However, our nation’s official unemployment statistics are flawed for several reasons. (1) They don’t count people who have become discouraged and “stopped looking for work” as being unemployed. (2) They fail to account for parents who would like to work but who cannot find worthwhile positions and have concluded that it makes more economic sense to be stay-at-home parents and live off of their spouse’s income. (3) They fail to account for people who would like to work but opt to retire since they cannot find worthwhile positions.

The unemployment numbers also fail to account for severe underemployment–people who want to work full-time but who can only find part-time work, the PhD scientist who drives a taxicab or who works as a postdoctoral researcher (low-paid, overworked gypsy scientist) because we’ve imported foreigners to work in the science field and overproduced PhD scientists, or the lawyer or MBA who couldn’t find work in their field as a result of severe lawyer and MBA overproduction.

Furthermore, the unemployment numbers fail to account for QUALITY of employment. After all, someone who works a poverty wage job for 10 hours/week is technically “employed”. Also, it would be technically possible to have only 3% unemployment but at the same time for everyone to be employed at poverty-wage jobs. After all, people do have jobs in third world countries and are “employed”.

As concerned citizens we need to dig deeper and look beyond the doctored-up unemployment numbers so that we can better discern the actual health of our nation’s economy and job markets.

Just a few years ago they lobbied Washington to overturn California’s new MPG rules for cars that is going to be set for 40 mpg’s. They won. Instead of developing fuel efficient cars and trucks they kept making SUV’s.

Now the big three are in trouble and we are being asked to bail them out. What is wrong with this picture.

I find this criminal, and while I feel for the workers being laid off, this is the fault of bad planing from management.

A nation built upon an inherently amoral ideology cannot sustain itself. The impulse to act sole in term of self-interest cannot legislated. We must create a system of political and economic relations built upon a sense of responsibility our nation, community, and fellow men.

Only when the sellers believe that there might be personal negative financial and career consequences will they look to the potential pitfalls in the investments they sell.

In the current situation, with the coin rolling in no one in sales wanted to hear from people with bad news.

Maybe there should be the equivalent of “environmental impact statements” (as flawed as they might be), required before new investment schemes are invented.

Individuals purchase stocks for one reason; in anticipation that the price will rise with the result that this will increase the net worth of the investor owning the stock of the company. Stocks fundamentally rise or fall as the investors’ expectations of the profitability of the company rises or falls.

It is true that much of the decline in the stock market results from a “selling panic” caused by the many bank failures and the ineffectiveness of the federal government to solve the credit shortage. Eventually the investing public will understand that life will pretty much go on a usual as the weak banks fail and as the credit crisis indeed is resolved.

However, much of the market decline is a result of investors adjusting their expectations of the future income of the companies that they hold in their stock portfolios. With expected returns from investments lowered, it means that “values” of stock portfolios will also fall. A lower expectation of earnings is the harsh reality we are facing; it is not panic driven.

The new reality is that the average household lost trillions of dollars by the value of their homes falling precipitously and now the decline in the stock market. This then results in a significant drop in demand for the goods and services offered by companies that investors have purchased. These companies will earn less and therefore the value of their shares will decline.

The issue for bargain hunters is to determine what portion of the sell-off is due to panic and how much is due to fundamentals.

http://banicki.biz

the dirty little secret about interest rates is this, if we raise the interest rates to encourage savings, for instance, and to reduce spending where people can save money for down payment on a car or a house for instance, the interest payment on the federal debt of 11 trillion dollars will get so high that all the current taxes collected would not cover the interest payment on debt alone, let alone have any money left to pay the benefits or even run the defense department. That is why the fed must keep the interest rates low regardless of the consequences, hyper inflation, worthless money.

OF MEN AND MICE

There is an invasion of mice in the Eastern India and Western Bangladesh. Lack of food is forcing mice in to the homes of people where the attack the residents. Army has been called to get rid of the pests.

It is funny, that mice are acting like people now, reproducing even in the face of a severe shortage of food, eating up the reserves. I wonder if they are liberals or conservatives, since both camps believe that “EVERYONE” has the right to reproduce, whether they can support the brood or not.

Just like a certain segment of our society already does it from instinct, I believe all politician, and the other do gooders should be required to wear their pants off their buttocks, if you have your head stuck up down there lowering the pants off your behind will let you get more air to your brains and thus allow you to think better.

Why are there some people even today thinking that anyone can fix the mess we are in.
How can anyone still believe that we live in a free society, a democracy no less, when we are a short few months, may be a couple of years away from a totalitarian regime. May be God will send us a prophet, right? RIGHT! The joke is on you, God gave you a free will and you abused the crap out of it.

A vast majority, eighty percent, of the humanity is totally useless, ( look up, A New World Order 2003, below), it is net waste of resources, water air and food, and does not contribute to the advancement of human cause.

Our current economic model, based on consumption, is self defeating, we must consume more and more to keep the economy going. But who pays for this consumption, and how? When no one (the rich and the industrialists) wants to spend “their money” (as in paying higher taxes or giving benefits to the workers) but to have some one else spend theirs, for their benefit. The government is then forced to borrow and spend to keep up the facade of prosperity. The situation is same whether it is the United States or Pakistan or Haiti. In the long run, however, the government becomes broke and corrupt, politicians lie and make fake promises while they are bought up by the ones that control the real riches of the land, unlike the government that is left powerless, the government that did not want to collect enough taxes from the rich is now left at the mercy of the same powerful.
it is on my blog

We are in such difficult times that I get uncharacteristically upset at people who delude themselves and end up ensuring the kind of leadership we’ve had since the Republican revolution began to take hold in the Reagan era. I hope “On Point” deletes my last entry.

Let me restate what I meant without resorting to name calling:

10.)You are a delusionary Republican, as can be attested to by the posts you have made on this site over the last couple of months and which anyone can go back and examine if they are interested (which I seriously doubt anyone is).

Once again I’m sorry and I will definitely refrain from using derogatory epithets in future posts.

1.) We manufacture more now than we ever have. The dollar has recently strengthened.

2.) The U.S. hasn’t been “the Unique Supreme” banking, trading and investing center for decades; but it all depends on where the money is and where the regulations are the most hospitable. We have a $13 trillion economy; nobody else is close. Hopefully Congress won’t blow it and discourage the world from investing here.

3.) I paid $2.50 for gas yesterday and it felt great.

4.) Money can always be found if the investment is worthwhile, especially infrastruture.

5.) Resource,transportation, and energy costs are down from highs and getting cheaper.

6.) Our education system is failing and yet millions of foreigners come here and more would like to just to get an education. Sure it could be better but it’s not for a lack of money, mostly its failings are due to the peversions of entrenched interests.

7.)If you want to pay for all of the above, you’ve got to borrow and right now people are willing to lend the US government money at rates that are at all time lows. Now is the time to borrow.

8.) Credit is a global market, and if you haven’t noticed the world is looking pretty shaky. Again US rates are at all time lows. We can borrow a lot of money and not have to offer much return because the US is so much more attractive than any other credit market.

9.) 94% of people who want a job are employed, very close to historic lows.

Economies ebb and flow, nothing goes up forever. What we are experiencing is a normal part of economic cycles. The economy will recover as it always has, despite the pessimism of doomsayers.

What we might need now is in conjuction with the bail out of banks is government spending on infrastructure and personal savings.

No bail out for detroit or home owners in trouble.