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Kathianne
05-01-2013, 09:06 AM
Hey it worked with inflation, right? No longer a problem. :rolleyes: From the conservative bastion:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100691168


'Real' Jobless Rate Still Above 10% In Most States

Published: Wednesday, 1 May 2013 | 8:43 AM ET


By: Jeff Cox (http://www.cnbc.com/id/36003787)

Two months from now, revised government estimates are likely to show that the economy is even bigger than the currently stated $15 trillion.

And while the numbers may make some blink or gasp, the mere size of gross domestic product (http://www.cnbc.com/id/44505017) won't hide the reality that in terms of actual growth, this is also the worst economy in 83 years.
GDP growth is in the midst of its longest sub-3 percent annual growth rate since 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression, according to Bespoke Investment Group. The economy hasn't topped 3 percent since 2005—before Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke took over—and is unlikely to do so this year.


So even if projections are correct that the economy is about 3 percent bigger than thought—say, another half-trillion dollars—the U.S. is still stuck in the slow-growth morass it has endured since the beginning of the Great Recession.


Nowhere is that more apparent than in employment.


Though employment has risen by 1.3 million over the past year, unemployment that counts the discouraged and underemployed, as well as the jobless (often called the "real" unemployment rate) has remained stubbornly high, at 13.8 percent of the workforce, according to the most recent count.


In fact, a state-by-state look at the numbers, released a few days ago and current through the first quarter, shows that just six states have real rates below 10 percent.

...

fj1200
05-01-2013, 09:22 AM
And related to the unemployment issue:

The Fed Is Destroying Jobs: Ken Griffin (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100686676)

According to Griffin, low interest rates have encouraged businesses to invest intechnology (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100686505) that reduces the demand for human labor. Meanwhile, health care (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100667380)reforms have increased the cost of human capital—so it's a double whammy.
"As we've all learned over the years, if you reduce the cost of capital you increase your use of fixed assets and you take out jobs. Corporate America, seeing an ever increasing cost for its employee base and extraordinarily low interest rates, is taking every step it can possibly take to reduce employment, to build factories abroad and domestically to substitute technology and automated processes for people," Griffin said.
That's pretty far from standard economic thinking, for sure. But it at least tells a coherent story about why the massive increase in the Fed's balance sheet hasn't been more effective and putting us on a healthier economic path.

IMO when both the fiscal (ACA) and monetary (Fed actions) are working against whatever you want to encourage is when the effects become disastrous; the '30s, the '70s, and now.