Columnist: 'Economy Is Even Worse Than You Think'

First Joe Biden, then Barack Obama and now Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke are fessing up they don't know what they're doing when it comes to the U.S. economy.

The Federal Reserve predicted today that unemployment will top 10 percent, despite earlier assurances from Obama that it would not go higher than 8 percent if his stimulus package was approved.

With more than 15 million Americans out of work and an additional 500,000 losing their jobs every week, there's no end in sight for the Obama recession.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Mort Zuckerman, chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report, says the unemployment picture is much worse than the government is letting on.

From his column:

Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.

Can we find comfort in the fact that employment has long been considered a lagging indicator? It is conventionally seen as having limited predictive power since employment reflects decisions taken earlier in the business cycle. But today is different. Unemployment has doubled to 9.5% from 4.8% in only 16 months, a rate so fast it may influence future economic behavior and outlook.

How could this happen when Washington has thrown trillions of dollars into the pot, including the famous $787 billion in stimulus spending that was supposed to yield $1.50 in growth for every dollar spent? For a start, too much of the money went to transfer payments such as Medicaid, jobless benefits and the like that do nothing for jobs and growth. The spending that creates new jobs is new spending, particularly on infrastructure. It amounts to less than 10% of the stimulus package today.

Read the full column, "The Economy Is Even Worse Than You Think," at the newspaper's Web site.