Monday, September 7, 2009

New Becomes Old

I took this photo only a week ago but with the help of a filter in Photo shop, it became old with a few clicks of the mouse. It is yet another shot of the old wooden irrigation trough running alongside Highway 97 just south of the US border.
Speaking of old, the economic reports, regarding the recovery, are up to their old tricks yet again. In an economic rebound, perception is everything so there is a spin put to all the figures that come out on an almost weekly basis. Friday's spin in Canada was the employment figures. Great news! There were 27,000 new jobs created in the country last month. Certainly, this in not bad. However, these jobs were mainly in service industry and were for the most part low paying. The other fact, at the bottom of the page, was that unemployment overall was up. This is called spin. The hope is that the reader has a short attention span and will not read the details, so, the headlines display the good news of the double edged sword. The US figures make our own pale by comparison. Some say that real unemployment there is close to 20% and still rising. Our published official numbers are around 9% so we are not that far behind if one can almost double the official number to get the real number. Again, more spin and more old tricks.

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