Unemployment is... Wow

From MSNBC: "11.1 million people were unemployed in December."


I was literally chatting with someone online when they saw a co-worker get the axe and then shortly thereafter were laid off themselves.  It really is a crazy, stressful time, even for the ones that aren't directly living the hardship. 


It's almost enough to call into question our bizarre interconnected economic world.  Maybe if way back when we never had opened up to the idea of allowing cheap exports to turn us into a nation of consumers then we would still have a production capacity, even if it was at the cost of higher priced goods.  And since the goods were priced higher we wouldn't have so much nor expect to have so many material goods.  And if our banks never could have sold bundled securities with fake risk grades to outside investors then the race to create these mortgages in the first place would never have occurred.  If every person selling a mortgage was still holding that obligation, and every dollar that we spent on a product went into the pocket of another American, could this whole thing have still got as blown out of proportion as it did?


I tend to think that it wouldn't have.  I also believe that this would have dramatically slowed down the speed of growth over the years but it all calls into question whether we NEED to grow at this speed in the first place, or if we have created this expectation for ourselves that even we could not live up to in the end.  And yet still there are people saying that this entire recession is just a hiccup on the way to getting right back on the same tracks.  I want efficiency in general, but what we have lacked for too long is accountability.  I feel bad for those being caught in the back draft of the accountability we are currently facing, but at the same time I feel like nobody is really living up to all the reasons that we should be held accountable for our actions and we're letting ourselves off the hook a little too easily.  That's what's really messed up about this world.