Unlike the U.S. news media, the tattle-tale Singapore Business Times always tells it like it is. As opposed to the countless and misleading forecasts about economic turnarounds and recoveries emanating from U.S. sources, the Times lays it right on the line. Like this, for instance:

“WASHINGTON – In the world of corporate profits, much like the broader economy, less bad is good these days. Unfortunately, it’s not good enough to stem the rise in unemployment.

“Two-thirds of the companies in the U.S. Standard & Poor’s 500 index reported first-quarter profits that exceeded analyst’s expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data, which is one reason why the S&P 500 index has rallied more than 30 per cent from an early March trough.

“However, the actual earnings results were down nearly 36 per cent from a year earlier, and the United States lost a net 2.1 million jobs over those three months.

“It is a reflection of what is happening in the broader economy …”

Indeed it is a reflection. It reflects the perfect scam. Economists and forecasters will repeatedly seduce the public by pronouncing that “things show signs of bottoming out”… “the worst of the recession is probably behind us”… “consumer confidence is rising”… “there is fresh evidence that the economy is turning around”… “first-quarter profits exceeded analyst’s expectations”, etc., etc.

Naturally, because dupes will “read it in the newspapers”, they will become rabid consumers and investors again – behavior that will surely produce the results those economists and forecasters had in mind. No, not an economic recovery of any kind. That’s not what they had in mind because they know a recovery isn’t possible. All they wanted was for more money to be poured into Wall Street … that unquenchable Ponzi siphon that guarantees that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

According to the reliable Singapore Times, Moody’s Economy.com has said – but gave no justification for its guesstimating – that it may be 2013 or even 2014 before U.S. unemployment recedes to a pre-crisis level of around 5.5 per cent. Although unemployment normally rises during recessions, Moody’s analyst points out that “what is different this time is that two key segments of the U.S. labour force, auto manufacturing and residential construction, will not bounce back when the economy recovers …

“It’s not just the auto workers. It’s all the suppliers and everyone else. We think the multiplier is five. For every job that’s lost, there’s another ‘five’ people who could potentially lose their jobs as well.”

[Speaking of “multipliers”, for every shipyard job there’s a multiplier of 16. That’s right. For every shipyard worker hired – when and if our leaders open our shipyards again – 16 offsite supporting jobs are created. You can take that to the bank – when and if our leaders open our shipyards again.]