Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
London Telegraph
Monday , January 11th, 2010
December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began.
The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not
show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped
out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to
17.3pc. That is the one that matters.
Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone
monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a
further exhibit of market infantilism.
The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after
people lose their job, and exhaust their savings. The local sheriff
will escort them out of the door, often with some sympathy
–– just like the police in 1932, mostly Irish Catholics who
tithed 1pc of their pay for soup kitchens.
Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over
300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost
their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody’s Economy.com expects
another 2.4m homes to go this year. Taken together, this looks awfully
like Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
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