Employment
Feeling uneasy?
“An Uneasy Feeling” is the title of an op-ed by Bob Herbert in the New York Times. “Staggering numbers of Americans are still unemployed and nearly a quarter of all homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth,” he writes. “Forget the false hope of modestly improving monthly job numbers. The real [...]
So, how are your kids doin?
“The American economy is broken, ruined by the greed and irresponsibility of fabulously wealthy corporate chieftains and their shabby acolytes and enablers in government,” writes Bob Herbert in the New York Times. He’s watching the Thanksgiving Day parade and thinking about all the kids in the crowd. “While Wall Street is handing out billions in [...]
15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams
AlterNet sees “15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams”: 1) Inequality of wealth unprecedented, 2) DOW hits 10,000 and big banks bailed out with taxpayer money give billions in bonuses, 3) Middle class collapsing, 4) While older workers lost big chunk of 401k needed for retirement, 400 richest Americans added $30 billion [...]
Stock market disconnected from reality
“How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs?” asks Robert Reich, in TPM. His answer? “Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they [...]
The recession is over! Enjoy the Depression.
“From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point.” So said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on September 15th, 2009 (MarketWatch). What he failed to mention is that, from a real-life perspective, the Depression is well underway. Bernanke’s “technical” bright spots–home prices and sales are up, job losses have slowed, retail [...]
A paycheck or two from the mean streets?
The recent stock market uptick, which Nouriel Roubini has termed the proverbial “dead cat bounce,” will not put millions of Americans back to work. Bloomberg reports, “More than 3.1 million jobs were eliminated last year and the unemployment rate jumped in February to 8.1 percent, the highest in more than 25 years.” Government reports are [...]
The Grapes of Wrath II
“On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment. . . . In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” (The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939) “What goes around comes around. [...]
Why do unemployment reports lie?
The rate of unemployment in the month of December, 2008, was 7.2 percent, or 8 million, according to the U.S. Department of Labor report issued today. As usual, the data in this report has been cooked by government statisticians to hide the real jobless rate, which is more than double that reported, about 15 percent, [...]
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