Unemployment Is Still Here, Wall St.

U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS HAVE AVERAGED 439,000/WEEK FOR
THE PAST MONTH, a continuing very high figure indicating a
continuing dismal state of mass unemployment. Stanford economics
prof Ed Lezear, in the Wall Street Journal, wrote that there is
no recovery in employment, but a "statistical illusion." "The
rate of new hires is virtually flat, at about the same level as
when the economy touched bottom in early 2009.... When an economy
has reached bottom and has already shed much of its labor,
layoffs slow. But that doesn't mean that the labor force is
recovering."

U.S. HOUSING MARKET HAS AGAIN SHRUNK STEADILY FOR 9 MONTHS
since the final end of Obama's "home buyers tax credit" for
speculators last Summer. April existing home sales were
"unexpectedly" down 0.8% from March, which was revised down. And
prices, even in the National Association of Realtor's highly
suspect "median figure," were down another 5% from April 2010;
and one-third below new home prices, making new home sales almost
impossible. Some 17 million households are underwater on their
mortgages.

MORE BANKER SEX: A Liberal Democrat Peer, Lord Oakeshott,
revealed in remarks on the floor of the British House of Lords,
that Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the
Inter-Alpha Group's Royal Bank of Scotland, obtained a
super-injunction to hide details of an alleged affair with a
senior colleague. Lord Oakeshott took the occasion of the
ongoing House of Lords debate on "super-injunctions" taken out by
celebrities against reporting of scandals, to spill the beans, on
the logic that "... every taxpayer has a direct public interest
in the events leading up to the collapse of the Royal Bank of
Scotland." (Telegraph) They sure do!