On Thursday evening, President Obama will outline his current thinking on job creation because we are clearly not coming out of the 2008 recession like we normally do. That is because what we just experienced was not a normal business-cycle recession, but a deleveraging/balance-sheet/debt-crisis recession. And the latter simply take at least 5-6 years to work through, after a country begins to deal with the problem, which we have not.

Even if somehow a Republican appeared in the White House tomorrow, there is no magic he (or she!) could bring with him/her to fix the unemployment problem. There are just some things the private sector will have to do for itself, and the sooner the government stops getting in the way, the sooner we will get things fixed. But it will take a long time, no matter what. That is just the way things are (Source, in part, Calculated Risk).