America's Economic Foundation Cracks

The Washington Times looks at unemployment -

The tally of newly laid-off workers requesting unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time in five weeks as the job market remained sluggish.

Initial claims for jobless aid rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 465,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Many economists expected a flat reading or small drop.

The rise suggests that jobs remain scarce and some companies are still cutting workers amid weak economic growth. Initial claims have fallen from a recent spike above a half-million last month. But they have been stuck above 450,000 for most of this year.

and housing -

Separately, the National Association of Realtors said sales of previously occupied homes rose 7.6 percent in August from July, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.13 million. Still, it was the second-worst month for sales in more than a decade. July was the worst month for sales in 15 years, a factor unchanged by a slightly upward revision.

The Real Effect
I love how people can look at the obvious and still miss it completely. Housing is trashed and seeing as how it was in a bubble, it is not going to lead this country out of the depression. Oooops, that's right, the recession ended in June of last year. Will someone tell the people collecting these numbers that they're collecting bad data! The recession is over, therefore the numbers are supposed to be good.

But at least our credit isn't tanking. And our dollar is still strong...

Or is it possible that this has been only a slight blip up on a bigger train ride down? Sorry, but that's reality and I'm sticking to it.