Andrew,

In previous articles, you have stated that Bush created 3m jobs during his terms. The 3m is only through December. Since January should be charged to Bush, the real number of jobs created under Bush is now about 2.3m.

Compared to Clinton's 23m, this amounts to a 10 to 1 ratio.

The psychology of this problem is that people haven't given up on the bull market of the 90's. "Puttin on the Ritz" was a feature number at the Academy Awards. The story of a poor third world kid winning the lottery in India was best film.

Having studied the films of the Depression, this second economic depression is developing along similar lines to the first. And why not? The media is 10 times larger than it used to be, and Hollywood is just as self interested and oblivious of their role in the matter.

The essence of the problem is a show of imaginary wealth which the media gives us. Such a display is revolutionary in the extreme. The desire for imaginary goods and services is placated with unsound economic policies to avoid political discontent.

During the first Depression, Hollywood barely mentioned the real story, (we saw the wealthy and their problems) and denied the message of revolution; social revolution, addressing the problem of labor and class inequities. Consequently the post war years have seen an escalation of class differences, funded with unsustainable economic legerdemain.

It remains to be seen if Hollywood deals with these problems, this time around. Media art, news and politics should take up a serious discussion of social problems. However seeing that several news networks are slates for the private fantasies of their owners, I doubt that anything other than bankruptcy will change their message.

The problem isn't really jobs, it's your stake in the economy.

Your place in society. Are we going to let Rupert Murdoch and Jack Welch preach to us about government policy? The media is a venue for the substantitive shaping of public policy, but change is not coming as long as we labor under the old studio system that currently exists in television news.

February has only 28 days. At over 20,000 lost jobs/day we lost jobs at a faster rate in February than in Dec. or Jan.

February nonfarm payroll came in at -651,000, taking the unemployment rate up to 8.1%, a 25 year high. The unemployment rate in California is now well over 10%. There were huge revisions up in the December and January figures. Remember when the market used to have a heart attack over a job loss of 100,000? Those were the days! More than 4.4 million workers have lost their jobs since December, 2007, taking the total unemployed to a record 12.5 million. It may be only a matter of months before we surpass the 1981 peak unemployment rate of 10.8%. These figures suggest that the current quarter GDP could be as low as -8%, the worst since the thirties. www.madhedgefundtrader.com