Republicans - hypocritical again.

Ho-hum - same shit, different day.

Mantras for the recession - cartoon

Gawker Makes A Good Point

From Gawker...

The Recession Is Over For the Rich! [Recessionomics]

from Gawker by Hamilton Nolan

Bernanke has a beard and is, therefore, the untrustworthy sort. So we would not put too much stock (heh) in this:

"From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point," he said, adding that "it's still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time, as many people will still find that their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was."

From a technical perspective, our schools are too broke to buy pencils. From a technical perspective, the airline industry's losing $11 billion.From a technical perspective, Americans have been forced to take to the Wal-Mart electronics section to watch their pornography.

This Recession is Serious

I don't know if the majority of Republicans understand the depth of this recession - it doesn't seem so since they are so diametrically opposed to the stimulus, the bailouts and the financial rescue of the middle class. I read enough financial news to know and understand that there is still a very real chance that the world economy could collapse into a complete depression. Banks in Europe are even worse off than those in the US and if Europe goes under, our economy would collapse right behind them. Check out the chart below.

From Acerbic Politics

We Don' Need No Stinkin' Stimuls

From Acerbic Politics

How Deep The Recession?

You've probably heard the unemployment figures for November that came out yesterday - 533,000 newly unemployed. But it is only part of the picture...

Back in 1994, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics changed how it gauged unemployment, choosing to exclude "discouraged workers." That means people available and eager to work but who, after a year of looking, have given up because they cannot find a job. The Clinton administration just chopped these discouraged workers out of the most commonly reported statistic on unemployment.

The figure now used - the official rate (which today clocked in at 6.7%) - is called U3 in BLS jargon. As you can see from this table, it's labeled "Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force." But, as you can also see from the table, there are other, broader measures that rarely get reported in the megamedia, although The Wall Street Journal did include one of these in paragraph 16 of Market Watch today:

An alternative gauge of unemployment -- which includes discouraged workers and those whose hours have been cut back to part-time -- rose to 12.5% from 11.8%. The number of workers forced to work part-time rose by 621,000 to 7.3 million.

From Meteor Blades on Daily Kos.