One day you hear of an economic recovery with businesses starting to hire, home sales rising, auto sales starting to recover, GDP advancing over 4%, consumers spending everything they have on the latest tech gadgets and fashion. Then you have 200,000 losing benefits and its starting to make headlines that something has to be done to extend it immediately. Its extremely interesting to hear everyone saying we have recovered from the recession but then go on to extend benefits for millions of people for another 100000 weeks. Wallstreet is showing everything is peaches and cream with equities rising day after day after day, corporate profits are up, corporate earnings are rising, thousands of stocks are touching new highs every week yet they keep passing unemployment benefits and continue to with the free handouts. Tuesday, April 06, 2010Last Update: 4:11 PM PT Unemployment Benefits Expire for 200,000 By AVERY FELLOW WASHINGTON (CN) - Unemployment benefits expired for 200,000 Americans on Monday because lawmakers went on their spring recess without passing a one-month deadline extension. An emergency one-month extension was to be passed under a unanimous-consent agreement under the Continuing Extension Act of 2010, but Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma blocked it, saying the government needed to find money in the budget to pay for the $10 billion extension. "Our debt and deficits are as much of an emergency as our unemployment rate," Coburn said in a statement. He asserted that he did not single-handedly block the extension, saying he voted for Congress to stay in session until it worked out the issue. "Any person with a thimble full of common sense could identify $9.2 billion of waste in our more than $3.5 trillion budget," Coburn said. "Yet, Congress finds this task so painful they would rather leave town and let certain unemployment benefits expire." Of the 14.9 million unemployed Americans, 11.4 million are collecting unemployment compensation, costing the government $10 billion per month. The Senate's failure to pass the bill also means lapses in funding for COBRA, which provides interim health insurance to workers who lose their benefits. The Senate is expected to address the issue after Congress starts up again on April 12. The extension already passed in the House. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nationwide unemployment rate held steady in March at 9.7 percent.
yes ,yes, everything is sooooo good. wallstreet paid out the most $$$$ in 2009 about 140 billion. all the while main street is broke. you see wallstreet jobs are most important. they make money screwing the pension funds. california is 500 billion short on funding their pensions. the truth is the fed is pumping 1.5 billion a week into the stock market, that was tarp money. bullshit everywhere. bp
Nice work for reminding us of this S2007S. Congress will soon rediscover these people. It will happen once these people respond as voters. Then $10 billion will mean little.
Come on, look at the bright side. 200,000 people kicked off unemployment rolls means the unemployment rate magically just dropped to probably 9.5%. Now they have an excuse to bleed the VIX and grind the market higher. Just sit back and enjoy the Kool Aid. <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2794799>
yea and to think that number is going to get larger as the next few months roll on, millions will be off the extended unemployment benefits and maybe by then we can all expect to see something below 7%.
I guess if anything, I'd be curious to see where these numbers are concentrated in...or are they spread out overall and no specific areas are holding a majority of these people.
One day we will have a 0% unemployment rate, once everybody has been fired from their job and their unemployment benefits have ended.