The president says he’s creating jobs. I’m skeptical. I guess there are some things government can do to ensure that jobs get created, out there in the bill-paying, profit-making world. But these do not include spending trillions of borrowed money.

And neither do they include simply giving more money to state and local governments.

The truth about Obama’s much-ballyhooed job creation is that more than half of his alleged new jobs turn out to be government jobs.

Government jobs don’t count, Mr. President.

Remember, many things governments do actually drain us. Jobs in the marketplace, on the other hand, serve real consumer demand, make us all better off. They also help pay the taxes for those government jobs. Employing more people in government means needing more real jobs to pay for the government ones.

And how much work do politicians cause us to engage in just to unbury ourselves from their silly, wealth-extracting regulations? I know, I know: Every time they add on some new complication to the tax code, jobs emerge in the accounting and tax-consulting industry. But this doesn’t exactly make us better off, does it? Not on net.

This lesson applies generally. Here’s the bottom line. Government can borrow and tax to spend to create “gross jobs.” Sure. But on net, after balancing the collective books, we’re not better off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

You didn’t have to be a small community bank to steer clear of the helter-skelter investments favored by the likes of Bank of America and AIG. But apparently it helped.

New York Times reporter David Segal writes that spending time with solvent bankers in places like Indiana was like stepping into an “alternate universe,” a place “where everything sounds a little strange because it makes perfect sense.”

Weird that it’s strange, eh? Sensible should be normal.

Turns out, the secret is to be boring. Clay Ewing, a banker in Jasper, says, “If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it.” So, no maniacal juggling of hyper-complicated subprime debt instruments just for the thrill of it.

Boring bankers also tell Segal: “If you don’t understand the risk you’re taking, don’t take it.” Also: “We want to be around for decades, so we’re not focused on the next quarter.”

Today, banks that abided by such common sense are solvent. And declining government bailout money.

Profligate bankers propelled by visions of infinite if inexplicable returns were not the only culprits in the housing bust. The Federal Reserve stoked the buildup of demented debt. As did many politicians.

But bankers who made bad decisions also deserve blame for surging blindly ahead. They could have done otherwise. They could have been, well, boring.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

A few people get sick, and schools shut down.

We have been having and enduring flu epidemics for some time. And people have died even in minor outbreaks. The difference now is that the patterns of epidemiology have become nightly news.

Why the talk about shutting down everything — schools, businesses, government offices? To prevent a major pandemic, like the 1918 Influenza outbreak, which killed millions.

The president went out of his way to tell us to avoid panic. The vice president, on the other hand, went on one of his jags and helped foment more panic.

The media, of course, abundantly repeated the message of panic.

Last autumn, the head honchos in Washington sowed the seeds of panic by proclaiming the mortgage-based financial bubble the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Hardly before anyone had received a pink slip, the government was giving away billions of dollars.

And then, they switched rationales and plans. And then they gave away more. Rinse. Repeat. Only the panic remains.

Well, stock up on water and masks and food. And cash. Or gold. That’s fine. But be wary of stocking up on too much government. When we panic we are not thinking straight, that’s when we are likely to lose the most. With the government and the media leading the charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is an important man. How do I know this?

A congressman told me.

While Specter is a Republican, his congressional booster happens to be a Democrat. Pennsylvania Congressman Robert Brady credits Specter with passage of Obama’s stimulus bill.

“[T]his bill would not have passed,” says Brady, “if not for Arlen Specter,” who was one of three Republican senators to break ranks for the presidents’ bailout extravaganza. In case you were wondering, Brady clarified his enthusiasm for the so-called “stimulus” package. “[E]very congressman is passing out checks, all over the country . . . because of a man named Arlen Specter.”

Clearly, Brady likes to pass out checks . . . as do most other congressmen.

But one former congressman doesn’t seem so fond of the program. Pat Toomey ran for Congress back in 1998 pledging to serve just three terms. He won, spent six years fighting wasteful, overbearing government, and then stepped down as promised.

Toomey, until very recently the president of the Club for Growth — a group dedicated to market growth, not growth of government — is likely to challenge Specter next year for his Senate seat.

The difference between Toomey and Specter? Toomey, being the challenger, may ask you to write a check to his campaign, while Specter, being the incumbent, will offer to give you a check . . . drawn on your account.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It takes guts and self-confidence to buck a trend, especially to buck a boom. So most contrarians keep a low profile.

Meet Plano, Texas, banker Andy Beal. I read about him in the pages of Forbes magazine, which profiled this master contrarian in early April.

Beal has been buying toxic assets and broken-down banks in big huge gulps. And he’s been doing it without the help of government. Forbes says that he “has purchased $800 million of loans from failed banks, probably more than anyone else.”

How? Well, back in 2004 he stopped making loans. He almost stopped banking. He cut back his hours. He had to lay off a lot of employees.

Why? He didn’t trust the market. He thought the binge of borrowing and lending utterly foolish.

Forbes relates that his behavior puzzled regulators, who were worried that he was over-capitalized! How could he resist the huge profits?

Well, Beal sure showed the regulators. And his competition. Today he’s buying assets for pennies on the dollar.

Beal believes the current crisis was caused, in huge honking part, by government. Now that government is giving failed bankers huge hunks of money, his reaction is twofold:

1. He calls all the bailouts “crazy.”

2. He is taking the opportunity to make a fortune . . . without government help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.