Talking shop on jobs

It was a day for listening in Washington at a White House jobs summit Thursday, a day before an unemployment report that may make Friday a day for ducking.

Automatic Data Processing Inc. said Wednesday private sector jobs shrank by 169,000 from October to November, marking the month as the eighth straight with declining job losses.

The ADP report generally reflects the government's findings, but the numbers are overshadowed by the more critical Department of Labor report, which is scheduled for release Friday.

Economists predict the unemployment rate will remain stable this month at 10.2 percent, which is higher than it has been in more than a quarter century, having reached 10.8 percent in the early 1980s, the only other period since 1948 that it has hit double digits.

In Washington, jobs were the focus of a White House summit in which 130 business leaders gathered to air ideas of where the private sector and government could combine their talents and create jobs.

President Barack Obama has said, however, direct job investment -- in other words, a second economic stimulus bill -- is not likely, The Washington Post reported. The money just isn't there after a recession reduced government revenues and two massive bailout bills -- the $700 billion bank bailout last winter and the $787 billion spending initiative passed in February -- have combined to create a $1.4 trillion federal deficit.

This creates a recognizable impasse.

"I think the president is between a rock and a hard place here. There were a lot of good ideas, but all of them cost money, and that is something the president doesn't have," said Carl Schramm, chief executive of the Kauffman Foundation.

Obama expressed some skepticism at one point, telling a breakout discussion group infrastructure projects had not become a panacea of economic opportunity.

"The tension we've been seeing is that what is good for the longer term may not work as an immediate short-term stimulus. We're still getting slapped around in the Recovery Act for this. The term 'shovel-ready' -- let's be honest, it doesn't always live up to its billing," the president said.

In another breakout session, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner heard from former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, who said credit fees were crushing small businesses. "Imagine you're got a small margin and you're giving half of that to banks on exchange fees -- how aggravating," he said.

The day highlighted business ideas, but revealed an administration that prides itself in pulling the financial system back from the brink, but is struggling with a recovery that is stubbornly jobless.

Obama heard encouraging discussions on leveraging private and public funds for clean energy initiatives -- for weatherization, specifically -- and a call for expanding export opportunities.

In global markets Friday, the Nikkei 225 index in Japan rose 0.45 percent while the Shanghai composite index in China gained 1.61 percent. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong slipped 0.25 percent while the Sensex in India fell 0.49 percent.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 dropped 1.52 percent.

In midday trading in Europe, the FTSE 100 in Britain lost 0.53 percent while the DAX 30 in Germany lost 0.43 percent. The CAC 40 in France lost 0.47 percent while the DJ Stoxx 50 was off 0.24 percent.