Depression for the USA?

People queue for a job fair in New York. The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Photo: EPA

Excerpts from a column by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph

With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932

The US workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation.

"The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession," said Robert Reich, former US labour secretary. "All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing."

"Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing," he said.

California is tightening faster than Greece. State workers have seen a 14pc fall in earnings this year due to forced furloughs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting pay for 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to cover his $19bn (£15bn) deficit.

Can Illinois be far behind? The state has a deficit of $12bn and is $5bn in arrears to schools, nursing homes, child care centres, and prisons. "It is getting worse every single day," said state comptroller Daniel Hynes. "We are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. That is obscene."

Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high. More here - much more:

Woe is us. If only some super genius could have seen this coming.  This is gonna hurt all of us.  It's too bad that libs don't have to live with the pain of their policies instead of sharing with all of us.  Libs love to share, but they never share anything good.  Oh, they'll tell you they're sharing good stuff but I disagree -- their stuff sucks. 

I can't wait until January when the tax hikes hit.  People are busy moving/shifting income into this year to avoid the tax increases.  What does that mean for next year?  If you can't figure it out, you'll probably be voting for libs and blaming Bush, big oil, evil corporations, etc etc.

Let's see, what did Omaba and Biden call this?  Oh yeah, ... "recovery summer." LMAO!

Gotta give Obama one thing -- he knows stupid-ass people when he sees them.