The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 467,000 jobs were lost in June, bringing total non-farm employment down to 140.2 million, which, although bad, could have been worse, as I personally haven’t been fired yet, which is the only good news in the whole thing, as far as I can see.

The Bureau reports that, officially, “The number of unemployed persons (14.7 million) and the unemployment rate (9.5%) were little changed in June,” which was helped by the fact that the labor force actually went down by the 358,000 people who stopped looking for work.

The tally so far is that “Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.2 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6 percentage points”, essentially doubling.

Bloomberg.com put it as “The world’s largest economy has lost about 6.5 million jobs since the recession began in

...

Yesterday the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revised its 2Q08 GDP growth to an annualized rate of 3.3%, up from 2.7%. It’s a shame this data had to be revealed on August 28, a date not associated with humorous pranks; had it come out on April 1st investors would have a much better clue that the BEA is joking. There are several problems with the BEA’s data. But the most glaring of them pertains to its inflationary measures. According to the BEA, the GPD price index—its primary measure of inflation—was 1.2% for 2Q08. I’ve thought long and hard about what demographic possibly experiences inflation of 1.2%. The closest group I could come up with was the Amish—who don’t use electricity or drive cars and therefore are immune to energy prices—though their status as “food consumers” hurt even this hypothesis—food is second only ...