U.S. Unemployment Hits 10.2%

Up from 9.8% in one month to 10.2%, the United States unemployment rate is now at a startling 26 year high with 15.7 million people out of work. 

Comments

[Gary]

Huffington Post said The forecasts used to drum up support for the [Stimulus] plan projected today's unemployment would be about 8 percent.

To quote the great Secret Agent Maxwell Smart, "Missed it by that much!"

[Amy Proctor]

Gary, where are all the Obama supporters to praise Obama's handling of the economy? I don't get it.

[Greta]

It is worse than that. If you add in the underemployed who had to take any job available at much lower income, the number is over 17.5%. With the healthcare mess they are trying to create, it will rise to over 25% unemployed. They will try to blame it on Bush, but only the total idiots will still buy that crap.

[Charles]

Amy, the people who supported Obama thinking he was going to help the economy have long since woken up to the fact that the only economy he wants to improve is the one on Wall Street. But in your excitement at being able to attack Obama's handling of the economy, try to remember how we got in this mess in the first place.

We are here because conservatives on both sides of the aisle repealed the financial regulation that had kept us free of collapse since the 1930's. We are here because conservatives in both parties promoted so-called free trade policies that decimated our industrial base and shipped all our jobs overseas. We are here because conservatives cut taxes on the wealthy and stripped government so that it could not maintain our infrastructure. We are here because conservatives, particularly Democrats, ripped away the social safety net. We are here because conservatives in both parties listened to Alan Greenspan and did nothing to stop the bubble and burst economy of the last 30 years.

Obama is doing little to fix the economy, but anyone who would suggest that we would be better off if one of the architects of our collapse were in charge is smoking some good weed.

[Mike]

Charles,

Let's not forget Wall Street had to do something with the piss poor loans that the Government forced them to take on. Ted F the Brilliant billionaire I used to work for had something to say about that. Not sure how they would have placed the sub-prime loans even with more regulation. The lack of oversight may have allowed the Government to pretend home ownership was real based on policies that both sides wanted to see work, except for derivatives, and the cost of housing making it hard to continue the treadmill. The insane clowns in Congress can't stop spending money and we are going to hell without the handbasket.

[Charles]

The insane clowns in Congress are so addicted to Wall Street money that they can't even pronounce the work regulation any more. The ownership society was nothing more than a scheme to get more Americans in debt to the big bankers so they could accelerate the transition of this country into a banana republic.

Wall Street wasn't forced to do anything. The mortgages weren't the problem. If the issuer of the mortgage had been forced to hold onto it instead of selling or securitizing it, the bursting of the housing price bubble would have had minimal impact. No one forced Wall Street to re-package worthless mortgages into exotic derivatives. No one forced the rating agencies to put AAA ratings on worthless junk. No one forced AIG and the others to issue credit default swaps to bet on those worthless securities. All those actions were taken by greedy criminals who knew that the government would bail them out in the end because they own the freaking government.