The coronavirus pandemic is not only a public health emergency of massive proportions; the response by governments worldwide has created staggering economic contraction, leading to unprecedented growth in unemployment. Initial data indicates that countries that previously had low single digit unemployment rates are now, within a period of a few weeks, seeing double-digit unemployment statistics, with no end in sight to further hemorrhaging of jobs.
Policymakers have concluded that sever measures are necessary to contain the coronavirus pandemic; shutting down all but the most essential industries , stay-at-home directives and social distancing. This has all led to unprecedented demand destruction, resulting in massive growth in the ranks of the jobless.
The world is increasingly stuck between a rock and hard place. The Covid-19 outbreak is proving so virulent, the absence of desperate measures enacted by policymakers will result in overwhelming and collapsing the public health system, resulting in massive death. What is occurring in Italy reflects this.
On the other hand, demand destruction on the scale we are witnessing will exacerbate the Global Economic Crisis now unfolding, rivaling the Great Depression in its intensity. This will implode tax revenues, ironically also leading to underfunding and ultimately collapsing public health institutions. The short-term fiscal response by governments will undoubtedly bring on the largest public debt crisis in economic history. In other words, the sovereign cannot indefinitely write checks to the hordes of unemployed , whose number will grow along with the victims of the pandemic.
There is a real possibility of mass death due to the impact of covid-19. It also must be recognized that long-term double-digit unemployment risks undermining social and political order, also leading to mass death through social disorder and massive violence by an increasingly desperate population.
About four years into the supposed end of the Great Recession, the proclaimed recovery of the U.S. economy remains one that is largely jobless, as well as being artificially goosed and propped up by massive bouts of monetary stimulus, known as quantitative easing, by the Federal Reserve. Thus, the April jobs report has been heralded as great news by pundits, claiming that the American economy that month created 288,000 net new jobs, and that the official unemployment rate has declined to 6.3 percent. Sounds like good economic news-but not so fast.
The economics correspondent for the British newspaper The Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, has waded into the details of official employment and workplace participation statistics in the United States, and found that in fact the non-farm workforce in the U.S. actually declined by 806,00 in April and overall labor participation in the U.S. has declined to a miserable 62.8 percent of the population. Thus, it is able-bodied men and women who have left the labor force due to discouragement that has driven down the unemployment rate, and not new job creation. The U.S. economy, which officially grew by a measly 0.1 percent in the last quarter (essentially no-growth), is still dependent on massive monetary stimulus and large government deficits. Meanwhile, monetary stimulus is losing its economic punch, while distorting the economy through the creation of massive asset bubbles. The Fed recognizes this, and is well into its tapering back of quantitative easing.
From every perspective, the American economy does not look nearly as good as it is being described in official circles, and ditto for much of the rest of the world, still mired in the great global economic crisis.
If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:
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Hillary Clinton Nude
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The International Labor Organization is the latest global body to warn about the ongoing global economic crisis. According to the most recent report from the ILO, the global economy is about to tip into what it calls a “a new and deeper jobs recession.” Given that advanced economies already are experiencing levels of unemployment and underemployment rivaling the Great Depression of the 1930s, it is not surprising that the ILO believes that the next phase of the jobs crisis will lead to a sharply elevated risk of social unrest.
As fiscal austerity becomes the preferred policy response in advanced economies to the ongoing global economic crisis and its related sovereign debt crisis, even higher levels of unemployment are unavoidable. The current spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement to many other cities across the world points to the validity of the ILO’s warning about spreading social unrest.

Officer Larry of the NYPD is on his way to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan to arrest peaceful protesters involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Being a public spirited member of the New York Police Department, Officer Larry does remind us that there is a global economic crisis underway that rivals the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As I predicted in my book, “Global Economic Forecast 2010-2015: Recession Into Depression,” President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package has been a conspicuous failure in positively impacting the staggeringly high rate of unemployment in the United States. As is well known, massive job losses occurred in rapid order after the financial calamities of mid and late 2008. I projected in my book that at a vast price in expanded public debt, at best the Obama administration would stabilize unemployment rates at an historically high level.
Now we have the drumbeat of the 2012 presidential campaign sounding louder. Barack Obama is an astute politician, and knows his chances of being reelected to a second term are dismal unless he can tackle, or seem to be tackling America’s jobs crisis. In that connection, Obama has announced he will make a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 7. The speculation is that he will propose tax credits for companies that add workers to their payrolls, and stimulus spending on infrastructure. With the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, there is no chance he will get any serious legislation passed involving additional spending. At best, the Obama speech that is pending is an electioneering gimmick, and will prove as effective as the administration’s overall economic crisis policy. In the meantime, while the president drafts his speech and the political establishment engages in its usual partisan games, a growing group of leading economists are forecasting a double dip recession in most advanced economies, including the United States. That increasingly likely development will have more impact on the jobs crisis than even one thousand presidential speeches.


What began initially as the Global Financial Crisis has now become the Global Economic Crisis. The global demand destruction that is raging is now leading to a massive jobs crisis that will ravage the societies of virtually every nation on the planet. Governments throughout the world will attempt to address the jobs crisis in the same manner they have been responding to the financial and economic crisis: they will beg, borrow and print money measured in the trillions of dollars to throw at the problem. Their results in combating monstrous levels of unemployment will likely be as ineffectual as our political masters and their “experts” have been in attempting to ameliorate every other aspect of the Global Economic Crisis.
Later this week, updated unemployment statistics for the United States will be released. President-elect Barack Obama has already warned that they will be “sobering,” which likely means he already knows how bad they are. However, the U.S. government deliberately understates the true unemployment rate when they release official numbers. Among the statistical gymnastics utilized by the U.S. Labor Department is the expediency of excluding discouraged jobless who have given up hope of finding employment; they simply do not exist when the U.S. government counts its number of unemployed workers. When this component of the unemployed is counted, the true jobless rate in the United States is in excess of 12%, about half the peak rate experienced during the Great Depression. No wonder Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has now joined the list of those proclaiming that the U.S. is now in an economic depression.
The consumer demand of the U.S., driven by debt, is now collapsing with the growing jobs crisis. This is leading to demand destruction for those export goods developing economies around the world depend on to employ their teeming masses. During the course of the year the jobs crisis will clearly be a global phenomena, as are all the other factors that characterize the ongoing Global Economic Crisis. While the ultimate result is unclear, history tells us that massive unemployment on a global scale rips asunder social cohesion, facilitates political extremism and despotism, and exacerbates international tensions. The jobs crisis may ultimately contribute to a geopolitical crisis that threatens the very peace of our planet.