Slow Burn Stats: The Case of the Vanishing Worker

The Slow Burn

By Catherine Austin Fitts

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an article describing the unemployment picture in the town of Decatur, IL.

Although the unemployment rate in Decatur reached 14% following the 2008 downturn, it dropped to 7% in March, 2015…a significant improvement.

The Journal, however, went on to show that falling unemployment in Decatur is happening (in part) because workers are:

  • Moving away
  • Retiring
  • Giving up on looking for work

Here’s an excerpt from the Journal article:

“But the falling rate doesn’t tell the full story of a recovery that remains uneven nearly six years after the recession ended. Among the 20 metropolitan areas where unemployment fell by at least 2.7 percentage points in the past year, 16 also saw their workforces shrink over the same period, according to Labor Department data. Half of those were in Michigan or Illinois, including Detroit, Decatur, Flint, Mich., and Rockford, Ill.”

“Most places saw at least some hiring and job creation. In Decatur, though, payrolls fell over the past year due to layoffs, attrition, transfers or other causes.”

Manipulation of statistics is one of the critical ingredients of what I have described as the slow burn.

Here is an excerpt from one of my previous posts:

The “slow burn” is a political culture and economy managed through principles of economic warfare in which insiders systematically protect themselves and centralize control and ownership of resources by using:

  • Central banks
  • Currency and lending systems
  • Taxation
  • Regulatory and enforcement policies
  • Controlled media and entertainment

Insiders use these means to drain the time, resources, and life of people on the outside. Although insider cartels compete and jockey for power, they are able to settle their squabbles by increasing control and draining everyone and everything else. This is why the bubble economy continues to deplete the real economy. It is likely the reason why Dick Cheney said, “Deficits don’t matter.”

In a slow burn scenario, it is possible to prop up trillions of dollars in financial asset values by systematically arranging subsidies that ultimately liquidate life. This is what “managing” markets really means: de-populating people and places to maintain phony values created and necessitated by derivative bets.

Read the complete post here…