

U.S. job losses soar, jobless rate at 14-year high - jadence
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN0739187520081107

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Prrometheus
It's funny that the justification for having a central bank is supposed to be
that it can minimize short-term economic fluctuation through monetary policy.
According to supporters of a central bank, the business cycle is supposed to
be a failing of an unrestrained free market, not a properly regulated one.

The economic history of the United States is a powerful argument against that
assertion.

~~~
nradov
Indeed. It's funny how the central bankers believe we need free markets for
everything except setting interest rates and adjusting the money supply. For
those apparently we need a Communist-style central planning bureaucracy.

And now in retrospect it's clear that most every major decision made by the
Fed for the past decade or more has been wrong, and has made macroeconomic
problems worse instead of better. Perhaps Andrew Jackson had the right idea
after all (at least on that one issue).

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biohacker42
Does anyone besides me expect grunge to make a come back?

How's the job market in the Seattle area?

We old gen X folk enjoyed the Seattle Sound when the economy was crap.

Do the millennials (gen Y) get to live through their own version of the early
90s job market?

Cheer up gen Y, it will turn around, and you just might get some good music
out of it.

P.S.

Get off my lawn.

~~~
smelendez
We will call our band 'secular bear'.

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p0ltergeist
welcome to the L-shaped recession. welcome to the secular bear market. a
secular bear market periodically shows amazing % gains in stocks, but always
ending down. look at the dow in the 30s, the nikkei in the 90s (and
now)...even cyclical gains of 100% or more could not stem the larger down
trend

forget all this garbage of now being a great time to max out ten credit cards
to build a website. there is only one rule for secular bear markets - preserve
wealth. there is no value in planting in an economic winter. don't fight it,
wait for an economic spring to appear in the economy and have capital ready
for a more appropriate climate. we have years to go. this will end only when
all excess debt is deleveraged and governments, consumers and companies alike
have healthier balance sheets purged of debt.

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josefresco
Welcome to Hacker News p0ltergeist and thanks for your comment.

No value in planting in an economic winter? Doesn't that conflict with 'buy
low sell high' principle? If you wait too long for the spring, you end up
paying too much.

/not an expert, has mucho debt

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p0ltergeist
_No value in planting in an economic winter? Doesn't that conflict with 'buy
low sell high' principle?_

no. the dow is going to 5000 (but will likely go to 12000 first) . that is a
better time to consider "planting". furthermore oil is going to go over $200
and t-notes will yield 20% before this is all over, because what we are doing
now is planting the seeds for hyperinflation (to follow our current deflation)
with all of this "50 billion here, 100 billion there, 700 billion here" money
printing.

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swombat
I hope you have some good solid spread betting going on to clean out when all
your predictions come true.

Oh, you don't? You mean these are just in-the-air?

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Zaak
That's a good point. If you really do know what's going to happen, there's
almost certainly a way you can profit from it.

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p0ltergeist
i do and i will

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david927
That's interesting you say that, because while I feel I've seen this coming
(and have annoyed people for years to get into metals), at the same time, I'm
not confident at all with exactly how it will all pay out. My gut says that if
it's paper, it's worth paper. But really, I don't know.

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steveplace
Before people go off screaming _Recession_ I would like to note that we've
been in a recession and secular bear market since 2000. Only due to central
bank intervention did it seem to get any better... and the intervention
delayed the normal business cycle and deepened the contraction.

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ars
It's funny how the news reporters work so hard to find every reason under the
sun for why the stock market is going down - except that traders in general
prefer republicans, and they are not happy obama won. But reporters can't say
that.

Not directly related to unemployment I know.

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vaksel
if traders in general prefer republicans, then how do you explain the huge
drop under Bush

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hugh
From Bush's inauguration in 2001 to late 2007, the Dow rose from 10,000ish to
14,000ish. It's only dropped in the last year, and in particular in the last
few months, as it became more and more likely (based on approval ratings and
polls) that the next President was going to be a Democrat.

It wasn't until a month before the election that the Dow crashed back below
the 10,500 mark which it was at when George W Bush took office in 2001.

OK, now I don't believe that's really the only thing going on, obviously
there's a zillion other factors which are more important than just Republicans
vs Democrats. But you asked how you could explain the "huge drop under Bush"
despite traders being more confident when the administration is Republican,
and I gave you an explanation.

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newt0311
Its funny how we Americans run like headless chicken when the unemployment
rate hits 6.3% while Europe has rates like that in the _good_ years.

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kqr2
The actual unemployment rate in America is higher because we stop counting
people after their unemployment insurance runs out.

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nradov
Wrong. <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.faq.htm>

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tjic
14 year high?

Wow.

Bush has finally let the unemployment rate get almost as bad as it was under
Clinton...

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tom_rath
When Clinton _started_ his Presidency.

I'm guessing you're too young to remember the whole "It's The Economy, Stupid"
theme behind Clinton's first-term campaign.

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gjm
Yup. See, e.g., page 6 of <http://www.policepay.net/pdf/usecon.pdf>.
Unemployment had a local maximum in 1992 and then went down every year until
2000.

