Say What? December 26th, 2011 Edition [Reader Post]

A disappointed Matt Damon: “I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, `Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician.’ You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.”

Unemployment Manipulation and Chicanery [Reader Post]

Ed Luce wrote in the Financial Times, “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.” Remember that the unemployment rate is not how many people don’t have jobs (the U6 rate of 15.6%), but how many people don’t have jobs and are actively looking for a job (the U3 rate of 8.6%). Luce continued, “Last month, unemployment fell from 9 percent to 8.6 percent… more than half of the fall was accounted for by a decrease in the numbers ‘actively seeking’ work. The 315,000 who dropped out of the labour market far exceeded the 120,000 new jobs.”