In Narnia, the animals move their lips when they’re lying about the economy

Image from The Communist.

I suppose by now you’ve heard about yesterday’s awful jobs report.

Only 73,000 jobs were created in this country for the month of July. You usually want that number to be around 150,000. For context, the last full month that Joe Biden was president – December 2024 – the number of new jobs created in this country was 256,000.

Oh, for the good old days.

There’s more bad news. The job numbers for May and June had to be revised – downward. The number of new jobs created in this country for May was 19,000. Worse, the number of new jobs created in June was only 14,000.

That’s a statistical drop in the bucket. Any lower and we’d be flirting with negative job growth.

When Joe Biden was in office, the number of available positions in this country topped out at over 12 million. Today that number is below 8 million.

President Hoover was so unhappy with these numbers he fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, which sent a clear to message to others who compile economic numbers: If the numbers are bad, LIE, because the emperor does not like being told he has no clothes.

At this juncture we have two distinctly different ways of looking at the world:

1. The Reality Viewpoint, which holds the jobs reports for May, June and July were truly and spectacularly shitty, and:

2. The Narnia Viewpoint, which holds the economy is roaring like a bonfire under the wise guidance of President Hoover … and the animals move their lips when they’re lying.

The reality is we are probably headed for a recession. Other numbers tend to support that conclusion.

Remember when President Hoover said he would not let the value of the dollar decline? Well, guess what: Since January, when President Hoover took office, the value of the dollar has declined 11 percent.

You know what isn’t down?

Inflation.

Yup, inflation rose to almost 3 percent last month. Economists say that with President Hoover’s on-again, off-again tariffs, inflation is bound to rise even more.

Ford and Stellantis both registered losses for the latest quarter. GM managed to eke out a profit but said its earnings were cut in half – by President Hoover’s tariffs.

The experts say the reason the economy hasn’t tanked before now is because businesses, anticipating President Hoover’s mismanagement, laid in a stash of inventory before the tariffs went into effect. But now those inventories are being depleted and we are having to shift from the Narnia worldview back to a sobering reality of higher prices and fewer jobs.

As for those MAGAts and ’bots bragging about all that tariff money coming into the government’s balance sheets, I would remind them that, OK, President Hoover increased their taxes, and now the government has more money to give to billionaires. They pay more for shit and the government has more money? That’s hardly the flex they think it is. It’s time for the MAGAts to wake up and face the world they’ve created.

Oh, and the stock market they’re always crowing about? Yeah, it lost 1.2 percent of its value yesterday.

Time to shift those stocks into bonds, because even Wall Street, as greedy and complicit as it is, must sometimes deal in reality.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .