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You're free to do whatever you like, just don't do so to confuse the uninformed. Most people understand what U3 represents and accept that as the unemployment metric.
Question I have for you is were you using your alternative metric in the 2000's when Bush's number was either side of ten percent? Using U6 does highlight better when the explosion in unemployment began. Moves the up slope several more months into bush's term, are you sure you looking to highlite that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by theunbrainwashed
Unemployment has gotten worse since early 2011, which was around 22% at the beginning and now hovers between 22% and 23. I use the unemployment data that was used pre-1994 (which is more comprehensive than the current U6), not the bogus, fake U3 number. The real unemployment number is between 22% and 24%. So why is the economy "improving"? Christmas and Thanksgiving hiring
Too bad nobody checks to see how many will be short on their January rent.
Landlords fund an awful lot of Xmas shopping.
Aint that the truth.Back in my house framing days I hated christmass. Builders would go buy their wives new jewely for christmass then couldn't pay their subs for most of January.
I just don't like the notion that somehow the economy would have created billions in lost capital without federal aid. Bernanke studied the depression for his dissertation, and he is of the same mind. I cannot imagine where it would have come from. I respectfully disagree on that one.
Fiddlehead, I did support TARP and was glad that Obama continued the program. The "bailout" carried high interest rates that the banks paid, and a lot of restrictions on bank behavior including compensation limits. The government did its job as the lender of last resort. We agree on that.
I did not like politicians making sneering references to bankers, as if all eight thousand banks were to blame for the actions of a dozen of the biggest ones. Dodd Frank will drive small banks into the hands of large banks, further concentrating the industry to our detriment. This is not a talking point--go talk to the bankers in your town.
The rest of the stimulus, count me out. I closed on a house two weeks before the house tax credit deal kicked in. My neighbor traded an old beater in on a new car a month before Clash for Clunkers. I hired an emplyee six weeks before the exemption on new employee payroll taxes went into effect. That's why I say these programs spray money at random--they pass them, put in retroactive effective dates, and you either win the stimulus lottery or you don't. I didn't--so my taxes went to the next guy, or the business down the block, who is in the same circumstances I am in.
Meanwhile households are paying down debt like never before in history, saving money like we haven't since the early 1990's, and still manage to spend a little bit more month by month. The economy is healing, very slowly, and the message to policymakers should be "don't do something, just stand there." Stable policy would go a long way.
Party on.... Think Monty Python and all is well...
It is in fact, not well. Inflation still coming/continuing, wages stagnant, and the main growth is in government.
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