At the time of this posting, The Financial Times web page has conflicting headlines. One has US unemployment up to 418,000 (21 July) and one has it below 400,000 (29 July). This is amid news that our GDP has not grown very much,♠ although exports are up and imports are down, which is a good trend or us.
The REAL GDP grew by an annualized rate of 1.3%. The Current GDP grew by an annualized rate of 3.7%. Maybe living in the Current world is better than living in the real world.
Speaking of "world", I don't think this is the end of the world. However, you can see sign posts up ahead. They may be pointing to the end of the world.
And, with unemployment filings going down we may find that when we get to those sign posts they are saying this way to a future recover. In fact, given that markets sometimes pick up the more subtle indications, this current crisis may be giving markets confidence that the United States Government has finally recognized that it has some long term problems and is preparing to tackle them.
Regards — Cliff
♠ This does not look like a permanent URL.
Absent from government figures are those who have abandoned hope of employment, and stopped looking, which I would argue is having a greater impact on month-to-month unemployment numbers than any other factor right now. Recent stories illuminating the profound discrimination against unemployed job seekers are not a coincidence here.
ReplyDeleteWe are told precisely what the controllers of information WANT us to hear....and much of what we KNOW is pure fantasy.
ReplyDeleteThe only "truth" is in the equation that points to "what we take in minus what we spend"...and we get a negative number....a big one when one throws in the other figure, minus payments on debt principle and interest.
I suggest that there is no such thing as a "non-debt financial number." It is all related to debt in our case.......