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Don't Look Behind the Employment Curtain - Rodney Johnson/HSDent (11/21/11)

As I have discussed too many times, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) continues to fudge the jobs numbers by including the Birth/Death Adjustment, which is a measure of how many jobs are added to or taken away from the economy by small companies either starting up (births) or shutting down (deaths). Amazingly, the BLS almost always assumes that this is a positive number, so that miraculously there are lots of new jobs created by small businesses…even when there isn’t.

Eight Days...and Counting - Jeff Thredgold (11/15/11)

Members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction…also known as the “super committee”…have a rapidly dwindling number of days to agree to a minimum of $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. Their agreement…or lack thereof…is due bymidnighton November 23.

Has Gold Jumped the Shark? - Rodney Johnson / HSDent (11/16/11)

For those of us who grew up with the TV sitcom Happy Days, there was an episode of the show that marked the end of the series long before it went off the air.  The episode involved the gang heading to California and while there the Fonz ended up water skiing and jumping over a shark.  The episode was so outlandish and flat that it was immortalized in the world of television.  Whenever a series runs an episode that is an unwitting spoof of itself and shows all the creativity and energy of the show is gone, it is called “jumping the shark.”