U.S. job losses soar, jobless rate at 14-year high

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN0739187520081107

by jadence • 18 years ago

16 33 18 years ago

p0ltergeist6• 18 years ago

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.

josefresco• 18 years ago

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

p0ltergeist6• 18 years ago

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.

prakash• 18 years ago

Can you explain more about this? You have stated what you think will happen. What leads you to conclude that a "L-shaped recession"/ "secular bear market"?

Thanks!

p0ltergeist6• 18 years ago

because this is not stocks leading the economy down (2000), this is the economy leading stocks down. this is a global debt crisis. simply restoring confidence will not change anything. those in debt will have to come out of debt. why aren't banks lending? would you lend to someone already technically insolvent?

we've increased the national debt by 10% in just about a month. you tell me if you think that bodes well for the economy.

indeed, debt will become more of a problem in coming years as people see their secured assets lose value (i.e., classic "underwater" loans). people will all seek to liquidate at once, but since they are underwater they will still be in debt even when they no longer have possessions.

DEBT. that is all you need to know about this crisis. it will take years for our debt situation to be solved. until it does, we are in a secular bear.

biohacker42• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

We will call our band 'secular bear'.

newt0311• 18 years ago

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.

jcl• 18 years ago

On the other hand, unemployed Europeans get paid more.

(Or so the argument goes... No idea how true it is, as I can't find stats.)

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

Two words: health insurance.

kqr2• 18 years ago

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

nradov3• 18 years ago

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

steveplace3• 18 years ago

Two numbers in the unemployment report: U3 and U6. U3 is lower and the one looked after in the media. U6 is much more harrowing and much more accurate.

tjic• 18 years ago

14 year high?

Wow.

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

tom_rath• 18 years ago

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.

gjm• 18 years ago

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.

ars• 18 years ago

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.

vaksel• 18 years ago

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

hugh• 18 years ago

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.

steveplace3• 18 years ago

traders in general prefer republicans

No, they don't. There's little correlation with that profession and political leaning.

And there's also no statistical data to link market performance with a political party. I didn't think you were inferring that, but as a failsafe, I mention it.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

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.

nradov3• 18 years ago

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).

steveplace3• 18 years ago

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.

U.S. job losses soar, jobless rate at 14-year high

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