By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
Dear CIGAs,
There has been so much bad economic news out, recently, I do not see how anyone with half a frontal lobe could say the economy is not in trouble. Friday, new unemployment figures were announced, and a weak 119,000 jobs were created. The rate fell to 8.1%, but only because more discouraged workers stopped looking for work and disappeared from the government’s data base. In Friday’s report, economist John Williams of Shadowstats.com summed it all up by saying, “The headline U.3 unemployment rate dropped a statistically insignificant notch to 8.1% in April, from 8.2% in March, but the “good” news was anything but good. The declining pace of headline unemployment reflected an accelerating increase in the number of the headline unemployed giving up looking for work, because there were no jobs to be had. . . . The SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure, accordingly, notched higher in April to 22.3%, from 22.2% in March.” (Click here to go to the free section of Shawowstats.com.) So, unemployment in the real world actually went up—not down. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, planned job cuts rose 7.1% in April, and more than 40,000 more workers are going to be laid off. (Click here for more on this story.)
Housing is another sad story. Year-over-year housing prices continue to decline despite record low 30-year mortgage rates below 4%! In the last two years alone, 1 million homeowners who bought houses lost money and are underwater. In January, the Federal Reserve estimated 12 million Americans owed more than their homes were worth. (Click here for more on that story.) Economist Robert Shiller of the Case-Shiller home price index lamented, two weeks ago, “I worry that we might not see a really major turnaround in our lifetimes.”
More…
http://usawatchdog.com/its-official-economy-heading-down/
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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