Yesterday I was reading reports that the pundits were expecting a report of around 400,000 jobs to be lost in November. Krugman was the only one I read which mentioned maybe 500,000. The actual number was 533,000, the worst since 1974, when the economy crated as energy prices doubled following the 1973
So I cannot fathom why the stock market went up today.
I don't see how the Bush Recession is doing anything more than steepening its descent over the next several months. And because that fucking imbecile threw away so much money in tax cuts to the rich, coupled with his wars paid with credit, we are so far in the hole as a nation now that even if we can pull out of the fiscal ditch that Dubya and the Deregulators drove us into, we'll spend most of any tepid recovery just trying to pay down the enormous balance he has stuck us with.
I've written before about the difference between the U-3 (the published rate) and the U-6 (the true rate). The November U-3 rate is 6.7%, the U-6 rate is 12.5%. As things get worse, the U-3 rate is more and more fictional as people just give up looking for work.
When a naval officer was transferred into a job where everything was in the process of going to hell, the flesh-peddlers who did the assigning would sell the assignment as "an opportunity to excel."
That is the situation that President-elect Obama now is in.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Leisure
18 minutes ago
1 comment:
This ain't a SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up). This is a SAAFU -- Situation ABnormal, All Fucked Up. When the U-6 rate hits 15%, things will start getting a bit... messy. When it hits 20%, all hell is going to break out, because our entire food delivery system for the indigent is going to collapse. You're going to see food riots. Guaranteed. Great mobs of people just gathering outside of grocery stores and then suddenly storming in and looting the place of every bit of portable food that can be had. It'll be 1932 all over again...
- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin
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