad news for the Obama administration, which has been struggling to boost the sinking U.S. economy and lower an unemployment rate of more than 9 percent.
But amid all of these is a multibillion-dollar disaster it seems no one's talking about — a massive flood engorging the Missouri River Valley that began in June, stretched through more than a half-dozen states and may last until October.
Hundreds of thousands of acres have been flooded or damaged, including some of the nation’s best farmland along the river’s floodplains in northwestern Missouri, which were expected to yield gorgeous crops of corn and soy before the waters came. Iowa faces tens of millions of dollars to repair I-29, one of the state’s main arteries for interstate traffic. Damage to levees and dams could reach $1 billion.A couple of comments:
The President will roll out a jobs package on Thursday that strives to lift the ailing economy through roughly $300 billion worth of tax credits, school renovation projects, job training for the unemployed, and a program to prevent layoffs of school teachers, according to a person familiar with the administration’s plans.This school year has already started; this will do nothing for the economy for the next nine months, but if passed, the program will kick in next summer during the height of the campaign. I assume a lot of new schools and school additions will be named and renamed.