This election is supposed to be all about jobs and the economy. But judging from the news coverage, those words may be important in the context of the campaigns, but they aren’t important enough to actually talk about meaningfully. So, what say we catch up on how we’re doing.

The unemployment rate has been slowly coming down, in fits and starts. In December, it hit 8.5%.

Unemployment rate for the last 12 months

Unfortunately, there is a long way to go.

Unemployment rate for the last 5 years

There is particularly a long way to go when you get past some of the nuanced definitions that go into the “unemployment rate” and consider how much of the population is employed now compared to how much was employed before the collapse. What this shows is that what little employment growth there has been, has barely kept up with population growth, if at all. It may also show that a whole, huge wave of baby-boomers have exited the workforce permanently, due to the recession. Whatever the detailed causes… this is one of the most horrifying tidbits of data you’ve never seen in the news.

More bad news on the unemployment front. The length of time people who lose their jobs remain unemployed, has continued to increase over the years since the recession. Which means job losses have not been temporary. They have, to a large degree, been permanent. This should be, basically, considered to be such a disaster as to push everything else off the front pages until it is fixed.

Average weeks the unemployed stay unemployed

What is terrifying about that graph isn’t so much the increase in average length of unemployment from about 17 weeks before the recession to 40 weeks now. What is terrifying is how it compares to anything we’ve ever experienced in our recorded history.

Unemployed people stay unemployed longer, by a catastrophic amount, than ever.

Not quite as catastrophic, but certainly not good, is that new unemployment claims have jumped in the last few weeks.

New unemployment claims

As you can see, this number bounces a lot, and it comes out weekly. To smooth it and take some of the noise out, we usually like to look at a four week “moving average.” The increase has been enough to raise that too. Despite the alarming increase, it is still at a lower rate than it has been all year. We’d like to think this is temporary.

New unemployment claims, 4 week moving average

Put in context of the last five years, new unemployment claims are still higher than they were before the collapse, but the overall trend is improving. Slowly.

New unemployment claims, last 5 years, 4 week moving average

An alarming possibility, however, is that this recent uptick in unemployment claims it a symptom of an unfortunate turn on the global scene. If you think it has been a while since you’ve heard blood curdling shrieks from the Ron Paul / inflation panic people, there’s a good reason. The dollar has been gaining strength since last summer.

Trade weighted dollar index, last 12 months

This is the main reason gas prices came down this Fall. Global oil markets have been trading based on the Euro for several years, so when the dollar falls against the Euro, gas prices go up. When the dollar strengthens, gas prices go down. Until we start poking Iran with a stick, anyway.

Gas prices, last 12 months

Since what matters is how the dollar and the Euro (and other major currencies) compare to each other, strengthening in one is indistinguishable from weakening in another. The strength in the dollar since last summer has more to do with the Euro collapsing because of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, than any particular US economic improvement.

Anyway, while the inflation hawks like to see a strengthening dollar, it makes imports more attractive compared to our domestic production, and our exports less attractive to the rest of the world. We’d expect to see a stronger dollar result in a slowing of export growth and a widening trade deficit. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing.

Exports are weakening with the strengthening dollar.

As the dollar has gained strength, exports that had been growing nicely have levelled off and even pulled back a little. And the trade deficit, which had shown improvement for five months, reversed course and grew.

Trade deficit grew in November, more even than was forecast.

None of this bodes well for jobs in the near future.

Of course, if we’ve seen anything since the crash, it is that economic growth and American jobs are no longer as tied together as they used to be. Our gross domestic product [GDP] continues to be positive, although extremely slow, at well less than 2%.

GDP growth is positive, but very low

For what it’s worth, the leading indicators show more of the same. Slow economic growth, enough to hopefully keep us from sliding back into recession… but not enough to fix our devastating unemployment crisis.

Leading indicators show continued positive, but very sluggish, economic growth

Call me a paranoid nut case, but I think President Obama’s decision to make some recess appointments while the Senate wasn’t, technically, in recess, was a defensive move against no less than a coup d’etat that Mitch McConnell has been plotting for a long time.

The Senate confirmation process has irresponsibly been used as a political football for a long time, and by both parties. But Mitch McConnell has taken irresponsibility in this area to levels never imagined. He has completely abandoned any sense of the confirmation process being one of oversight and, instead, turned it into a blunt weapon to degrade the entire functioning of government. The conventional wisdom has been that this is one of McConnell’s key strategies toward his stated goal of making President Obama a one-term president.

I no longer buy that. I think it is more insidious than that. I think Mitch McConnell fully expects President Obama to be re-elected, he fully expects that he himself will be the Senate Majority Leader in 2013, and that he is paving the way for nothing less than a coup d’etat.

I believe that his intention all along has been to desensitize the public, and the rest of the Senate, both to the idea of using the Senate confirmation process as a blunt force political weapon, and the idea that brinksmanship that ends in vast damage to the government and the nation for political gain is “normal.” I believe his intention is to vastly escalate both of these practices starting in January 2013 and to have these escalations be viewed by the public as changes in degree rather than type.

Ultimately, I believe that Mitch McConnell intends to use the Senate confirmation process to launch a virtual coup d’etat in which he claims, essentially, veto power over the people’s decision to re-elect President Obama, if that is what comes to pass, and that he will refuse to confirm any presidential appointments from the cabinet level on down. This could include everything from President Obama’s appointments to critical positions like the Secretaries of State and Defense to the myriad of leadership positions throughout the executive and judicial branches which, if left vacant, prevent the government from functioning at all.

With the power to do this, and get away with it, McConnell would be in a position to make virtually any demands he wanted of the President. He would essentially own the executive branch, and could insist on running it from his Senate office.

Further, I don’t think I’m the only paranoid nut case who thinks this.

The weak link in a McConnell strategy to deny the president any power to appoint officers of government, is the President’s constitutional authority to make recess appointments. There is more detail to this than meets the eye, and more than a little nuance, but basically McConnell has been causing the Senate to lie and say that it is in session when it is clearly in recess. He causes what is called a “pro-forma session” of the Senate, and then he immediately causes it to end. He is basically turning the “OPEN” sign on every few days, but the Senate is dark, there is nobody at work, and no Senate business can be conducted because, in reality, the Senate is closed. It is on recess.

There has been, apparently, talk swirling around the White House for weeks, about the possibility of the President using a trick of his own to get around the Senate trick. The presidential trick would involve making his appointments and sending out a flurry of e-mails in the few seconds between the time when one pro-forma session of Congress ends and another begins.

But the President opted against that. Instead, he waited until that window was clearly closed, and then he made his recess appointments. By doing this he directly challenged the legitimacy of the pro-forma Senate session. He called, what he hopes, is the Senate’s bluff. And he did it in a way that is likely to result in a legal challenge to the legitimacy of his appointments that could end up being decided by the Supreme Court, because the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of government is, ultimately, what is in question.

McConnell isn’t the first Senator to force the Senate to use pro-forma Senate sessions specifically for the purpose of denying a president the ability to make recess appointments. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) did it to President George W. Bush toward the end of his term. But he is the first Senator to pair this tactic with a broad strategy of denying Senate confirmations altogether specifically to degrade the overall functioning of government and the viability of the President.

I believe President Obama sees, as I see, a coup being plotted by Mitch McConnell in the Senate. And this step which, understandably in this context, infuriated McConnell, is one of what may be several defensive moves he takes to protect nothing less than our Constitutional form of government.