http://www.space.com/news/091217-mars-science-laboratory-titanium.html

I am no economicst, but I have severe doubts as to the sustainability of this alleged recovery. General Electric recently posted adverts for 90 factory job. 10’000 people applied. Admittedly, these jobs entailed generous benefits, but even so, the bare numbers are depressing.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091008/NEWS01/910080326/GE++10+000+applications+for+90+factory+jobs

Another story that the high end media appear to have failed to report upon was the huge queue of job seekers that formed in London yesterday.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220302/Huge-queue-desperate-job-seekers-unemployment-hits-2-47m.html

Why are the Telegraph, Guardian etc. not drawing people’s attention to these alarming developments? Is it perhaps, because they might revoke memories of the Great Depression?

At any rate, to me, a “recovery” is something profoundly different than a firework at the stock markets that is not accompanied by a commensurate creation of new jobs. The matter of the fact is that the automotive and metal processing industries in Europe and the US have been very hard hit and might, unlike in the Far East, never recover from the blow.

The gulf between the world that Jonny Jones, the man on the street, experiences and the realm of figures, charts and euphemistic language that economists increasingly seem to inhabit, is expanding. Where will this all end? Russia’s stock market has been praised as offering interesting prospects over the last few years. Meanwhile, Russian men die at an average age of 59 years.

blake