By Bob Turner

(AXcess News) Washington - The House of Representatives passed unemployment benefits extension bill HR 3548 by a sweeping 403 to 12 vote which President Obama is to sign into law Friday as the nation's unemployment rate climbed to 10.2%, far higher than most economists forecast.

Employers cut 190,000 jobs from payrolls in October, far more than expected.  The increase in unemployment pushed the national unemployment rate to its highest level in more than 26 years as the United States struggles to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Job pundits were forecasting the U.S. unemployment rate to rise to 9.9% from 9.8% in September.  But despite recent economic data showing that gross domestic product grew 3.5% and productivity shot up 9.5%, the jobs market has not been able to expand with some 7 million Americans having lost their jobs since the recession began.

Thursday, the US Department of Labor reported initial claims for the week ending October 31, 2009 fell 20,000 to 512,000, its lowest level since January and continuing claims declined 63,000 to 5.75 million, a level not seen since March.

But despite how good those figures stack up, there are plenty of American workers who've just given up or who've accepted part-time work.  If you add those workers back into the data the nation's unemployment rate would be at 13%.

HR 3548 provides $2.4 billion in unemployment extension benefits that without it, most states would run out of money to even pay unemployment benefits.  The unemployment benefit extension will go on the backs of businesses who are expected to pay an extended federal unemployment tax to pay the money back to taxpayers, though lot's of luck seeing the cash back as the Obama administration has todate kept all of the TARP funds banks had repaid the US Treasury under Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's control.

Christina Romer, President Obama's chairwoman of economic advisors said in a White House post Friday morning, "Having the unemployment rate reach double-digits is a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done before American families see the job gains and reduced unemployment that they need and deserve."

The White House prominently displayed a photo of a Union construction worker Friday morning on its website (above), proclaiming how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has "saved over one million jobs".  Yet critics say its "liberal eyewash" that many of the so-called 'saved jobs' were political paybacks for the army of union door knockers who helped get Barack Obama elected President last November.  One of the biggest paybacks of all time was the government snubbing bankruptcy laws to cram down a takeover of General Motors that gave the auto Union a large stake in the company in exchange for Geithner handing over billions in taxpayer dollars.

One good thing that came out of HR 3548 was an extension of the first-time homebuyer tax credit.  Real estate developers, who are partially to blame for the collapse of many of the small banks in the United States, where in Nevada alone two such banks can be traced back to Sen. Harry Reid and a certain Las Vegas attorney who helped Reid collect political donations from the developers and then after the banks failed, which had loaned funds to them for raw land development,  got those same Nevada developers hundreds of millions for constructing apartments for low-income residents - many of which had lost their homes to foreclosure - in an unbelievable 'Round Robin' cycle of near political corruption - if you could catch Reid with that smoking gun.

Sen. Reid may have had a tougher time slipping out of the limelight if it weren't for the Las Vegas Sun and Reno Gazette Journal, the two major newspapers in Nevada, love affair with anything Blue.  But that's another story!

Sen. Reid, who is up for re-election, is facing stiff competition from two Republican candidates who in recent polls have double-digit gains in popularity amongst Nevada voters over Reid.  Earlier this week Democrats watched as eastern gubernatorial races gave up seats to Republicans in states which Democrats had long held the post.  The media says the writings on the wall over Obama's chances of re-election in 2012 and many Congressional seats are expected to be won over by conservatives that might balance the political scales in Congress and bring about a more bipartisan group of lawmakers.

But thanks to the tax-credit extension for first-time homebuyers the real estate sector is now more neutral towards the Obama administration and within many states, Democratic lawmakers are probably getting their backs slapped by real estate developers as campaign checks are being collected by a political machine on a community level that would put Lenin's socialism to shame.  If only Republicans were as organized!

The icing on the cake was a new $6,500 tax credit for existing home owners who sell their home and buy another during the period the program is in place, which is now extended to April 30, 2010.  In the prior legislation only new home buyers received a tax credit.

The entire tab for HR 3548 is $24 billion, with Bernie Madoff investors also getting in on the money grab by allowing them tax credits for prior years income when they invested with Madoff.  While network television shows groups of individuals who are portrayed as the 'poor rich', most of the investors were - and are still - quite wealthy - by your or my standards.  What a shame when you have to sell your Mercedes or summer home in the Hamptons.  God forbid that $1,000,000 painting should go on the auction block or six figure jewelry end up in one of the swank pawn shops of Beverly Hills or Miami.  While I think the investors who lost money, regardless of how wealthy they were then - or now - they are 100% right in saying the SEC is ultimately responsible for allowing the Ponzi scheme to have gone on unchecked for as long as it did.

Now, hedge funds are coming under scrutiny and I hope that some of the Long Island stock swindlers behind them that AXcess News, Forbes and the New York Post have repeatedly covered are next.  Here too, investors should hold the SEC accountable as well as State securities regulators for letting hedge funds run unchecked - and unregulated.

Many small businesses have been driven over by the Obama political machine and ignored.  In turn the US Chamber of Commerce has repeatedly, and openly, been criticized by the President himself for daring to question his administration's claims in healthcare reform and small businesses who so far have had no recovery funds come out Washington.  Some say, the size of your donation is relative to the attention you receive on Capitol Hill and apparently it's becoming quite evident.  Though recently President Obama clicked in small business as needing more out of the government, not unlike how AARP all of a sudden began backing the President's healthcare reform when members before hand had criticized the retired Americans political group for not taking a stand.  Now it looks like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may quiet down its saber rattling towards Washington in a similar appeasement.

Obama's 'change' campaign has turned into a taxpayer nightmare with a federal deficit in excess of $1.4 trillion and still Obama's administration keeps on spending.  Even Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has sweated out the fact that the Obama administration has to step up to the table quickly and resolve ways of curbing the excessive spending the government is incurring at the expense of taxpayers if it expects the value of US Treasuries to remain high in the eyes of foreign buyers.

Currently, China holds a lot of US IOUs in the form of treasury notes and while the Chinese yuan has not been detached from the greenback as the Bush administration had unsuccessfully attempted to do, if Beijing all of sudden dumped treasury notes, the value of the dollar could tumble and reek havoc on the US economy - and the job market.

If you're wondering what all this political finger-pointing towards Democrats and spend-happy Obama administration has to do with the unemployment rate - it's a key factor in determining how quickly the nation recovers from the recession.  Trade, foreign perception of our currency and markets all play a role in how fast the economy recovers and while the nation does need practical intervention in the form of economic stimulus from Washington, what it doesn't need is a socialist form of Democracy to change the foundation of our constitutional Republic as a means of curing the economic ills America has fallen under by nationalizing a capitalist system.  You cannot overlook fair balance in economic stimulus - if you want to be re-elected in 2010.  That appears to be the real message coming from Washington, which is far over due.