Hold the Champagne

The broken leg the economic doctors put in a cast seems to be on the mend. Meanwhile, the patient is hemorrhaging, badly; worse in April than in May. It is the worst economic bleeding our economic doctors have seen since the 1930s. But the leg seems to have started to mend, and we all can sign off on the cast.

I would not transfer the country from the intensive care unit, not while the wound opened during his economic collapse is still spurting blood at an historic rate.

I am happy that 290,000 more people had jobs in April than in March. I am unhappy that there are 6,617,000 people in this country who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, 169,000 more in April than in March. Using the most lenient method of counting people who are out of work, we now have 550,000 more unemployed people in April than March. So there were 15.26 million people out of work, who are actively seeking work, in April.

Remember, these 15 million unemployed are not living alone, so at least 30 to 45 million people are being adversely affected by the great recession because someone in the family is out of work. Include in the count those who are too discouraged to look for work and the people who are working only part time and are looking for full time work, and the number of people adversely affected by the great recession is closer to 60 million.

That is only a seat of the pants estimate including immediate family members. How many other people are loaning their children, siblings, parents, friends, etc. cash to keep them afloat? I do not know, and I do not know if anyone is trying to find that out. But I image that number would be around 25 percent of the total population, not just 9.9 percent of the workforce.

This is not over by a long shot. It is not even time take the champagne out of the cellar and put it on ice.