Intensifying Crisis & Staggering Unemployment

Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 07:51PM

Every picture tells a story and the above chart of unemployment is not a pretty one. It comes by courtesy of John Willaims work over at ShadowStats which we spotted earlier today on Eric Kings World News website.

John Williams just warned that the ongoing financial problems have horrendous implications for the markets and systemic stability. Williams, who founded ShadowStats, also noted that U6 unemployment levels are not being reported by the mainstream media and they are at staggering levels. Here is what Williams had to say about the situation:

“The outlook for the broad economy remains bleak, despite relatively upbeat February payroll data. Deterioration in the January trade deficit and related revisions suggest negative impact on first-quarter 2012 GDP reporting, along with increasing downside pressure on the U.S. dollar from underlying economic and political fundamentals.”

John Williams continues:

“Systemic-solvency and liquidity issues continue to plague the Fed and to restrain U.S. economic activity. Bank lending remains impaired, while household income has taken a new hit, as indicated in recent reporting. Separately, as detailed in the Hyperinflation Watch, annual and monthly growth in the broad money supply appears to be stalling, again. That likely is a further indication of mounting difficulties in the systemic-solvency crisis.

As with January, the February labor numbers involved massive seasonal adjustments...The reporting pattern in recent monthly payroll changes has been running in parallel with the trend forecast (200,000 for February, 215,000 is the trend forecast for March) generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) seasonal-adjustment model. That indicates that payroll activity is behaving as the BLS expects, but such “stability” in these unusual times is not likely to survive for long in the real world.