Three Important Things

One: I have been going down the list of Fela albums and youtube-ing them. Its fantastic.

Two: I think the establishment is misleading us. What some people have coined the "economic recovery" won't actually happen the way we've been led to believe.

This period doesn't show signs of simply being cyclical unemployment. It is true that most sections of the economy are suffering equally, but that doesn't explain unemployemnt levels at close to twice what we're used to seeing (unemployement now is close to 10%; in better days, its more like 5 or 6%). Also, this doesn't look like what's referred to as frictional unemployment. Perhaps there are many students and others that are "voluntarily unemployed" in the workforce. But, the economic contraction associated with 2007 up to the present doesn't reflect the thousands of people between jobs or otherwise frictionally unemployed.

This period is more like economic depression and severe structural unemployment. Older industries are fading and newer industries are hiring sufficiently-trained employees elsewhere. Structural unemployment requires that the labor supply catch up to labor demand. And I don't see that happening proportionate to the numbers of jobs lost... at least not in the next few months or even years. And this is most likely to affect the folks lower on the totum pole in terms of wealth, education, and resources --- a hypothesis I think is consistent with other trends in our political economy and global environment.

Three: Lauren posted a new account of her life in Guatemala.