Mr. Rawles,
The following paragraph is excerpted from John Mauldin’s excellent FrontLineThoughts.com newsletter this week:
“The longer-term picture of labor force withdrawal is kind of shocking. Total household employment is down by 4.4 million since the Great Recession began in December 2007, and the number of unemployed is up by 4.9 million. The civilian population is up 9.6 million – but the labor force is up just 447,000. The number classed as not in the labor force is up by 9.2 million – and those not in the labor force and wanting a job is up 1.7 million. In other words, just 5% of the increase in the adult population over the last 4-1/3 years has found its way into employment; the other 95% are not in the labor force.”
All of the government economic intervention since the markets tanked over four years ago has failed to produce any significant increase in employment. We have almost 10 million more people but less than half a million more jobs despite going over $6,000,000,000,000 – a 2/3rds increase – deeper into debt.
Ben Bernanke still patiently explains to us one more time that this is the best course of action. Paul Krugman puts out another book arguing we haven’t spent (borrowed) nearly enough yet. Warren Buffet argues on behalf of the Administration that he isn’t paying high enough taxes while he fights the IRS over millions he already owes and won’t pay. And Obama’s teleprompter tells anyone still paying attention that people giving up looking for work is improvement because that lowers the unemployment rate.
We are not led by fools, we are fools for allowing these people to lead. – Kevin D.