Administration speeding up on economic problems

WASHINGTON — At a time when most administrations are slowing down, the Bush White House appears to be speeding up — at least when it comes to getting the $700 billion financial rescue program up and running.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, President Bush's point man on the gigantic program, is pushing his staff to do everything possible to show markets that the government is getting the money out the door to bolster the financial system and get banks to resume more normal lending.

On Wednesday, one day after Sen. Barack Obama won the presidency, the Treasury Department detailed how it planned to borrow a record $550 billion before the end of this year to back the bailout. Treasury said it would sell $55 billion in bonds next week, including a reintroduction of the three-year note — all part of a massive borrowing effort required because of the cost of the bailout and a budget deficit that some believe could hit nearly $1 trillion next year.

The government's surging financing needs, along with some labor data released Thursday, are stark reminders of the challenges awaiting Obama even as the current administration moves to implement its rescue program and the Fed fine-tunes its approach to the crisis.

In the latest sign of the ailing job market, the number of people continuing to draw unemployment benefits jumped by 122,000 to 3.84 million in late October, according to Labor Department data. It was the highest level since late February 1983, when the country was struggling to recover from a long and painful recession. New filings for jobless benefits last week dipped to 481,000, a still-elevated level that suggests companies are in a cost-cutting mode.

A separate report from the department showed productivity — the amount an employee produces for every hour on the job — grew at an annual pace of 1.1 percent in the July-September quarter, down from a 3.6 percent growth rate in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, unit labor costs — a measure of how much companies pay workers for every unit of output they produce— increased at a 3.6 percent pace in the third quarter, compared with a 0.1 percent rate of decline in the prior period.

Worker productivity growth slowed as overall production, or output, declined, reflecting the hit to consumers and the economy as a whole from the housing, credit and financial debacles.