Will bin Laden finally get his US recession?

[Flabbergasted]

Times Online

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/united_states/article2426209.ece

Will bin Laden finally get his US recession?
September 11, 2007
Gerard Baker: American view

snip

(OBL) took the opportunity of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to branch out from his usual theological strictures and offer a rolling lecture to Americans on, among other things, global warming (bad), the writings of Noam Chomsky (good) and a priceless little observation about “the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages”.

So there you have it. If the US sub-prime mortgage crisis has reached into the inner sanctums of the al-Qaeda leadership bunker, you know it must be pretty serious.

The man’s timing, as it happened, was impeccable. On the very day he released his video, the US Government released another unpleasant surprise. The employment data for August were a bigger horror show than Osama’s ridiculous ramblings. The decline in non-farm payrolls of 4,000 was the first monthly fall in four years. Worse, given that we can always hope that one month’s figures don’t represent a trend, was the downward revision to the previous two months’ data. In the three months to the end of August, America’s job creation slowed to an average of just 47,000 a month. To put these numbers in perspective, the United States needs to create about 120,000 jobs each month just to find employment for its expanding workforce, so if demand for workers is growing at a third of that pace, you’ve got serious trouble.

And there was something even worse. Though the unemployment rate held steady at a very healthy 4.6 per cent, this was only because huge numbers of people left the workforce last month. The jobless rate measures those out of work as a proportion of those in work and those not in work but looking for a job. When you give up looking, you drop out of the data entirely.