Black Sunday? Should be Red Sunday

I haven't posted in quite a bit. My summertime vacation is over and now I'm back at work. In addition everything that's been happening with housing and the financial markets is a bit depressing. I'm not sure why they called it Black Friday. With Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy shouldn't it be titled Red Sunday? Afterall, being in the black to me always meant you were running a profit while being in the red was losing money. Or maybe they should have titled it "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," with my apologies to U2.

While what's happening at the National level is amazing and will have some profound effects down the line I'm looking with as much interest at California where I live. The unemployment numbers for Aug. come out this Fri http://www.bls.gov/LAU/ and I can't imagine it's going to be good. I'm sure it will go up from July's 7.3%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics stated: In July, 43 states and the District of Columbia recorded over-the-month unemployment rate increases, 6 states registered decreases, and 1 state had no change. That's not what I call a good track record nationally either.

Take a look at some of these graphs from the bls site:

As you can see here the labor force for CA has increased every year since 98. No big surprise there.As you can see with the next one that employment was steadily growing until 1/08 when all those running the Ponzi scam in the mortgage industry started losing jobs. Along with construction, etc..it continues.

Next we have the unemployment growth chart. Yikes! I haven't seen that steep of an incline since I climbed Mt. Baldy. Noticed when it started climbing. Right about the time people had to start paying the piper for the subprime mess:

Lastly we have the unemployment rate expressed in percentage.

The last four months have been grim. While March and April were at 6.2%, May moved to 6.8%, June jumped to 7.0%, and July was a juggernaut at 7.3%,. August might be the start of the Apocalypse we'll have to wait and see what Friday brings.