Pundits Plussed, Workers Gruntled By Precedented Jobless Claims

The Summer
of Recovery is really starting to cook now, with another
increase in unemployment claims.

Like all the previous "unexpected"
increases in jobless numbers, the new report from the Labor
Department is being treated as a
big surprise.

More green shoots:

* Institute for Supply Management notes a new
slowdown from May to June.

* U.S.
Census Bureau [pdf] reports a 0.2 percent decrease in
construction spending from April to May.

* Mortgage applications and existing home sales are both

heading south.

How does President Obama fit into this, with
his high sentence about the Summer of Recovery? "He's
a human destroyer," says investment banking consultant Howard
Davidowitz, who adds the president is "surrounded by a bunch of
complete incompetents, led by himself."

Nor is this simply free-market cant. Paul Krugman, the Doctor,

says the United States is in the early stages of a third Great
Depression. That's the 21st century equivalent of the
stock tip from Joe Kennedy's shoeshine boy. If even he's got
the news, it's time stock up on guns and nonperishables.

I refuse to talk about the "return" of the recession or the
"second
dip" of the recession for the same reason I refuse to refer to
Mickey Rourke's "comeback": You say he's back; I say he never
went away.

Posted using cast2blog.com