Jim,

They don’t know what they’re doing and that’s the really scary part!

CIGA Keith

World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor says
The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s “if not ever”, the Governor of the Bank of England said last night.
By James Kirkup
10:00PM BST 06 Oct 2011

Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession.

Economists said the Bank’s decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE], or asset purchase programme, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead.

More… ^[1]

Cracks In America’s New Economic Norm
CIGA Eric

The civilian labor force and total nonfarm employment expanded by 423 and 103 thousand, respectively. Yet, despite this obvious mismatch, the civilian unemployment rate held 9.1%? What gives. As the old saying goes, there’s more than meets the eye ^[2] here.

The civilian labor force has been steadily contracting since 2009. This means the workers unable to find full jobs have increasingly given up their search in America’s new economic norm.

Civilian Labor Force (CLF) And Year-Over-Year (YOY) Change
^[3]

Adding insult to injury, the façade this new norm is beginning to display a growing number of small cracks. Employment sectors sensitivity to the global economic growth, such as transportation and warehousing, have clearly lost their upside momentum in 2011. This momentum loss is illustrated in the chart below.

Truckers and Warehousing Payroll And YOY Change
^[4]

Moreover, recent trend changes in announced layoffs ^[5] and initial jobless claims ^[6] suggest that these cracks, still undiscernable to the naked eye, are likely to expand in coming months without further stimulus. This may prove to be difficult in world where austerity is viewed as solution to the world’s economic problems.

Headline: Economy adds 103K jobs, rate stays 9.1 percent

WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers added 103,000 jobs in September, a modest burst of hiring after a sluggish summer. Still, job growth remains too weak to lower the unemployment rate, which stayed at 9.1 percent for the third straight month.

The Labor Department also said Friday that it has revised the previous two months to show that companies hired at a stronger pace than first estimated.

Employers have added an average of only 72,000 jobs in the past five months. The economy must create about twice as many consistently just to keep up with population growth.

Source: finance.yahoo.com ^[7]

More… ^[8]