Saturday, January 7, 2023

December 7

 Well, Old Spineless finally got his wish to be Speaker of the House. It only took 15 votes and his giving away most of the power of the Speaker. The next two years should be continued theater and chaos from what used to be the Republican Party. The Former Guy's sycophants are pretty much in charge.

I wasn't paying much attention to the latest unemployment data on the news this morning. They said it was at a very low 3.5%. Really?? I confirmed that with a quick Google search. However, I also did a quick check of Shadowstats. They confirmed he headline number but the U6 number, which includes the "short term discouraged" and "marginally attached workers" excluded from the official number is about 3% higher and, if they measure the unemployment as it was in 1994 and before, the unemployment is at almost 25%. The only way we have low unemployment is by excluding large parts of the labor force.

I found this by way of NakedCapitalism which is interesting given the layoffs announced by Amazon and some tech companies. The stealth layoffs mean the company doesn't have to announce job cuts. Makes me wonder how much of this kind of thing is going on and how much it affects the unemployment numbers.

Found this one from the Asia Times also by way of NakedCapitalism. Almost none of the info presented in the article has appeared in the mainstream news.

Gizmodo continues the sad saga of the cryptocurrency meltdown.

Since I am no great fan of The Former Guy I loved this story from the Oilprice.com. Though I don't believe there is any more chance of the anything coming of the arrest warrant against him (any more than expect to see Putin in the dock at The Hague for war crimes) it did bring a smile to my face.

No comments: