The number of working Americans turning to free government food stamps has surged as their hours and wages erode, in a stark sign that the recession is inflicting pain on the employed as well as the newly jobless.

While the increase in take-up is often attributed to the sharp rise in unemployment – which on Friday hit 9.7 per cent – the Financial Times has learnt that some 40 per cent of the families now on food stamps have “earned income”, up from 25 per cent two years ago.

The agriculture department, which runs the programme, attributes this rise to workers having their hours cut back.

“I’m sort of stunned, it seems like a dire warning . . . that even the jobs people are retaining in this recession aren’t at the wage level and hours level that they need to provide for their families,” said Heidi Shierholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute. (MORE)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c1e698a2-9984-11de-ab8c-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

-

TrimTabs' CEO Charles Biderman Discusses Massive Insider Selling

"Insider selling is 30 times insider buying, while corporate stock buybacks are non-existent. Companies are saying they don’t want to touch their own stocks…When companies are heavy sellers (of their own stocks) and retail customers are borrowing to buy stocks, that’s always been a sign of a market top."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/trimtabs-ceo-charles-biderman-discusses-massive-insider-selling

But you tell me

Over and over and over again, my friend

Ah, you don’t believe

We’re on the eve

of destruction...

re: The situation is far worse than reported anywhere in the attempt to maintain the illusion of normalcy.

This, obviously, cannot go on forever. Indeed, I believe that we're rapidly heading toward the second leg down of this disaster. I previously posted that I believed that 2009 was the year that all illusions would be stripped away, and that by year's end the "attempt to maintain the illusion of normalcy" won't any longer be possible. I've read a number of forward-looking pieces from different quarters, some of which are quite dire and see a complete collapse as being imminent, while others push off the inescapable day of reckoning by 2-5 years. But the key word is inescapable.

I dunno if you've ever seen the great German film, 'Downfall', which recounts Hitler's last days in the bunker*. What is going on now reminds me of that. Even as we see the inevitable destruction heading our way, there is an attempt to maintain a blind belief in some sort of miraculous turnaround. Bernanke shuffles worthless paper around the globe in much the same way as Hitler moved phantom armies around on a map to counter the Russian advance.

This is all so sad, maddening and quite scary.

*For a good laugh (which we all need), watch 'Hitler Plans Burning Man',

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV4i7dWeu0c

which takes a clip from 'Downfall" and does a sort of 'Mystery Science Theater' thing with it. :)

SEE:

Birth/Death Model Revisions

...the Birth/Death numbers remain in deep outer space.

At this point in the cycle birth death numbers should have been massively contracting for months. The BLS is going to keep adding jobs through the entire recession in a complete display of incompetence.

The Birth/Death numbers have been a joke for at least two years now.

BLS Black Box

For those unfamiliar with the birth/death model, monthly jobs adjustments are made by the BLS based on economic assumptions about the birth and death of businesses (not individuals). Those assumptions are made according to estimates of where the BLS thinks we are in the economic cycle.

The BLS has admitted however, that their model will be wrong at economic turning points. And there is no doubt we are long past an economic turning point.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/09/jobs-contract-20th-straight-month.html

re: People don't want the party to end, so they persuade themselves that it won't end.

And when it actually ends, the cognitive dissonance is so great they go nuts.

Not good when some of the pollyannas have nuclear weapons.

As Carroll Quigley wrote at the end of his epic, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966)

--

The hope of the twentieth century rests on the recognition that war and depression are man-made, and needless. They can be avoided in the future by turning from the 19th century characteristics just mentioned and going back to other characteristics that our Western society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding an increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self-discipline.

Only the passage of time will show if the hope I seem to see in the future is actually there.

Sir, you may now turn over in your grave.

Here is another excerpt from in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time where Professor Quigley is writing about financial capitalism as it existed from 1850-1931:

In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures. Since most government

officials felt ignorant of finance, they sought advice from bankers whom they considered experts in the field. The history of the last century shows that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen and the people generally.

Nothing has changed.