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Showing posts from May 13, 2008

Quick and stolen

I have not felt very motivated lately to write. I have ideas, and even formulate blog posts; but it is always when I am hours away from actually being able to sit at a computer and type it out. One of the things I am really tired of hearing is the doom and gloom over our economy. Here is an analysis by a money manager from Raleigh I just read: 1.US employment: Today, our unemployment rate is roughly 5%. Last year at this time, the unemployment rate was 4.5%. Five years ago, the rate was 6%. The average rate of unemployment over the past 50 years is 5.86%. So, the rate of unemployment is higher today than a year ago, but it is by no means stark. A fair number of economists have set the “natural” rate of unemployment at about 6% to account for those people temporarily off of payrolls. Some would argue that the current trend is bad, but they typically go too far in assuming that small trends will become long-term trends. (These are the same types of forecasters who, in the 60s, projec