From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson ("No End In Sight"), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

If there is just one finance blog I would consider required reading to understand the depth of corruption in Wall Street, it is naked capitalism. It was created by Yves Smith, the author of ECONNED: How Unenlightened Self-Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.

In her book she describes how going back to the 1970s, there was a push by free-marketeers to use Economics, not Finance, to not just create policy but to develop the trading tools that has created the hydra of the 1980s S&L and the current banking collapse, the sub-prime mortage orgy and the derivatives unicorn and rainbows markets.

Smith is ruthless when it comes to denouncing Economics as a discipline that is not qualified to provide policy advice and she has no problems calling out free-marketeers as looters. To say I deeply admire the breath of her financial knowledge and her fearless activism is to put it mildly.

It's why, when she says a documentary about the crisis is good, I take notice. From naked capitalism - Inside Job: A Movie Wall Street is Sure to Hate  read more »

Mark Twain said there are lies, damn lies and statistics and his adage applies to unemployment measurement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six unemployment metrics monthly, each referred to in ascending order of inclusiveness of the unemployed as U-1, U-2, etc.

The measure reported by the media as the unemployment rate that severely undercounts the unemployed is referred to as U-3. The U-3 rate is obtained by dividing the narrowest definition of the unemployed by the work force.
The U-3 definition does not include whom the BLS calls discouraged and marginal workers, those who want a job but have given up the search because market conditions and personal experience indicate the process is futile.

U-6 Unemployment counts the marginal and discouraged plus those seeking full time employment but can only find part time work. The Federal Reserve tracks what it defines as the Augmented Unemployment rate, which I've read is equivalent to U-6 less part time workers. I couldn't find any Augmented Unemployment releases on the Fed site and despite major data inclusion differences, some bloggers have used U-6 and the Fed's stat interchangeably.  read more »