Wall Street Claims Ignorance

November 19th, 2009

The government propaganda minions in the financial media have done it again this week, claiming that the flattening trend of new unemployment claims is a sign that the economy is improving. Are they too stupid or too clever to report the real reason that claims are coming down? That is that if millions fewer people are working, then fewer people can claim unemployment compensation. Maybe the real question should be whether the trend of claims as a percentage of those eligible is improving. The answer is that it is not.

Over and over again the mouthpieces of the mob make these claims that the economy is slowly improving. An examination of the raw data shows that, at best, they are playing semantic games. It may or may not be getting worse more slowly than it was before, and most data series are clearly not as bad as they were at the zenith of the financial crisis a year ago. But economic collapses, i.e. Depressions, like economic expansions, take countertrend breathers every now and then. This is one of those “now and thensâ€