Unemployment Rate

[Richard]

Holy sh**t some of you are optimistic.  Are you batsh**t insane or just hopelessly desperate?

I don't think I can give a number to how high it will go, but the U-3 will exceed 15% within the next 2 years, and I suspect it will exceed 20% at some point.  And that is the U-3.  What do you think the U-6 and the REAL rate will be, the rate that the government isn't fiddling with?

This is going to be so WONDERFUL.  It is hard not to sit and laugh at the misery that is coming.

[Richard]

Stimulus money?  What stimulus money?  You mean the funds that are sitting on financial institutions' balance sheets?  That is supposed to somehow stimulate the economy?  How?

For every dollar in credit retired (paid off), $100 is removed form the money supply.  An economy that was driven by credit will not recover no matter how much you money you throw at it, because consumers have turned into savers and the savers are not actually saving, but retiring debt and shrinking the money supply.

We are talking a permanent 20% reduction of the GDP that is heading this way.