EconomicCrisis.US

A continued drop in the number of people seeking new unemployment benefits in the U.S. last week and a large gain in private sector employment reported by payroll giant Automatic Data Processing offered fresh signals that the labor market began to stabilize as 2011 drew to a close.

Separately, service-sector activity in the U.S. economy grew in December, at a pace similar to the prior month.

Initial jobless claims fell by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 372,000 in the week ended Dec. 31, the Labor Department said Thursday.
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In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.

Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June 2009 — household income fell 3.2 percent.
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U.S. consumer prices fell slightly more than expected in June to post their biggest drop in a year on weak gasoline costs, but underlying inflation pressures remain elevated.

The Consumer Price Index fell 0.2 percent, the Labor Department said on Friday, the largest drop since June 2010, after rising 0.2 percent in May. Economists had expected prices to fall 0.1 percent.

But stripping out food and energy, core CPI rose 0.3 percent after a similar gain in May and above economists’ expectations for a 0.2 percent increase.
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For the last few days, we’ve been having an important discussion about the magnitude of the economic challenges in the west; if you didn’t read yesterday’s letter, I really encourage you to do so before proceeding because it’s important to understand why the west has truly passed the point of no return.

Simply put, the United States and much of Europe are borrowing an extraordinary amount of money now just to pay interest on the money they’ve already borrowed. They cannot even self-fund their mandatory entitlement programs without going into the hole, and their options are limited:
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