[PRCo]

[Schneider Fred]

I'm coming to realize the business we should be in ... like the  
1930s ... is selling tomb stones and coffins.
A friend drew my attention to something I had not noticed.    
Unemployment has now surpassed 1993-94.  But the jobless rate isn't  
rising to alarming levels.   Why     I suspect it has not gone higher  
because the discouraged unemployed represent a large number of  
people, i.e. a great number of people simply are not looking for work  
because they don't think they can find jobs.

But what my friend drew to my attention were the actual job losses  
which I admit I had not looked at since October.   Ouch.   Double ouch.

If we adjust those losses to the size of the population, we have  
greatly exceeded the job drops in early 1990s; we are very close to  
1982 when steel collapsed and we're not that far from 1949 which is  
the last benchmark before the Depression of the 1930s.   There are  
two flaws that I've put into those numbers.   The first is that I do  
not have population data readily available for people 16 and over so  
I simply used the general population.   Probably not a really big  
deal except that it makes 1949 (the baby boom years) look better than  
they were.  The big glitch that I put into my numbers was that I  
simply overlooked the tremendous number of women in the labor force  
today who were not there between 1946 and 1960.  They do not affect  
the comparison with 1982 but they will materially affect the  
1949-1958 comparisons.



Here are the numbers for all the years since 1945 in which there were  
cumulative job losses:



2008 ... we lost 2.589 million jobs.

1991 ... we lost -857,000 but adjusted for today's population, that  
would be equivalent to 1.084 million.

1982 ... the drop because of the steel crash was 2.128 million jobs.   
If we were to inflate that proportionally for the additional  
population today, it would comes out to 2.887 million jobs today.  In  
2008 we only lost 90% of that volume!

1975 ... a loss of 360,000 adjusts to 606,000.

1958 ... a loss of 297,000 adjusts to 545,000.

1957 ... a loss of 545,000 adjusts to 1,002,000.

1954 ... a loss of 371,000 adjust to 718,000.

1953 ... a loss of 462,000 adjusts to 913,000.

1949 ... this was the year we caught up to the post war demand ... we  
lost 1,512,000 jobs and that my friends equates to 3,163,000 jobs if  
the population had been as large as it is today.   That was the worst  
postwar year since the Great Depression.  Or the worst one that  
concerns me.  If we take the large number of women out, then perhaps  
the more realistic comparison would be closer to 2.5 to 2.7 million  
jobs today ... and that's the same level we're at in 2008.



There was a huge loss in 1944 and 1945 ... 1945 was 2.75 million jobs  
which equates to close to 6 million.   But it didn't matter.   What  
we were doing was converting from wartime production to civilian  
production.   In 1946 we created 4.268 million jobs.   At the same  
time we had huge numbers of service coming home and many of them went  
to school under the GI Bill ... unemployment was actually very low.





















Parachuting investor caught in Fla. after fleeing




Light snow falls on the home of missing Indiana businessman Marcus  
Schrenker...
15 minutes ago
Must Read?
Yes

391
HARPERSVILLE, Ala. — With his world crumbling around him, investment  
adviser Marcus Schrenker opted for a bailout. However, his plan to  
escape personal turmoil was short-lived.

In a feat reminiscent of a James Bond movie, the 38-year-old  
businessman and amateur daredevil pilot apparently tried to fake his  
death in a plane crash, secretly parachuting to the ground and  
speeding away on a motorcycle he had stashed away in the pine barrens  
of central Alabama.

But the captivating three-day saga came to an end when authorities  
finally caught up to Schrenker at a North Florida campground where he  
had apparently tried to take his own life, said Alabama-based U.S.  
Marshals spokesman Michael Richards.

Schrenker was taken into custody around 10 p.m. EST after officers  
from the U.S. Marshal's office in Tallahassee, Fla., found him at a  
campground in nearby Quincy, Richard said. He was in a tent with a  
slashed wrist when they arrived.

"He had cut one of his wrists, but he is still alive," Richards said.

The missing pilot was tracked down after investigators developed  
leads that he might be in Florida and forwarded to U.S. Marshals  
officers there, Richards said.

Schrenker was on the run not only from the law but from divorce, a  
state investigation of his businesses and angry investors who accuse  
him of stealing potentially millions in savings they entrusted to him.

"We've learned over time that he's a pathological liar — you don't  
believe a single word that comes out of his mouth," said Charles  
Kinney, a 49-year-old airline pilot from Atlanta who alleges  
Schrenker pocketed at least $135,000 of his parents' retirement fund.

The events of the past few days appeared to be a last, desperate  
gambit by a man who had fallen from great heights and was about to  
hit bottom.

On Sunday — two days after burying his beloved stepfather and  
suffering a half-million-dollar loss in federal court the same day —  
Schrenker was flying his single-engine Piper Malibu to Florida from  
his Indiana home when he radioed from 2,000 feet that he was in  
trouble. He told the tower the windshield had imploded, and that his  
face was plastered with blood.

Then his radio went silent.

Military jets tried to intercept the plane and found the door open,  
the cockpit dark. The pilots followed until the aircraft crashed in a  
Florida Panhandle bayou surrounded by homes. There was no sign of  
Schrenker's body. They now know they should never have expected to  
find one.