Great Depression Online Archive Issue:

Laboring On Your Behalf

Great Depression Online
Long Beach, CA
April 24, 2009

Inside This Issue You Will Discover…

*** No Recovery in Sight
*** The Great Currency Devaluation Experiment
*** Laboring On Your Behalf
*** And More

No Recovery in Sight

When jobs are plentiful, and people have gainful work, the economy generally grows.  More jobs, more paychecks, and more consumption, translates to more jobs, more paychecks, and more consumption…plus some savings and investment too.

Of course when jobs are sparse, the opposite happens.  Paychecks disappear, and as consumption fades, money flows to a trickle…then it dries up all together as more jobs vanish.

Disappearing paychecks and vanishing jobs, regrettably, is the economic order of the day…

“New jobless claims rose more than expected last week,” reported AP, “while the number of Americans continuing to filing claims for unemployment benefits topped 6.1 million.

“Both figures are fresh evidence layoffs persist amid a weak job market that is not expected to rebound anytime soon.

“The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment compensation rose to a seasonally adjusted 640,000, up from a revised 613,000 the previous week.  That was slightly above analysts’ expectations of 635,000.

“Economists are closely watching the unemployment compensation data because they believe a sustained decline in the number of initial claims could signal the end of the recession is nearing.  Jobless claims have historically peaked six to 10 weeks before recessions end, according to a report by Goldman Sachs.  Initial claims reflect the level of job cuts by employers.

“But the latest report shows job losses remain high.”

Alas, there’s no recovery in sight.

The Great Currency Devaluation Experiment

We certainly believe that having work is a heck of a lot better than not having work.  Still, we have to ask: What good is a job if you’re paid with monopoly money? 

In other words, why bother punching the time card if, for your labors, you’ll hardly receive enough to cover your commute?  Sure that example may seem a bit exaggerated, but as we discovered in the last GDO, the Federal Reserve’s admittedly pursuing a policy that’ll cut the purchasing power of your wealth in half within a generation.

With this scenario if you skimp and save all your working years to pile up a modest $1 million savings for retirement, it’ll only get you about half way to where you want to go.  The whole strategy evidently is to lighten the government’s debt burden.

“The more you owe, the more it becomes attractive to devalue the currency,” noted Warren Buffett back in 2006.  And the U.S Government owes a lead weighted load.  Last we checked the National Debt was over $11 trillion…and that doesn’t include unfunded liabilities.

Yet, while devaluing the currency may lighten the government’s debt burden, it’ll wreak havoc on the hardworking…the savers…the taxpayers…the middle class folks who play by the rules.  We find this prospect alarming, to say the least.  If you do too, you’ll find this free report, which has all the details on how to protect yourself from the consequences of the government’s great currency devaluation experiment, to be a valuable read.  Access it here: Protect yourself from the government's great currency devaluation.   

Laboring On Your Behalf

We’ve been humping and grubbing, laboring and toiling, slaving and grinding from deadline to deadline, meeting to meeting, proposal to proposal, and contract to contract without rest for quite sometime.  But yesterday we did something we rarely do.  We took a day off from the day job. 

Yet still, on your behalf, we labored on.  We arose the usual time – around 5:30 AM – and did a little work on this here issue of the GDO.  Next we did something we’ve been meaning to do for some time…we sanded down and refinished the wood paneling on the hot tub.

The day was gloomy and overcast, a little cool, so next we lit up a rip-roaring fire, and settled down in our recliner with a copy of Edward Gibbon’s, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  There we came across things like…

*** “The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law.”

*** “The experience of past faults, which may sometimes correct the mature age of an individual, is seldom profitable to the successive generations of mankind.”

*** “Under a democratical government the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude.”

*** And More.

What does it mean?  We’re not entirely sure. 

But we felt all the smarter just for pondering such things.  Perhaps because we have a hunch – a slight inkling – this may offer some insights into the disagreeable snafu the United States, and many other nations of the world, are presently subsiding.

Sincerely,

M.N. Gordon
Great Depression Online

P.S.  We recently made some changes to our website.  And while it may not seem like much to you, we find it to be a big improvement.  For we’ve never taken a web design course…html’s Greek to us.  Still we’d never let such a limitation get in our way.  So check it out at: http://www.greatdepressiononline.com.

 

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