Why Unemployment Fell – Don’t celebrate just yet:

Unemployment is the number of people out of work as a percentage of the total labor force. The labor force in everyone who’s employed or who wants a job. In July, that total labor force fell by 422,000.

Sudeep Reddy at the Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog says that the jobless number is down because the overall labor force is shrinking — people are giving up on looking for jobs, and so BLS doesn’t count them as unemployed.

unemployed-official

Ben Stein Finally Expelled from NYT – Felix Salmon voices his approval

Crunch Time for Gold – Brad Zigler looks at Gold’s behavior in relation to equity and currency markets.

The Fed buys last week’s Treasury notes – Chris Martenson on failed Fed auctions.

Why Current Policy Prescriptions Cannot Possibly Work – Thorsten Polleit of Mises.org asks good questions, and answers them:

Will depression be prevented if governments across the world run up huge deficits in an attempt to strengthen demand, production, and employment?