Light Reading - 2011 Jan 13 TH

Paul Craig Roberts does a wonderful job of exposing the excrement that the US government tries to pass off as hard data re employment statistics in:
"Spinning Unemployment in a Collapsing Empire"

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday that the economy gained only 103,000 new jobs in December--not enough to keep up with population growth--but the rate of unemployment (U.3) fell from 9.8 per cent to 9.4 per cent. If you are confused by the report, you are among the many.

In truth, what fell was not the number of unemployed people but the number of unemployed people who are actively looking for work. Those who have become discouraged and have ceased looking for work are not considered to be in the work force and are not counted as unemployed in the U.3 measure. The unemployment rate fell because discouraged workers increased, not because employment rose.

The BLS counts short-term discouraged workers (less than one year) in its U.6 measure of unemployment. That unemployment rate is 16.7 per cent. When statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) adds the long-term discouraged, the US unemployment rate as of December 2010 was 22.4 per cent.

The question to ask yourself is: why do the media focus on the unemployment measure that does not count any discouraged workers? The answer is that the U.3 measurement only counts 42 per cent of the unemployed and makes the situation appear to be a lot better than it is.

If you don't read any other article I recommend there, please read this one.
read article here

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Helen Thomas: Freedom of Speech and the Zionist Albatross
Trumping truth-telling
read article here