Are you ready for the cliff ?

[fred04]

'At any rate, relative to full employment, we're looking at elevated unemployment for years to come.'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein/fiscal-cliff-unemployment-rate_b_2329437.html

But of course, the 85,000 H1B visas will be gone in like a week, and our lovely politicians will be

killing each other to get the Indians even more.

Crazy.

[0xFFFFFFFF]

Sometimes you get the cliff,

sometimes the cliff gets you.

What a stupid article.  The real unemployment rate is at least 14%, and in STEM fields and especially IT it's almost impossible to calculate, when you have jobs but stinky salary and no security, etc.

If we go off the cliff, odds are unemployment goes up by about a third, I figure, but hey the lies just go up by about a third to cover it.

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Still, there is a huge wildcard, fracking and oil, could pick up the economy for ten years, even help bring back (some) jobs from China.  Luckily Obama is against it with all his strength, we wouldn't want that, would we?

[jblocks]

I'm for the fracking (not where I live though) but from what I hear each field is only good for some few years of major capacity

[PhillyGuy]

I tend to agree with this guy in that unemployment will remain high for years to come.  If they do not hash out the 'cliff' too long into 2013, expect to see massive layoffs all across the board; it will not be a pretty scene.  The economy will get hammered big time and it could plunge us right back into the Great Recession.  

Here is a fresh article on the ramifications:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100341708

[jblocks]

Now if instead of pumping up the banks with all that free money and taking their crap real estate portfolios as marked to fantasy, if 'they' had really dropped money from the chopper but paid off 50% of all mortgages and given cash to those who didn't have a mortgage, this recession would be over, the banks busted up, and the dollar worth 60% of what it was

[jblocks]

Unfortuately the job of the FRB is to keep the owners afloat (i.e. the big banks)

[0xFFFFFFFF]

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jblocks wrote:
Now if instead of pumping up the banks with all that free money and taking their crap real estate portfolios as marked to fantasy, if 'they' had really dropped money from the chopper but paid off 50% of all mortgages and given cash to those who didn't have a mortgage, this recession would be over, the banks busted up, and the dollar worth 60% of what it was

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I tend to agree with this.  Oh, it might have been a tad more complex. 

But also they could have clawed back a good part of that money from bankster executives who have grossly overpaid themselves for the past ten years as they created this mess.

[joe2324]

I totally agree that this fiscal cliff mess could create massive unemployment in 2013 and dump us right back into a much deeper recession.  If you combine the H1B issue, outsourcing and the fiscal cliff mess, the IT employment outlook is going to be even weaker in 2013 than it has ever been.

What concerns me even more is the lack of concern by the general population. People are blowing this off as if it is some kind of cliche or some kind of joke. In reality, going over this "cliff" is going to be bad, VERY BAD.

[IAmNumber813]

"According to the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, more than 2 million Americans will stop receiving benefits after Dec. 29, when the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program will cease to exist."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/congress-unemployment-deadline_n_2371838.html

This is a national disaster.

Can we get any Indian foreign nationals on H-1B guest worker outsourcing visas to volunteer to leave the country and return the American jobs that they stole back to American citizens?

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Boycott Companies That Boycott American STEM Professionals

[JCPOPESCU]

LOL ! 

Well, gee, the end of the world was supposed to happen a few days ago, supposedly, with the end of the Mayan calendar.

So perhaps the fiscal cliff will get me ?  

This whole "fiscal cliff" nonsense impresses me as one thing:  A bunch of political haymaking and a classic example of two bald men fighting over a comb.   It's really quite simple:  The Federal Government relies on monies flowing into the US Treasury from personal income taxes.   Since incomes seem to have been reduced or eliminated entirely what better way to raise taxes than some nebulous obscura as a "fiscal cliff" ?

When ANYONE says we want to raise taxes on the "wealthy" the first question is "wealthy " in contrast to what ?  A street person ?  

Perhaps we could push the pols off a cliff.   It would be a good start.