Talk that's not cheap

When George Bush talks, people listen -- and sell. When Bush stopped talking for a few hours, the market eventually rallied, although not quite enough to erase the sickening 439-point plunge that followed his speech. Listening to the president dish out platitudes in Alabama could make any intelligent American despair. He still boasts about his tax cuts, and complains about the inheritance tax, with considerably more conviction than he can muster when he finally mentions corporate corruption. He still talks about reining in the trial lawyers, as if they're somehow to blame for the drifting economy.

Bush's inability to focus and provide real assurance about the direction of the economy and the integrity of financial markets is spooking investors. And for obvious reasons, he cannot bring out that former Halliburton executive down the hall (or down in the bunker) to borrow some gravitas.

It is true, as Bush said so cheerily in Birmingham, that the economy has seen some positive indicators in recent months. There has been some growth in the service sector. Inflation, as he said without irony, is certainly low. Bitter laughter might have been more appropriate than applause, however, when the president spoke repeatedly of his concern about the need to create jobs and to help "young Americans who have no hope." For the most disturbing numbers crunched by those Washington wonks disparaged by Bush are the employment figures, which show that this feeble recovery is creating very few new jobs.

Job market slumping, too
The jobless rate has remained stagnant at around 6 percent for months now. Unemployment increased the most among young (12.2 percent) and black (10.7 percent) workers in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In absolute numbers, private sector payrolls actually declined slightly during the second quarter. And the Economic Policy Institute's labor analysts estimate that real unemployment is even higher because discouraged people are withdrawing from the job market.