U.S. unemployment rate goes down

[elvis]

How is it spinning if it was going up until this month?

Our entire economy collapsed.

It is only because our government reacted quickly that we didn't have a second Great Depression. I expected the rate to go way over 10%. Now we are going to pull out of this. Amazing really.

Chris, you are kidding right? In fact, I think you have been yanking our chain for a long time. So many of your posts are so laughable they can't be serious. I am waiting for the day that you come clean and say you have been BS'ing all this time. I mean really, how can you not laugh when you make a comment like the one above. That one really takes the cake.

And IMO I think our unemployment rate is probably more like 16%. With the crash in the housing market, I would expect most agents saw their income disappear. Did they count those folks?

The unemployment rate only includes those who are drawing unemployment benefits.

 

[pete]

The unemployment rate only includes those who are drawing unemployment benefits.

With much of that running out and you still need to pay taxes on top of that.

 

[editec]

Our entire economy collapsed.

It is only because our government reacted quickly that we didn't have a second Great Depression. I expected the rate to go way over 10%. Now we are going to pull out of this. Amazing really.

Chris, you are kidding right? In fact, I think you have been yanking our chain for a long time. So many of your posts are so laughable they can't be serious. I am waiting for the day that you come clean and say you have been BS'ing all this time. I mean really, how can you not laugh when you make a comment like the one above. That one really takes the cake.

And IMO I think our unemployment rate is probably more like 16%. With the crash in the housing market, I would expect most agents saw their income disappear. Did they count those folks?

The unemployment rate only includes those who are drawing unemployment benefits.

Totally wrong.

 

[sparky]

why would anyone trust stats from a government that operates for the benifit of the top echelon?

How Goldman bailed out Goldman…



Published: August 8, 2009
Updated 1 day ago





Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wasn’t on Goldman Sachs’ payroll when the US government bailed out his former employer, but he may as well have been.

That’s the implication in a New York Times article, published Saturday, that shows President George W. Bush’s last treasury secretary, a former CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs, had frequent conversations with the current CEO of Goldman during the week of Sept. 16, when the US government handed over $85 billion to rescue the troubled insurance giant AIG.

AIG’s outstanding debts to Goldman Sachs meant that $13 billion of the money handed over to AIG went directly to Goldman Sachs.

“During the week of the AIG bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein spoke two dozen times … far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives,” the Times reports.

The revelation is sure to fuel further claims that the $700-billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, passed by Congress last fall with the support of both major presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, was “gamed” by Paulson in order to help out his colleagues at Goldman — and preserve his own reputation, which he made as the bank’s CEO.

Paulson spoke with Goldman’s CEO in an official capacity a total of 26 times before the treasury secretary was granted an “ethics waiver” that allowed him to be in far closer contact with his former employer than would have otherwise been allowed, Reuters notes.

In the five days after Paulson received his “waiver,” on Sept. 16, 2008, he spoke with Goldman’s Blankfein another 24 times.

But Paulson may have done more than help his former employer get bailed out of bad debts — he may have helped orchestrate the demise of his former employer’s competitors.

“Indeed, Mr. Paulson helped decide the fates of a variety of financial companies, including two longtime Goldman rivals, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, before his ethics waivers were granted,” the Times writes.

Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — both investment banks in direct competition with Goldman Sachs — were not bailed out when bad debt forced them to cease operating last year.

“Ad hoc actions taken by Mr. Paulson and officials at the Federal Reserve, like letting Lehman fail and compensating AIG’s trading partners, continue to confound some market participants and members of Congress,” the Times notes.

From the Times article:

Goldman not only received $13 billion in taxpayer money as a result of the A.I.G. bailout, but also was given permission at the height of the crisis to convert from an investment firm to a national bank, giving it easier access to federal financing in the event it came under greater financial pressure.

Goldman also won federal debt guarantees and received $10 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. It benefited further when the Securities and Exchange Commission suddenly changed its rules governing stock trading, barring investors from being able to bet against Goldman’s shares by selling them short.
While spokespeople for the Treasury and for Paulson defend the former treasury secretary’s discussions with Goldman Sachs as necessary given the financial crisis, some scholars and observers say the circumstances are suspicious.

“We don’t know what they talked about,” Samuel L. Hayes, a Harvard Business School professor emeritus, told the Times. “Obviously there was an enormous amount at stake for Goldman in whether or not the A.I.G. contracts would be made whole. So I think the burden is now on Mr. Paulson to demonstrate that there was no exchange of information one way or the other that influenced the ultimate decision of the government to essentially provide a blank check for AIG’s contracts.”

Since the $700-billion TARP bailout, Goldman Sachs has been doing very well for itself. Since several of its competitors disappeared from the market, the Wall Street investment bank has cornered the program trading market; by some accounts, half of all the automatic, computer-based trades done on the New York Stock Exchange are now carried out by Goldman Sachs.

Last fiscal quarter, the company made $100 million from stock trading on each of 46 business days — an all-time record, shattering the previous record of 34 such days, set by Goldman the previous quarter. The company has also been able to re-pay $10 billion of the cash it was handed in the bailout.

The $700-billion TARP bailout has been operating for nearly 11 months, and still has no official ethics guidelines attached to it, the Washington Times reported Saturday.

“An audit released Thursday by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), says the Treasury Department is in the final stages of drafting rules on lobbying for bailout money - more than 10 months into the program,” the paper reported.

According to the report cited by the Washington Times, at least three of the financial institutions that applied for TARP money were granted cash despite not meeting the criteria. This, the report said, was due to “qualitative mitigating circumstances.”

 

[PoliticalChic]

I was curious to see how the right would spin this negatively.

Hysterical!

OK, Let's see how the left spins it.

Was the drop 'statistically insignificant,' as the 0.1% drop was under President Bush?


Few Bright Spots in Last Job Report Prior to Election
By ROBERT D. HERSHEY Jr.,
Published: Saturday, October 3, 1992


"In the last chance for an improved job report that could help President Bush's re-election chances, the Government said today that the United States lost 57,000 more jobs in September and that the unemployment rate posted a statistically insignificant one-tenth point decline, to 7.5 percent."

Few Bright Spots in Last Job Report Prior to Election - The New York Times

Still hysterical?

 

[Old Rocks]

Well, things are not better. They are just getting worse at a slower rate. If the economy does improve, and the job numbers become positive within a year, then President Obama can justly say that he did prevent the worse from happening. If the job numbers continue going south, even by a decreased amount, the Democrats will pay for it in 2010, and 2012.

However, this could turn into a real nightmare for the Republicans. Were the economy to come back, and come back strong, President Obama pass the Health Care Plan, and have it actually work to where almost all Americans have access to Health Care, by however miniscule a margin it passes, the Republicans will simply be seen as the people who tried to block all progress on every front, after they had created the mess in the fiirst place. And the blue dogs might see some real competition in the primaries.

Next year is going to be very interesting, politically.

 

[ba1614]

Considering that this is within the margin of error, I don't see it as cause for celebration.

A more revealing stat of where unemployment is at is the 7.88 million people who have been unemployed for more than 15 weeks, up 74% since Dec, and the highest ever.

Not as Bad, but Not Good - Floyd Norris Blog - NYTimes.com

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The long-battered U.S. job market showed some signs of improvement in July as employers cut far fewer jobs from payrolls and the unemployment rate fell for the first time in more than a year, according to a government report Friday.

The Labor Department reported a net loss of 247,000 jobs in July, the fewest job losses since August 2008. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 325,000.

The job loss in June was also revised lower -- to 443,000 job losses from 467,000.

The unemployment rate fell to 9.4% from 9.5% in June, the first decline in that closely watched reading since April of 2008. Economists had expected unemployment to rise to 9.6%.

Jobs picture brightens - Aug. 7, 2009

ROFLMNAO...

WOO HOO! Unemployment increased by a quarter million people and UE rate DROPPED 1/10th of 1%... but still hanging just below 10%.

IT'S A MATH MIRACLE!

But this is HYSTERICAL! It seems like just last year when this SAME IDIOT was DEMANDING that 5% unemployment represented "THE WORST ECONOMY IN 50 YEARS!"

LOL...



Leftist...

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

hey, I have an idea! Let's send some more jobs to fucking China!

That's being worked out right now...

All one needs to export jobs is to increase the cost of doing business HERE! Now I'm sure you heard that many states increased the Minimum wage... and in so doing increased the probability that those companies that would benefit by moving to where costs are reduced, will be moving to where they're costs are reduced.

LEFTISTS: Driving US Industry out of the US, Since 1930"

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

Well, things are not better. They are just getting worse at a slower rate. If the economy does improve, and the job numbers become positive within a year, then President Obama can justly say that he did prevent the worse from happening. If the job numbers continue going south, even by a decreased amount, the Democrats will pay for it in 2010, and 2012.

However, this could turn into a real nightmare for the Republicans. Were the economy to come back, and come back strong, President Obama pass the Health Care Plan, and have it actually work to where almost all Americans have access to Health Care, by however miniscule a margin it passes, the Republicans will simply be seen as the people who tried to block all progress on every front, after they had created the mess in the fiirst place. And the blue dogs might see some real competition in the primaries.

Next year is going to be very interesting, politically.

Well Old Rocks is right...

IF the Economy responds strongly to fiscal policy which discourages and punishes production... then that is going to be a REAL problem for REALITY and those who are forced to live there... and this because that kind of delusion would be some real competition.

 

[anna]

Going down like barry hussein did to his gay murdered friends in chicago!!

 

[pinqy]

its summer time
employment usually does go up in the summer


and it will also in the late fall
getting ready for the christmas season

I was going to say. Unemployment always rises in the fall when the kids go back to college.

Neither of you are quite correct. The official numbers are seasonally adjusted to correct for just those predictable variations. The unadjusted numbers will show the trends you're stating, but the adjusted numbers mathematically adjust for them so that we can see the real month-to-month trend and ignore the noise of regular seasonal fluctuations.

It's good news as far as we aren't hemorraging new jobs lost like in past months--but the numbers only tell how many drew FIRST time claims for the month--& do not show how many people have looked for jobs--that have just given up--& are now off of the unemployment insurance program--because their unemployment insurance benefits have expired.

Wrong....that's the UI claims report...a weekly report from DOL. The monthly Unemployment Rate (from the Employment Situation report) by BLS defines unemployed as all people 16 years and over not in the military, not in prison, not in an institute, who did not work during the week containing the 12th and actively looked for work in the previous 4 weeks, unless they were on temporary layoff in which case they didn't have to look.

The unemployment rate only includes those who are drawing unemployment benefits.

No it doesn't, and it never has.

 

[garyd]

Depends on which number you're barking about doesn't it?