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[nova]

ShortyPrice, on 22 January 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

I am too, but how long did it last?

BTW, the BLS shows a different set of numbers than you claim

http://www.bls.gov/cps/prev_yrs.htm

We are unfortunately now into that goober's second term and the unemployment rate is still dismal.

And the only reason the unemployment rate has gotten any better is that the labor force participation has gone down over the last 4 years.  I keep saying this again and again but people giving up EVER finding a job is not a good thing.

And that 10.3% unemployment rate in the early 80s is due to what we should have done over the last decade or so, namely increasing interest rates, letting the at least one of the successive bubbles we've been in deflate to set the stage for a real recovery.

Instead what we've done is blow more and more air into repeated bubbles, which is going to result is some ugly long term pain before long.  We're past the point of having a happy middle ground.  Either the fed is going to run out of lung capacity to keep blowing the bubble resulting in the unwinding of all that leverage and the ensuring deflation OR the fed is going to keep blowing and blowing to the point we see a hyper-inflation event.  There are several factors that make me think the latter is the more likely of the 2, but only by 60/40 or so...

[smokeyone]

zartan, on 22 January 2013 - 04:28 AM, said:

I am old enough to remember Reagan's unemployment rate of 10.8 in 1983

using the sytem to measure unemployment that provides that number Obama is over 16%. you do know Obamas admin changed the reporting formula right? His 10% was 18% under the old formula.

[zartan]

smokeyone, on 22 January 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

using the sytem to measure unemployment that provides that number Obama is over 16%. you do know Obamas admin changed the reporting formula right? His 10% was 18% under the old formula.

Do you know that the GOP always picks whatever standard of unemployment that makes the Dems look worst and calls it the 'real' way of gauging the jobless rate?

[smokeyone]

zartan, on 22 January 2013 - 03:44 PM, said:

Do you know that the GOP always picks whatever standard of unemployment that makes the Dems look worst and calls it the 'real' way of gauging the jobless rate?

concidering the method was unchanged for multiple presidents and changed by Obamas admin to reflect a lower number, no I didnt know that.In fact the last time it was changed was 35 years ago.