My thinking was that the ratings would be lowered……and this post was going to be about that…..but the bastards best me to it…….oh well….onward and upward.

I wish that I had better news…..I hate being that guy that seems to always delivers the crappy stuff….but I do what I must to help people see what is coming…….

The economy is in the toilet….so it cannot get any worse, right?  Wrong again!  It will soon get a lot worse and this time it will be again on the backs of the unemployed……Washington is doping the spending cut two step and there is an economic storm approaching….NO!  This time it is not he debt or the debt ceiling……..but rather the stopping of the unemployment benefits……I know…I know……I can suck the fun out of the party…..but forewarned is fore armed…….

This from Yahoo News…….

At the start of 2012, the extended unemployment benefits approved by Congress in December 2010, which cover a maximum of 99 weeks per person, will expire. Though the benefits are hardly lavish–a little more than $300 a week for most recipients–their total impact on the economy is huge, because so many Americans are currently taking advantage of them. Moody’s Analytics estimates that when the benefits expire, $37 billion will be taken out of the economy, the New York Times reports. That’s enough to exert a significant slowing effect–at a time when the recovery is already a long way from robust.

Government benefits that go to poorer Americans, like unemployment insurance, tend to boost consumer spending more than other kinds of stimulus, because people living paycheck to paycheck have little choice but to spend the money, rather than saving it. So the disappearance of jobless benefits will take money out of circulation when economic growth is seeking to gain some traction.

Indeed, economists say that the withdrawal of jobless benefits will create a major ripple effect on growth as a whole. Consumer spending accounts for around 60-70 percent of U.S. economic activity, economists say. But with so many Americans having lost wealth in the housing bust, spending has been tepid for a while, preventing the recovery from gaining any momentum. Now, the end of the extended benefits will likely soon put a further crimp in spending.

Oh crap!  It cannot get much worse, huh?  Nope!  And how will our cowards in Washington handle this new crisis?  I know that at times I can be a bummer and I see boogey men behind every bank account….but so far I have been pretty accurate in my concerns….

And then there is Cantor, the House majority leader who said to Jim Kramer…..

CANTOR: Jim, the most important thing we can do for somebody who’s unemployed is to see if we can get them a job. I mean, that’s what needs to be the focus. For too long in Washington now we’ve been worried about pumping up the stimulus moneys and pumping up unemployment benefits and to a certain extent you have states for which you can get unemployment for almost two years and I think those people on unemployment benefits would rather have a job. So that’s where our focus needs to be.

So if you are unemployed you will most likely be one the chess pieces in a debate in the House and if all goes like it did with the debt debate…..YOU ARE SCREWED!