Continued claims are now at 6.02 million – the all time record.

Nearly 5 million jobs have been lost since the start of Depression 2.0. Interestingly enough, the unemployment rate was at 4%+ or so before the recession started. The unemployment rate is now almost 9%. The unemployment rate has only doubled, and yet we started with almost 3 million unemployed and added 5 million to that number. Some people got jobs, some people just had their benefits expire and are now not counted among this data set. Another thing I don’t entirely get, is how 6 million people figure out to be 9% of Americans – I’m guessing they’re only counting people in the workforce. But those people not ‘in the workforce’ – children, retirees, ‘disabled’ people like my mother – are still a drain on resources. And this means that a sizable population of people on unemployment are helping care for some of these people.

Our resources are spread very, very thin and we are piling on the debt nearly to the tune of George W. Bush’s entire presidency on a per-budget-year-deficit now. 1 trillion dollars in debt has been written off with 3 more to come, mostly from America, and we have a nearly 4 trillion dollar federal budget this year. And they want to increase taxes, while digging us into this abyss of debt-slavery. A year ago I joked about “a trillion here, a trillion there, soon we’ll be talking about real money.”

Sometimes I wish I was wrong more often.

At least housing starts are near an all-time low. At least a few people realize that building more new houses on credit when so many are going unoccupied and prices are cliff diving is a terrible idea.

And tell me, why is this bad:

Japanese wholesale prices fell at their fastest annual pace in nearly seven years last month, official data showed Monday, adding to worries about the renewed threat of deflation.

I mean, it only means the rich will get less richer because the poor will pay less for goods. Hey, that’s fucking GREAT from my perspective. I mean, the price/performance value of computing materials has been on an exponential downward decline for the last 40 years and it’s been FUCKING GREAT yo! Have you heard anyone complaining that they were paying too little for a computer?

The playing field needs to be more level or a society will tear itself apart. This is a situation that has repeated itself endlessly in our historical record.

Tags: depression 2.0

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 11:58.