Are you unemployed? Well for many of you if you are not you will be. Yesteday I learned that my family is expecting to see a rash of unemployed siblings all with college degrees, advanced careers, houses, dogs, children, cars, et cetera.

Since December 2007 I have kept track on my own computer the job loss and now I think this illustrates the obvious what Roubini, Johnson, Krugman are all saying---this is a depression brewing. Job loss progression:

• December 2007 = <19,000>
  
• January-February-March 2008 (1Q '08)  = <232,000> av bleed 77,333 monthly
• April-May-June '08 (2Q) = <206,000> av bleed 68,666 ('08 av  73,000 mo.) <457,000 t>
  
• July '08 = <60,000>
• Aug '08 = <127,000>
• Sept '08 = <284,000> (3Q '08) = <471,000> (av bleed 157,000) <928,000 ttl>
  
• Oct'08 = <423,000>
  
• Nov '08 = <584,000>
• Dec '08 = <681,000> (4Q '08) <1,688,000>(av bleed 562,666)<2,644,000 ttl>
• Jan '09 = <655,000>
• Feb '09 = <706,000>
• Mar '09 = <742,000> (1Q '09) <2,103,000> (av bl 701,000) <4,719,000 ttl)

If you understand progression analysis the first 2 quarters the recession was garden variety and manageable, but then the dike began to break in August cascading to a level that the monthly bleed basically doubled the bleed of the first two quarters, where in October we lost almost as many jobs as we did in the first 6 months, where in the 4th quarter we lost 1 1/2 times more than lost in first 3 quarters. Now the bleed continues to grow where the first quarter of 2009 is almost 40% of the 4th quarter, though like a flood it is slowly leveling off.

At this rate the 2nd quarter will probably see April reach 800,000 job loss, where then one can ably project that May might see us hitting 840,000, June growing to 880,000 or eclipsing 2,500,000 amassing 4.6M for 2009 already and therefore passing 7M for the entire crisis.

The reality is that the job loss will continue at some rate, and if Roubini and Johnson are correct that we have to nationalize the banks and break up the financial elite the job loss will probably regress at a level that it reached like the inverse of the bell curve. So rosy let us presume that job loss of another 2M in the last two quarters so we could be between 9-10M job loss by Christmas 2009. Happy Holiday everyone!

The earlier recession of 2001 the best year in hiring was 2004 where 2.1M jobs were added. At that rate it would take five years just to catch up the job loss if it stopped in Dec 2009. But that is not reality. Now this does not include the necessary 150,000 jobs needed to include increased population growth. This equates to another 3.6M jobs or a deficit of 13M jobs and a hiring rate of 2.1M takes us into six years of recovery where another 9M jobs have to be created during that time to also incorporate the population growth. All told that is 22M over this period that have to be created to simply come back to zero. Now remember Bush Administration was 7M  in the deficit creating jobs to incorporate population growth in his 8 years.

I just thought you all should know these macro numbers. My actual fear is that the jobloss will not end until sometime in 2010.  So it is a Depression. And that is only the US.

This is a response to The Atlantic's provocative essay by Simon Johnson titled "The Quiet Coup" regarding the political and financial imbalance by Wall Street and how and why it contributed to "The Great Collapse" or "Great Global Recession". Thank you Simon for your overview and penetrating piece. The result again is a forewarning that are also the tidings that Roubini and Krugman are exclaiming right now in different ways.

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump "cannot be as bad as the Great Depression." This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression--because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

Now here is the simplest quotient: It is the elites who caused this. It is the elites who have benefited to date. It is the elites who are being made whole without hair cuts or other redistribution's or punitive measures while just look at the auto industry and the Midwest's systemic unemployment where fundamental reorganization is being demanded as a prerequisite for any effort.

William Greider of The Nation and WaPo stated so succinctly on Friday night on Bill Moyer's PBC Show that Obama (and his Administration) must eventually make a decision between America's Elite and America's ordinary person. That the social, political and financial reorganization that will emerge will either further institutionalize the financial corporate oligarthy as America's government or will fundamentally re-democratize America. The problem for Obama is not his instincts, as he already twice chose ordinary Americans over Wall Street's elites in his adult life. His instincts to get out of the DC Beltway even in his first 60 days is commendable. But the trouble is, the very basic thing about DC and the Presidency is that we go out and place elites in all those positions----elites think first about being an elite and staying an elite.

This is no different than the fabled stories like The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie by the minstrel Blind Harry that found Robert the Bruce, the eventual King of Scotland conflicted between incrementally increasing his noble gains and uniting the clans and repelling the scourge from England and its Longshanks. In that fable poem Robert the Bruce yearned for the feelings of real leadership that William Wallace demonstrated and finally Robert chose to stand with the ordinary clansman and not the nobles winning the Battle of Bannockburn and Scotland's freedom.

These and other lore's like Robin Hood all point to the overthrow of the elites corruption and unsustainablility. In our modern times this too must be understood and yet as Simon Johnson prophesizes is that the "Great Collapse" cannot be stopped. Within the suffering will also provide the opportunity and necessity to actually reorganize and rebuild the global society.

In my mind, throw them all out. I know we have smart enough people who can reconstitute our society's new capitalism instead of crony capitialism. It is the simple solution to a complex problem that is complex by only trying to keep whole insolvent banks, bankrupt finance companies, corrupt governing bodies, self-serving elites who want to be bail out while we bail.  It them who drove society off the cliff, they don't get the keys anymore.