American Nightmare

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2010/09/24/obama-and-the-american-dream-in-reverse/

Less is more.

Learn to live with "more".

Trillions for defense, but not one penny for jobs

H.R.5297 - State Small Business Credit Initiative Act of 2010

Yes, we are running horrific deficits that will eventually bite us in the ass.

Yes, just throwing money at a problem is not a solution.

Yes, this Initiative does not force banks to lend money, it is simply an incentive for them to do so.

BUT... the cost of this thing ($30 billion dollars) is about what we pay pursuing foreign wars for a two month period.

At least this legislation is attempting to jump start jobs recovery which is the NUMBER ONE thing America needs right now.

Let's put less money into killing and more into "life-ing". This and tax cuts for business is what we need. NOW. We're trying to avoid Depression 3.0 here people.

DC follies

When Main Street needed stimulus, they gave the money to Wall Street.

When we needed financial reform (smackdown punishment), they (sloowwwwwwly) brought us Health Care "reform".

We need a Jobs Bill / SBA loan guarantees, but they give us Finance Industry "reform".

Soooooo... when something to stimulate business and jobs finally rolls around, how deep into the new Great Depression quagmire will we be?

Hope, Change = Bad timing, Making it worse.

The Recession is OVER!!!!

The DOW is holding 10,000 this week. Yay!

Let's look at other figures.

1 out of 136 homes in the U.S. are in foreclosure.

Over 970,000 homes entered foreclosure in the 3rd Quarter of 2009.

oil prices are spiking. (speculation much?)

Sound familiar?

Add to that the "4 week moving average" of new jobless claims cresting 530,000...

...and you got a world of hurt.

as icing to the cake let's add: no specific and measurable finance regulation  and   nor reform of any kind.

let's chant it now: "DOUBLE DIP! DOUBLE DIP! DOUBLE DIP!"

unemployment numbers, august 2009

Less job loss claims, but higher unemployment rate?

WHUT?

Last month's report with the record job losses minus the underemployed and no-longer-looking-for-jobs made the the rate dip one-tenth of a percent. Now this month's report has a different spin of Voodoo

"The pace of U.S. job losses hit a one-year low last month but the unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year high of 9.7 percent"

So how does lower job losses this time cause the unemployment rate to go up? Mystery.

Include the UNDER-employed in the figure (crap part time jobs due to necessity... BLS's "U-6" statistic) and you get the real depressing figures:

"a record 16.8 percent in August from 16.3 percent in July"

I won't even go into the stats for minorities, young Americans (18-29)... and worst of all: young blacks and hispanics.

But if you want to gaze at the depressing reality yourself, look HERE.

The last time it was this grim, I was the young minority.