OUR JOBS, HEALTH CARE & FINANCE PICTURE

This is just a small glimpse into why things aren't going to be looking up for a while ...

First up, new unemployment figures are out. And they're not good. Today 9.5% of America is officially unemployed. But that's only the beginning. The number of unemployed Americans who are no longer looking for work is up as well. Why is this bad? Because if you're so discouraged that you're no longer looking for work (almost 800,000 Americans) you're not counted as unemployed. This means that our unemployment rate is well above 10% (the job's picture is actually worse). Check out this interactive graph from the NY Times on the matter.

Up next, in another NY Times article we find an old bogeyman that's looming over our economy: insured people going bankrupt because their health insurance doesn't cover their bills. In fact, as I point out in my book, over half of all bankruptcies in America (well over a million this year) aren't caused by irresponsibile debtors. They are caused by catastrophic illness that happens to people who already have health insurance. The article takes us through one of those stories. How do we fix this? According to the article, here's one way:

If everyone in the country were required to have insurance, the industry says — a mandate that Congress is contemplating — the costs and risks of insurance would be spread over a large enough pool of people to let insurers provide full, affordable coverage even to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

I can hear the republicans now, "How much is this going to cost?" I can tell you one thing. Government "vouchers" (the proposed Obama plan) and competition from government hospitals (discussed in last week's program) would go a long way in making us more competitive while putting a bite in the 15.3% of GDP that we are currently spending on health care in America (which not even the "socialist" countries are spending). Put another way, we need national health care.

Finally, we have banks and mortgage lenders gearing up to kill President Obama’s proposed new consumer protection agency that's designed to regulate home loans, credit card fees, payday loans and other forms of consumer finance. That's right. The same institutions that created the economic mess, and that are still heavily dependent on taxpayer-supported loans and loan guarantees (worth about $9 trillion) for their survival, are working to make sure that they are free to do it all over again.

So, in a few words, we have regular Americans fighting to keep their jobs in a weakened economy backed by double-talk and predatory practices from their health insurers and creditors. And industry heavyweights want to keep the status quo. Nice.

- Mark