The Pain Hits Home in Madrid

Rick Newman submits:It sounds dreadful. After drifting down consistently since last fall, the unemployment rate has suddenly shot up again, from 9.7 percent in March to 9.9 percent in April. But don't despair: A rising unemployment rate is actually one of the best signs yet that the economy is bouncing back.

Ever since the economic growth in the USA fell back below 2% on a year-over-year basis, which was in early 2011, there has been talk of below stall speed (the speed, below which an airplane losses lift and falls down to earth) growth and an unavoidable recession. With good reason: Since WWII every time year-over-year growth in the US had fallen below 2%, a recession followed in due course.

I have a pretty cool interactive map below that will let you graph the unemployment rates based on parameters that you can choose. First let's take a look at the current unemployment rate and a discussion of the parameters that define it.

Two from Tim Duy. Here's the first: Really? One Basis Point?, by Tim Duy: Bloomberg has a story with an ominous opening paragraph:

The government's mishandling of Argentina's economy has hit new highs recently with the implementation of price controls on food. It is a notoriously ineffective policy that tends to create shortages and spawns black markets.