Stop the NewSpeak train, I gotta get off.
Now rising unemployment is considered a recovery? How does that work?
Bastards! I suspect the actual rate is much higher than 9.8%. I reckon they figure 9.8% is as high as they can go without us getting out our pitchforks.
The song "Oh!Susanna" contains less contradictions than this sentence.
The real unemployment rate is probably around 22.5% or 23%.
This is very significant. The "official" unemployment uses U3 data, which is totally wrong. If they used the same criteria they used during the Great Depression (when unemployment was 25%), and compared the same numbers today, the public would be told the truth - we are in a Depression.
It seems to me the take away is that their policies have failed. I don't understand why the media isn't treating Obama's economy like it treated Bush 41 or W's. W's had what was "full employment" under Clinton and was attacked for a "jobless recovery" and "the worst economy since Herbert Hoover" and yet their guy's failed policies halfway into his term? Oh! It's not his fault. Look over there he flew to Afghanistan to talk to its president on the phone. Way to escape bad news, O!
Bush 41 lost his job; unemployment was never this high and we saw story after story after story about homeless Americans, about epic long lines for menial jobs, starving children… Where's this coverage for O?
I think you are right. The gubbermint sees the ten percent level as a psychological threshold, one which blows up the talk about stimulus and recovery and all the rest. We will never see them admit to 10%. But then I think they are lying steadily already, so it will not mean anything to me when it plateaus at 9.8-9.9.