Remember this date (03-FEB-12) because on this day Americans (and Conservatives in particular) got two pieces of good news that could have impacts for the 2012 election and our country going forward.

First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued its unemployment numbers for January and they were good (on the surface).  America added 243,000 jobs, the U-3 Unemployment Rate dropped to 8.3% and the job gains were adjusted for November and December by +57,000 and +3,000 respectively. 

The U-6 Unemployment rate (which counts those who have been so discouraged that they left the work force and aren’t counted in the U-3 rate) is still high at 15.1% and this is a better indicator of the so called “recovery” that the Obama team touts.   James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute wrote a good piece explaining what the U-3 Unemployment rate would be if we had the same participation rate now (63.7%) as we did when Obama took office (65.7%) as well as other analysis from the BLS report today.

While today’s BLS report shows the recovery under Obama is still much worse compared to the recovery under Reagan, this was at least some good news for the economy and shows that even with all the job killing policies of this current administration, Capitalism is still able to produce some small gains.  Hopefully this is a sign of things to come for those who have struggled to find a job and many Americans can becoming gainfully employed while we wait for a real recovery to happen after our community-organizer-in-chief loses the general election in November.

But there is another piece of good news that has larger implications on the election this year and that came from Obama’s team today.  Obama officially stated that he now “owns” the economy and he can no longer blame poor economic data on Bush.  See quotes from the following USA Today story:

“Further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” said a statement from Alan B. Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

“It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007,” Krueger wrote on the White House blog.”

So there you have it.  Obama’s chief economic advisor stated that the lower unemployment rate is a direct result of Obama’s policies and they will continue to enact these policies to improve the jobs situation going forward.

In engineering terms – If you claim that a system outputs have been altered based on your inputs then you make the claim that all prior inputs to the system have been swamped out (or eliminated) and you now have your hands firmly placed on the steering wheel of that system.  You can’t claim credit for the positive effects and deflect blame to someone else for the negative effects once you make that claim.

Obama owns every piece of economic data that is produced from now until November when the election occurs.  Do not let Liberals use the “we’re just fixing what Bush broke” meme ever again.  Obama owns this economy now and he is responsible for it 100%.

ADDENDUM – It should be noted that the unemployment rate of 8.3% is larger than the Obama administration stated would be the maximum rate it would reach after enacting his 2009 stimulus plan.  See link here (Figure 1 page 4).

I have also shown in a previous post how the economy could rebound in 2012 as the expectation of Obama’s loss in the general election becomes more certain.  Do not be surprised by this and you have heard it here first.