More on Unemployment and its Repercussions

....“it is unlikely we will see meaningful reductions in the foreclosure and delinquency rates until the employment situation improves.” Mr Brinkmann expects the peak in foreclosures to lag the peak in unemployment by around 6 months. _FinancialTimes

Informed analysts are beginning to see unemployment as a leading indicator of things to come, as well as a lagging indicator. This makes their work much more difficult, and casts the US government's so far extravagantly ineffectual interventions in a much more tragicomic light.

The unemployment rate stood at 9.4 percent in July but is expected to peak above 10 percent. That means more foreclosures, which will put a drag on recovery.

"It will definitely slow down the housing market a bit, which will have a corollary effect on the overall economy coming back" to life, Sharga said. _McClatchy

Oh, it will do more than slow down the housing market a bit. The effect of unemployment-caused home foreclosures will reverberate throughout the financial sector and spill over to affect all other sectors dependent upon credit -- including the government.

An interesting article with plenty of accompanying charts to illustrate the problem.

More on housing market woes (via SimoleonSense)

Backers of Obama -- including most of the media and large numbers of big money speculators and investors -- are growing frantic at their Prince's inability to instantly solve economic problems which are increasingly built into the US welfare state. Obama merely promises to enlarge the welfare state, and to integrate even greater self-destruct mechanisms into the works. It is all he knows.

Others who are growing frantic include the oil barons of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and other dictators who overextended themselves on credit -- based upon spring 2008 oil prices. These blood-on-their-hands gents have to have higher oil prices. But they are stuck between supply and demand. They have many options for cutting oil supply, but how can they crank up demand in a world of economic downturn? It is likely that as supply is artificially cut, oil importing economies will find substitutes for oil, and increase conservation -- as well as cut economic activity even more.

China is beginning to hurt from lack of export markets as well.

So we have all of these unlikely bedfellows who want to jump-start economic activity in the western economies, but don't quite know how to do it.

Well-connected speculators and media barons have been trying to push the market upward using hype and massive denial. Watch the price of oil trying to reach its target of $100 a barrel. Oil supplies have been slowly choked, by dictators and the Obama / Pelosi reich. Pundits have been talking up the price of oil for many weeks now, with very slow progress to show for it.

The US has a government that doesn't understand the very basics of solid economic prosperity. It only understands bubbles and facades. Consequently, bubbles and facades are what the government has in mind, to serve the public. Government enablers, who stand to profit from the grand-scale scam, stand in line to assist in the deception.