GraniteGrok

Bet that got your attention, eh?  There is some logic to it when you ponder "why did the Stimulus bill, that was rushed through the process at the start of Obama's administration, delay its spending until, oh say, elections?"

What the hell? This man says last week that “we acted — immediately and aggressively” and this week says “by design, the bulk of the remaining 50 percent of Recovery Act funds will be deployed in the coming months of 2010.”

That is not immediately and aggressively. He says “one in ten Americans still cannot find work” but also says in his budget, “the Administration moved rapidly to sign into law, just 28 days after taking office, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the Recovery Act) to create and save jobs, as well as transform the economy to compete in the 21st Century.” (Budget at p. 8)
Obama is trying to have it both ways. He admits his stimulus money is dragging out and that even after 18 months it won’t all be spent. At the same time, he tells the public at the State of the Union that the reasons there is still 10% unemployment is “bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded but hard work on Main Street isn’t” and “Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems.”

So between that and the sense of companies, big and small, that the prudent thing is to just hunker down and not "venture" out during this recession, no jobs.  That stance has arisen as the Obama Administration has pretty much every thing possible to tell companies "you have no idea what is coming next!".  Demonizing capitalism by bad mouthing the banks, taking over companies and industries, promising taxes up the yinyang, raising this cost and that cost and yet another cost by issuing policy statements and threatening ever more regulation after regulation; if I owned a company right now, the LAST thing I'd be doing would be adding the potential of much higher costs by hiring people.

Companies are not ATMs and they are not social services organizations.  Their one and only mission is to create profits.  

Given his bent towards socialist or outright self-avowed Communist advisers (e.g., Van Jones, those extolling Chairman Mao), what capitalist would want to add more risk to their portfolio with more potential "loss centers" (formerly called "employees")  courtesy of the Federal Government?

I can assure you all that this attempt at proving that a centralized "command and control" of an economy will not be any better than any other attempt in history.  When will the Progressives ever learn that a handful of people, no matter how smart they may be or think they are, can never match that of millions all looking to their own (and family) self-interests.