Wall Street rallies as unemployment rate soars – US shed another half-million jobs in April

The official US unemployment rate jumped by 0.4 percentage points to reach 8.9 percent last month, according to figures released Friday by the Labor Department. The economy lost another 539,000 jobs in April, as total job losses reached 5.7 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.

Video: Ron Paul – Reckless Spending And Taxation Prolonged Great Depression

Ron Paul has slammed Barack Obama’s claim that reckless government spending and taxation is the only way to alleviate the economic crisis by pointing out that the end of the great depression only came after taxes and spending were drastically cut.

The Absurdity of Spending US Tax Dollars on Israel

Paul J. Balles argues that if enough ordinary Americans “feel the pinch and connect the dots between their own financial losses and America’s continued unbridled support of Israel’s devastating war machine, Israel could be forced to make peace with the Palestinians”.

U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy

A United Nations document on “climate change” that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

MSM: America loses 23,000 jobs every day and output suffers biggest slump in 25 years

American businesses were forced to shed more than 23,000 jobs every day last month as recession tightened its grip on the economy, pushing the unemployment rate to a 25-year high.

MSM: GM says it will go bust in days without new US bail-out

General Motors today warned it would go bust within 30 days unless the US treasury gives it a further multi-billion dollar loan.

Some notes from the Abyss; Fusion Centers going to fuse the future & NATO PSYOPS info operations schema exposed

As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a “lost decade,” the result could be a global landscape filled with economically fueled upheavals.

Despotism 101: Communist Officials Train to Disperse Unrest

The directors of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) some 3,000 county level Public Security Bureaus are set to go through a training course on quashing mass dissent.

MSM: Job Losses Pose a Threat to Stability Worldwide

PARIS — From lawyers in Paris to factory workers in China and bodyguards in Colombia, the ranks of the jobless are swelling rapidly across the globe.

MSM: US unemployment climbs to a 32-year high

The number of Americans drawing unemployment benefit has risen to a 32-year high, underlining the need for President Barack Obama’s $789bn (£554bn) fiscal stimulus package.

MSM: Pioneer pulls plug on 10,000 jobs

Electronics firm Pioneer is axing 10,000 employees as it pulls out of the flat-screen TV market by March next year and predicts a record annual loss.

Ship of Fools – Paul Craig Roberts

The US economy is imploding, and Obama is being led by his government of neconservatives and Israeli agents into a quagmire in Afghanistan that will bring the US into confrontation with Russia, and possibly China, American’s largest creditor.

The January payroll job figures reveal that last month 20,000 Americans  lost their jobs every day.

Video: Peter Schiff – Obamanomics = Food Lines

Peter Schif on Fox Business News With Liz Claman.

MSM: Private Sector Cuts 522,000 Jobs in January

U.S. private sector job losses slowed slightly in January, ADP Employer Services said Wednesday in a report that came in slightly below economists’ expectations.

ADP said private employers cut 522,000 jobs in January versus a revised 659,000 jobs lost in December. The December job cuts were originally reported at 693,000.

Video: John Williams, Shadowstats.com, on the Unemployment Rate

John Williams, Founder of Shadow Government Statistics, calculates that the jobless rate is a full l0 percent higher than the government is reporting. He also discusses the news Monday morning that American companies (including Sprint, Home Depot) are cutting about 43,000 jobs.

Investors Becoming Overly Complacent – Stock Market and Gold Update

A routine I have always kept to is listening to market news on the radio every morning. Recently it has felt as if the morning market news has morphed into the morning job losses report. It is no longer tracked on a monthly or weekly basis but rather the consortium of job cut announcements have been a routine part of the morning news. This Thursday morning, we were confronted with 12,000 jobs cuts lead by Eastman Kodak, Wednesday brought us 15,000, Tuesday 11,500 and kicking off the week on Monday we recorded 71,000 jobs losses. At this rate we are on track to lose about half a million jobs per month, adding to the already 2.6 million lost last year. I cannot remember a point in time when were faced with such an onslaught of daily negative news regarding the real economy. It is both breathtaking and heart wrenching, the number of people losing their jobs on a daily basis.

MSM: Boeing axes 10,000 jobs as demand weakens

The cuts include the 4,500 redundancies recently announced at its commercial plane unit, and are equivalent to 6pc of its 162,200-strong workforce.

MSM: Starbucks to cut 6,700 workers

Starbucks Corp. said yesterday that it will eliminate about 6,700 jobs because of the difficult economy.

The company becomes the latest to announce job losses and joined major employers such as AOL and Boeing yesterday in detailing layoffs to cope with the current recession.

MSM: One million Russians lost jobs in December – official

(Reuters) – The number of unemployed Russians rose to 6 million in December compared to 5 million in November as an economic downturn hit home, the head of the federal employment service Yuri Gertsiy said on Saturday.

MSM: Bloody Monday: Over 71,400 jobs lost

The final week of January began with a bloodbath for the job market, as over 71,400 more cuts were announced on Monday alone.

MSM: State’s unemployment rate soars to 9.3%

California’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.3 percent in December from 8.4 percent in November and 5.9 percent in December 2007, the state Employment Development Department said Friday.

MSM: Check This Graph-Proof we are going into a Great Depression. Notice MASSIVE job losses?

The U.S. economy probably lost more jobs in 2008 than in any year since the end of World War II as firings rippled from homebuilders and automakers to banks and retailers, a government report may show this week.

Payrolls fell 500,000 in December, bringing last year’s decline to 2.4 million, the most since 1945, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News ahead of Labor Department figures due Jan. 9. The unemployment rate likely jumped to the highest level since 1993.

The figures will underscore the urgency behind President- elect Barack Obama’s plan to pass a stimulus package that will create jobs and mitigate the recession, already the longest in a quarter century. Other reports may show slumps in housing, manufacturing and service industries deepened at the end of last year, setting the stage for more weakness in 2009.

MSM: Microsoft poised to announce job losses

Microsoft is preparing to announce the first widescale layoffs in its 32-year history, with up to 15,000 jobs at risk, according to some predictions.

Speculation about job cuts was triggered by a report from Fudzilla, the technology blog site, which said that employees had been told that the software group was “readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations” on January 15.

2008 worst year for Wall St. since 1931

The Dow Jones has closed 35 percent down for 2008 marking the worst year for the Dow since 1931.

On Wednesday on the last of trading in 2008, The Dow Jones industrial average rose nearly 120 points, while bond prices fell sharply as investors moved into stocks.

Trading proceeded quietly because many investors have closed their books on the year. The Dow is down 35 percent for 2008, while broader indexes are down about 40 percent.

MSM: Pros Say – Employment Collapse is Coming

The last week of 2008 began in the green for commodities as oil and gold prices surged following a flare up in violence in the Middle East.

The dollar was broadly lower, especially against the Swiss franc, which rose on safe-haven buying amid the fighting in Gaza.

Experts tell CNBC that further falls in the greenback and employment can be expected.

1 in 10 American Homeowners either Late on Mortgage or in Foreclosure

A record one in 10 American homeowners with a mortgage were either at least a month behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of September as the source of housing market pressure shifted to the crumbling U.S. economy.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said Friday the percentage of loans at least a month overdue or in foreclosure was up from 9.2 percent in the April-June quarter, and up from 7.3 percent a year earlier.

MSM: banks set to cut 30,000 jobs

Up to 20,000 jobs look set to be lost as a result of the imminent merger of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, as a further 10,000 job losses were announced across the investment banking fraternity.

Although restructuring teams working across both Merrill and BoA are still deciding on final headcount reductions, it is understood that the cuts will come through reducing overlap between the two institutions – in particular in areas such as technology and support services.