Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Saturday, November 8, 2008

ZIRP and the Unemployment Rate

Or "Zero Interest Rate Policy." The Federal Reserve would basically operate the same way that you did when you loaned your brother twenty bucks until his next payday. In the banking world, zero-interest is essentially "money for free."

Krugman also links to a WSJ Market Watch article that says that the unemployment rate is 6.5%. That is the "seasonally adjusted U-3 unemployment index." If you add in those who are so discouraged that they've stopped looking for work and you bump that up to 6.8%, or the U-4 rate. U-5 includes those who say they are not completely discouraged, ready to work, but just aren't looking right now and that rate is 7.5%.

The key index, to my mind, is the true unemployment index, or U-6. U-6 includes those workers who want to work full-time, but are doing one or more part-time jobs to try and make ends meet. The U-6 rate for October was 11.8%. (The table is here.) U-6 is gloomier than the other rates, but it is the one that gives the complete picture of the percentage of Americans who are not employed at full-time jobs.

More than one in nine Americans are unemployed or doing part-time instead of full-time work.

At this point, I have to wonder if President-elect Obama isn't lying in bed at night and saying to himself: "Jesus H. Christ, what the fuck was I thinking?"

2 comments:

Raymond said...

I still see thousands of high paying jobs posted on job sites.

www.linkedin.com (professional networking)
www.indeed.com (aggregated listings)
www.realmatch.com (matches jobs based on your skills)

Good look to those looking for work! Good luck to Obama too.

Anonymous said...

No one in their right mind ever wants to be President. What a shit sandwich of a thankless job.

I think that's why they all age so dramatically when they are in office. Look at a picture of Clinton in 1992, and then another in 2000. Holy cow, he looked like Death's gramma at the end.