1 June 2012, bad news for everyone, that is bad news for everyone playing the western (U.S./British dominated) game of capitalism (including the “communist” Chinese)!
Employment numbers did not live up to the expectations of experts in the United States. The U.S. Department of Labor reported that only 69,000 net jobs were created in May. Employment experts in the private sector expected at least 150,000 new jobs.
To top that, the Labor Department revised the April and March employment numbers…down! For the two months before May, the number of net jobs created was revised downward by 49,000!
In the past labor officials said that in order to have an economic recovery unAmerican Corporate America must create 200,000 net new jobs every month. That hasn’t happened, and now it’s worse! The latest estimates are that 362,000 net new jobs must be created every month, for three years straight! That would bring down the unemployment rate to 6%.
Here’s some factual numbers: At least 12.7 million people in the U.S. are “officially” unemployed. At least 100,000 million people are “unofficially” unemployed! Both those factual numbers come from the U.S. Department of Labor!
As one of the many Low Income workers who recently went back to work, working for the Man in the U.S. (after two years of unemployment), let me just say this: No Shit Sherlock!
We Low Income workers, still with jobs, have seen the unAmerican Corporate America bullshit first hand, on a daily bases. It’s now to the point many of us see it on an hourly bases! Nothing has changed, people! If anything the glorified, deified, well educated, well financed leaders of our country are only picking up speed with their snowballing moronic decision making! Need proof? How about JP Morgan Chase (I now work for a contractor who lost a contract with Chase, now I think we know a major reason why Chase canceled the contract)? Wake up people!!! UnAmerican Corporate America is the cause of our economic decline!
Now for Europe.
The 17 member European Union held onto its record unemployment rate for the second month in a row. The latest report is for the month of April, and it stands at 11%. When you break it down by EU member countries it gets worse: Italy 10.2%, Portugal 15.2%, Greece 21.7% (stats for February only).
But how about that Spain? 24.3% unemployment! When you look at just youth unemployment (workers under 25 years of age) it’s 51.5%!!! Can you say “get ready for civil war”?
The result of the collapse of the EU is causing the euro to crash & burn, and forcing the Japanese yen to increase in value. Not only that, but today was the first day that China and Japan began trading their money (in order to avoid the U.S. dollar) and the yen gained in value over the Chinese yuan!
That will kill Japanese business. Japan is a country whose economy depends on international trade. Since 2011 the yen has gained in value, and has already caused major harm to Japanese companies. Yesterday Toyota announced that it was selling $2.5 billion USD in bonds to raise cash, because they believed another credit crash was coming (funny how the U.S./British mainstream media misreported the news).
China is reporting a drop in the Purchasing Managers’ Index, down 2.9 points from April. The drop is caused by a combination of decreased sales internationally, and domestically. It means China’s economy is slowing down, and if China is the manufacturing center of the western capitalist world, then it makes for a good canary in the western capitalist economic coal mine.
Oh, let’s not forget those stable government bonds. On 1 June 2012, U.S. ten year bonds hit a record low of 1.5% interest! German government bonds hit a record low of 1.1%!
The result of all this doom & gloom, based on factual data, is that all the stock markets in Asia went down. In the United States the Dow Jones Industrial Average (aka Wall Street) lost all its gains for January to May 2012, falling more than 200 points in one hour and 30 minutes!