#1 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate for November was 9.8 percent. This was up from 9.6 percent in October, and it continues a trend of depressingly high unemployment rates. The official unemployment number has been at 9.5 percent or higher for well over a year at this point.
#2 In November 2006, the "official" U.S. unemployment rate was just 4.5 percent.
#3 Most economists had been expecting the U.S. economy to add about 150,000 jobs in November. Instead, it only added 39,000.
#4 In the United States today, there are over 15 million people who are "officially" considered to be unemployed for statistical purposes. But everyone knows that the "real" number is even much larger than that.
#5 As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been unemployed for half a year or longer. Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.
#6 The number of "persons not in the labor force" in the United States recently set another new all-time record.
#7 It now takes the average unemployed American over 33 weeks to find a job.
#8 When you throw in "discouraged workers" and "underemployed workers", the "real" unemployment rate in the state of California is actually about 22 percent.
#9 In America today there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. In fact, there are now approximately 5 unemployed Americans for every single job opening.
#10 According to The New York Times, Americans that have been unemployed for five weeks or less are three times more likely to find a new job in the coming month than Americans that have been unemployed for over a year.
#11 The U.S. economy would need to create 235,120 new jobs a month to get the unemployment rate down to pre-recession levels by 2016. Does anyone think that there is even a prayer that is going to happen?
#12 There are 9 million Americans that are working part-time for "economic reasons". In other words, those Americans would gladly take full-time jobs if they could get them, but all they have been able to find is part-time work.
#13 In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.
#14 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
#15 The United States has lost at least 7.5 million jobs since the recession began.
#16 Today, only about 40 percent of Ford Motor Company's 178,000 workers are employed in North America, and a big percentage of those jobs are in Canada and Mexico.
#17 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#18 Earlier this year, one poll found that 28% of all American households had at least one member that was looking for a full-time job.
#19 In the United States today, over 18,000 parking lot attendants have college degrees.
#20 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#21 As the employment situation continues to stagnate, millions of American families have decided to cut back on things such as insurance coverage. For example, the percentage of American households that have life insurance coverage is at its lowest level in 50 years.
#22 Unless Congress acts, and there is no indication that is going to happen, approximately 2 million Americans will stop receiving unemployment checks over the next couple of months.
#23 A poll that was released by the Pew Research Center back in June discovered that an astounding 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the economic downturn began.
#24 According to Richard McCormack, the United States has lost over 42,000 factories (and counting) since 2001.
#25 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.
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Submitted by Aletho News on Sun, 2010-12-05 22:42
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I read a surprising article by Ellen Brown the other day. Basically she says that the Fed's second round of quantitative easing (QE2) is sound monetary policy, and that Ben Bernanke is right when he says that it won't affect the overall money supply (and therefore the value of the dollar).
The problem with that assumption COZ is that even if overall money supply has diminished because of the recent economic contraction there is also a diminished quantity of real wealth as exemplified by available goods and services (the contraction hit these as well). Thus, if you restore the money supply to the pre-contraction level, you still have more dollars chasing fewer goods. Of course Bernanke insists that he is not creating inflation.
Aetho / Aletho: there's no problem. More money equals more goods and services. It's that simple.
No COZ.
More money does NOT necessarilly translate to more goods and services. Rather it generally translates to higher prices per unit of existing output.
More money does NOT necessarilly result in greater demand even, it depends upon who has the new money and what they want to do with it. In any event, growth in productive capacity is far more dificult than simply expansion of the money supply.
Aletho has it right. There is little or no correlation between the amount of money in circulation and the amount of goods produced or services provided. There is a correlation between the amount of money in circulation and the price of those goods and services.
When Bernanke claims that QE2 won't affect the overall money supply, he means that it won't be getting into the hands of anyone that will spend it. He is either lying or naive when he claims that it will not create inflation. Any expansion in the money supply will cause inflation sooner or later.
Mike Shedlock weighs in on the Bernanke 60 minutes interview:
... the Fed's QE policy is very misguided because it is likely to spur continued speculation in commodities. Think of it this way: China, Japan, or US investors do not have to finance $600 billion of US deficit spending, the Treasury simply printed enough money out of thin air to cover it.
That money will find another home, but I highly doubt it is the home Bernanke wants. There is little reason for businesses to hire workers in this environments and the odds of re-blowing the housing bubble are close to zero.
There are still other problems that adversely affect those on fixed income.
This is a very dangerous game Bernanke is playing...
What if this does not spur hiring but instead spurs gasoline prices and food prices? Oh not to worry ....
Pelley: You have what degree of confidence in your ability to control this?
Bernanke: One hundred percent.
Bernanke is a man with 100% confidence who did not see the housing bubble, who did not see a recession, whose worst case scenario for unemployment was 8.5% when it was already over 8%. Bernanke cannot find his ass with both hands and a roadmap, yet he is one hundred percent certain about his ability to control things.
I get what you're both saying -- I know what inflation is and how it comes about, and I knew someone would call bullshit on that post. I should have written apparently more money equals more goods and services in this case, because before I wrote that post yesterday I emailed Ellen Brown to ask her about it. You had a good point Aetheo, and I used your comment almost verbatim. This was her reply:
Sullivan:
I'm no economist, but I do know that new money that isn't used is equivalent to no new money at all. The government may have issued bonds to the Fed to get that money, but for as long as it isn't spent it won't cause inflation. Anyway, I don't know how Ellen reached her conclusion. I don't get it.
From the moment that money is issued, even if it is not spent, interest is owed on it. That alone will eventually have an inflationary effect.
I guess so, assuming the government ever pays its debt. They seem happy to keep borrowing indefinitely.
E. Brown's second comment:
The only way for governments to pay their debt is for them to ask their central bank masters to create more money, which in turn incurs yet more interest and creates more debt. If it were possible to pay off the debt, then the money would disappear. However, the system is designed to keep nations in constant servitude to the central bankers.
... when she wrote an inane article in which she cited Islamic banking as the motive behind the US aggressive posturing.
In fact, the hub of Islamic banking is in Singapore with London following. Furthermore, Islamic banking practices differ in only superficial ways from Western. These facts should have been immediately obvious to anyone with a background in economics.
My conclusion - Ellen Braun is a shill for Zionism.