Many years ago, when Dad and I used to look at official data and analysis, we knew they were flawed. So we developed our own. That’s how we figured out that the capital of savings and loans was grossly overstated and that thousands of S&Ls were headed for a massive bust. Our awareness of the flaws was also a key factor in helping us warn consumers prior to the failures of giant insurance companies during the 1990s. (See the review of our work by U.S. Government Accountability Office GAO.) It was critical to helping us warn you of nearly every major financial failure in the debt crisis that began more than two years ago. (See my blog for our forecast track record.) Plus, it’s one of the main ...

The hard figures released by the Labor Department last Friday, may look cold and impersonal. And Wall Street may be able to thumb its noses at it for a day or two.

But the half-million-plus stories of frustration, pain and even panic that they conceal couldn’t be more important:

In January, U.S. companies told nearly 600,000 people to pack up and go home.
A mind-numbing 626,000 filled out initial applications for unemployment benefits — a 26-year high.
The official unemployment rate has now exploded to 7.6%, the worst in more than 16 years.
Nearly 11.3 million American workers have lost their paychecks.
And these are just the most narrowly defined, official numbers. They exclude millions of jobless Americans who have given up looking for work or …