CHESSNOID

Economists and other financial experts like to make comparisons of how this recession compares to the Great Depression.  They like to argue the numbers aren’t as bad or there are no bread lines yet.  I think that is the sense of optimism they want to believe in and ignore the reality that we are living in.

According to the current unemployment reports we are now at a national rate of 9.8% which equals about 15.1 million people.  If you factor in the underemployed numbers that rate jumps up over 17% which is over 30 million unemployed people.

Unemployment Rate Hits 9.8 Percent video

Both those numbers are probably under reported.  Every time we have to revise the reports it always is more losses than before.  Next year when they update the reports it is expected to add in over 800,000 more lost jobs. Doesn’t that seem to be a big forecast miss.

Bloomberg:

The U.S. economic slump earlier this year was so severe it short-circuited the government’s model for calculating payrolls, raising the risk that today’s jobs report may be too optimistic.

About 824,000 more jobs may be subtracted from the payroll count for the 12 months through last March when the figures are officially revised early next year, a Labor Department report showed today. The revision would be the biggest since at least 1991.

The bulk of the miss occurred in the calculations for the first quarter of this year, the Labor Department said. The economy shrank at a 6.4 percent annual pace in the first three months of 2009, the worst performance since 1982.

The figures raise the possibility that the government’s calculations continue to miss the mark.

“We are probably still underestimating job losses,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “There could be another 30,000 to 40,000” that the data isn’t picking up, he said.

That would mean the loss of jobs for September could turn out to be as high as 300,000, rather than the 263,000 reported today by the Labor Department. Today’s report also showed the jobless rate climbed to 9.8 percent last month, a 26-year high.

The potential revision for the year through last March would mean that the economy lost 5.6 million jobs for the period instead of the 4.8 million now on the books.

Everyone likes to compare by percentages, but if you look at the raw numbers of the unemployed people, you can see how massive our current unemployment is in the big picture.    Unofficially, we actually have over 30 million people unemployed. Compare that to the raw numbers from the Great Depression and you will realize how bad it really is right now.

Because our population has grown so much, more unemployed people now will tax our resources exponentially more.  This is the first time now where people are running out of unemployment benefits before they even find jobs.

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) —

For the first time, the average amount of time it takes fired employees to find a new job exceeds the length of their standard unemployment benefits.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows the average duration of unemployment is now 26.2 weeks, longer than the 26 weeks of state benefits normally provided to workers who lose their jobs. It’s the first time that has occurred since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records in 1948.

I think for the Obama supporters, the kool aid is finally wearing off. All the promises of knowing how to fix the economy and withdrawing the troops from the wars he claimed not to support at this point are just broken promises.

I am not a Democrat or Republican. I am a registered Independent. I didn’t vote for Bush or Obama and focus my criticism not on them personally but on their leadership performance. I observe not only what they say but their decisions and actual actions. So far they have only demonstrated to be good politicians and nothing more. It looks like the BUSH-OBAMA recession will last much longer than anticipated since neither of them really know what to do. As our country suffers, Obama was out campaigning for a failed Olympic bid for Chicago. How ironic is that? The most powerful man in the world doesn’t see the big picture.

Obama: Latest Unemployment Numbers ‘Sobering’

When I listen to Obama’s latest speech, I hear a failed leader who doesn’t know what to do. Obama thinks Bernanke helped to avert the financial crisis we are in, when in fact Bernanke contributed to it. He hired Geithner as Treasury Secretary who forgot to pay his taxes. Both men are academically brilliant, but they were responsible for bailing out Wall Street with tax payer money. They committed a moral hazard by mixing public funds with private money. It is very challenging to get out of a recession when the people around you are financial stooges.