over the past couple years, i've come to view the unemployment number as being irrelavent. there are so many different variations of that number as it is - the real number is typically 4 percentage points higher than the published number.
i've chosen to focus on net job creation. and when i want to get a more detailed picture, i research the trends in job churn (to see where jobs are being cut vs. the new ones being created). bls has online databases that you can query in a wide variety of ways.. i've found it to be extremely useful.
Quote:
| I do think that the biggest current threat to our economy is oil. Yukos is only the latest evidence that shows that we are to venerable to the fluctuation in oil prices. Yukos produces almost as much as Iraq did before the war. Our stock market has certainly followed the price of oil as of late. |
you heard yesterday's news about how putin's blocked yukos from accessing their accounts? i've also seen reports explaining why people prefer arab oil over russian - the russians are inefficient and pass those extra costs onto purchasers.
personally, i think there is much that can be done at the federal level to help us move away from global oil dependency. unfortunately, everything the bush administration is doing only exacerbates the problem. be it their weak dollar policy, refusal to even research the impact of higher cafe standards, the proposal to dig up paltry reserves in anwr, etc.. the problem is larger than removing our dependency from foreign oil imports - the problem is our dependency on oil in general. we're greedy little piggies with our useless suv's/hummers, and it's catching up with us.