Are you unemployed?

5 things that Piss Me Off & Show Why We're In Trouble

1) Congress is making plans to pass mandatory health care for all Americans. Yet Congress won't eat their own cooking. Anyone ever seen the plans that Congress has for themselves? If not, click here...they have great options, of which 75% are paid by the hardworking taxpayers of the US. I am not in favor of any of what Congress and the President are trying to pass.

2) Goldman Sachs, after sleeping with the government by putting their criminal CEO Henry Paulson in as Treasury Secretary, had the walls cave in on them and depended on the American taxpayer to save them via the TARP fund and becoming a "bank" instead of an investment bank. So how do they repay the taxpayer? By trying to pay back only 1/2 the TARP funds they received and keeping the rest of their RECORD profits to dole out to employees who ran illegal trading schemes that gave them an unfair advantage. Remember how Halliburton was in bed with the Republican administration of Bush? Goldman has managed to be in bed with both Obama and Bush administrations.

3) The BS employment rate...I mean the BLS unemployment rate, which the government says is 9.5% but anyone with half a brain knows is much higher than that.

4) Banks are making record profits but are not lending at all, or making you bend backward, take it in the arse, and then tell you they promise they'll call you in the morning.

5)That until the public had an outcry, the Treasury Department had a job opening for a "humor expert cartoonist"". The job offering has since been cancelled. Among the duties included:

Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace, the close relationship between humor and stress, and why humor is one of the most important ways that we communicate in business and office life

Hard Times

Is this a "great recession" or a "soft depression"? Difficult to tell, but here's some food for thought:

1)In 2007, 51 percent of graduating college students had jobs lined up before graduation. This year, less than 20 percent had jobs. 2) State income tax receipts from January 2008 – April 2009 were down 26 percent from the year before, and money wired back to homes in Mexico from America is down 20 percent.
3) 51 million people on social security, 12 million people on SS disability, 34 million people subsiding on food stamps.
4) Seven million people are collecting unemployment benefits, and another eight million are unemployed and collecting nothing! There are 38 million part-time or self employed workers, and 2.4 million people in jail (1 in 100 adults).

By every measure, whether or not we are including the government's unemployment rate (9.5%), Shadow Stats unemployment rate (16.5%) or my personal estimate (12%), there is no doubt that times are bad. Housing numbers, horrible. Credit card defaults? The evidence is there, too.

My take...we are still in a great, great recession that is about 2 news stories away from officially being in a depression. What could take us to that point? Your thoughts are welcome here...

What to do if you are unemployed

Today's unemployment numbers were AWFUL! 9.6% unemployment rate, but a higher rate of 16.5% if you include people who have given up looking for a job.

The good news is that the media has it figured out and offers this wonderful tidbit of jobs you can get if you are unemployed, including:

1) Become a fake employee

2) Be an actor in a zombie movie

3) Do your best Michael Jackson impersonation

Yes, the financial media is doing a great job indeed....whats next to recommend, become a contrary investment blogger??

Want some good, solid advice? Read Mark Cuban's guide for becoming rich

It's going to hit the fan hard

A scary article from The Market Ticker, As I sit at my car lot with no customers I have time to surf the web and find info like this. Between my personal experiences, and what I see our incompetent government trying to bruch it all under the rug, I can't help but wonder how bad it is really going to get. In order for recovery to begin the bad debts must be cleaned out. This can not end well folks...click on the link to read the whole thing:

Recessions cannot end until the conditions that caused the recession are removed from the economy. This is elementary logic and obvious to anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size.
For an inventory recession growth returns when enough capacity is destroyed through layoffs and inventory selloffs to bring capacity and demand back into balance. Employers then hire new workers and the economy recovers.
For a credit recession, however, there is a much larger problem: The reason real interest rates went negative is that debt has a carrying cost and consumes free cash flow; so long as the debt taken on in the credit binge remains the cash flow impact also remains.
Default and bankruptcy clears excessive credit (debt) from the system - if it is allowed to occur. But if it is not, then the bad debt remains on the balance sheets somewhere and the cash flow impact remains in the economy. Employment remains weak, capital spending restart attempts falter as demand fails to return and credit quality continues to remain insufficient to support new credit demand.