Nope, this still ain't working, Scotty

A few more reports were out this week illustrating that Walker-style austerity continues to hold Wisconsin back from the strong growth that we're seeing in much of the Midwest. This was no more obvious than when shown with the Philly Fed's recent releases of its monthly coincident and leading indexes for all 50 states. These idexes showed that Wisconsin's economic growth over the last 3 months had slowed to 0.18% for the 12 months since Walker's budget took effect on July 1, 2011, which was well below the U.S. rate of 2.74%, and Wisconsin badly lagged all of its Midwestern rivals.

Change in state coincident indexes, Jun 2011- June 2012
Ohio +5.53%
Mich +5.24%
Ind. +3.85%
U.S. +2.74%
Iowa +2.59%
Ill. +2.23%
Minn +2.02%
Wisc +0.18%

And that trend isn't expected to break in the next 6 months, as shown by the leading indexes. Wisconsin is expected to grow at less than half of the U.S. rate through the end of this year, making it by far the worst performer in the Midwest since the age of Fitzwalkerstan began at the start of 2011.

You'll also notice the top performer - Ohio, with a lot of the growth in since last Summer. You may recall that Ohio had a similar struggle to the one in Wisconsin about union rights, and had a little election in November where collective bargaining rights were returned to the public sector with overwhelming support. At the time, Karl Rove's forces were warning of severe job losses and economic recession if these rights were returned to public sector workers. Well the evidence shows that instead Ohio has had the best economy in the Midwest and one of the best in the U.S. since SB5 was shot down, while Wisconsin removed collective bargaining rights, and has by far the worst economy in the Midwest.

And Walker's failures also show up in the long-term trend, as you can see Wisconsin was a middle-of-the-pack Midwestern state when it came to being hurt by the Great Recession, but since Fitzwallkerstan started, it has been left out in an otherwise robust recovery in our part of the U.S., where only the FIBs and the Cheeseheads haven't gotten back to where we were when Obama took office.

But hey, maybe the experts are wrong, and Walker's prediction of "prosperity is just around the corner" is finally going to come true as year two of his budget takes hold. Oh, and we have a headline from yesterday on the Wisconsin economy? Well let me have it!

Huge Plunge in NAPM Milwaukee Manufacturing Index.

Awww, crap.