I just saw a slew of articles pop up on major news sites, very similar to this post, about 12-16 hours after this post was published.

That's all fine and good, maybe great minds think alike, or maybe the great Kahuna God in the Ether implanted in a host of media minds the idea employers were not exactly acting above board. But isn't that kind of synchronicity just a little bit interesting?

If you are a journalist, paid, professional media, but how about linking or citing this article?

I sure cite and link up the original information, including the Boston Fed, the Atlanta Fed and whatever else I find, give hat tips, acknowledge the original, or link to the inspiration. Can ya all do the same thing?

Show me. Show me the job postings.

I don't believe it.

I think most people have if not experienced one beyond reality absurd job treatment, have witnessed it happening to others, by the age of 25 if not sooner.

It seems reddit and then other blogs and sites in comments helps.

I agree, there must be some sort of labor arbitrage something push out there, probably planned for the lame duck session to see this.

I went hunting for this 72% figure, even in corporate lobbyist propaganda papers and I could not find any metric like that whatsoever. But the "skills shortage" usually comes from the NASSCOM, ITAA, "Compete America" and U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists because they want to ship more jobs overseas and want to bring in more foreign guest workers to displace Americans.

That's my guess. I like Ratigan, big fan, but sometimes I really think he listens to some corporate agenda and doesn't realize where it is originating from. I think this is one of those times for this story. On the surface, who can argue with good education? I sure can't, but this is one of those trojan horse issues.

This just burns my ass because over and over again we see the American worker poo pooed. Give me a break, the U.S. worker works harder, we have less vacation days, we simply bust ass. Then, this idea that one cannot learn on the job.

Then, employers are just absurd. They won't hire older people, they will not hire disabled people. Depending on the occupational sector, they don't like black people, or in STEM, the force out rate for women is 53% in just a 10 year time window! What's wrong with this picture! Then they all hate older people. It's ridiculous, we need all of the older people and this country needs to change it's attitude fast because a. they need the money and b. they have years of experience and it really makes a difference.

Part of the age discrimination is perceived health care costs, which should be brought down, the rest is just ...well, attitude.

How about young people? It used to be there were college programs, PAID, co-ops, PAID internships which pretty much could take care of your living expenses plus tuition for the rest of the year. This was standard practice to take newbies under the older workers wing and help them get their sea legs.

All of this worker culture has been decimated.

As a techie, I can tell you a main STEM skill is the never ending ability to learn and self-teach. You'd be dead in the water without that ability for technology changes every 6 months. That said, acting like people cannot learn new skills on the job, when the entire United States learned skills on the job to become the biggest military machine in history and win the war...

just infuriates me. I mean come on, the entire planet is currently addicted to iphones and facebook. All of that requires learning new skills...i.e. the younger crowd is all thumbs, literally. Think they cannot learn some skilled manufacturing trade if they can figure out how to text at 80wpm with just their thumbs? What is wrong with these corporations and politicians?

Spread it around just for the animated gif! I'm working on adding more graphics and displays to illustrate ideas/data/concepts better, but I had to learn how to make one, which took forever, esp. trying to represent the "job pie" in one shot.

(ah, an example of learning a new skill now that I think of it!)

Excellent elaboration! I'll bet with you - this is too big, by a long shot, to sweep under the carpet.

Obama had to veto this piece of garbage bill but that doesn't get him and the rest of us off the hook to mitigate incomprehensible damage in store if there isn't a solution for this.

My analysis and reading of history, particularly since 2000, is that the people in charge and their minions are too damn dumb to solve this in a way that will both work and provide a degree of equity and justice for those who got screwed (not the flippers or scam artists, the everyday citizens who thought they were making an investment they'd be able to pay off).

Bottom line is that we have a different mortgage system in every state. One reason none of this was done before is that investors are not stupid. To create the ponzi scheme to enrich themselves, the crooks needed a complex system no one, including themselves, seems to have understood. Their profits quickly went into their private bank accounts. State courts will be the deciders in this mess. Even a notary system that applies to all states simply means the notary signed trash. Who owns the note? Who receives the payments? Can the "chain of title" be traced within the state records? The same flunkies who created the bad mortgages sometimes writing them using straw buyers (I have seen this) are running the mass foreclosure scams.
No one would have funded these mortgages if they knew what they were doing. This follows the S&L crises from the "license to steal" law done by Reagan. The scams in CA from energy deregulation including Enron. Better believe they will sweep this under the rug if they can with the help of a corrupt legislature. My bet is that it is too big and too stupidly done for a quick fix.

His speech, you should read in it's entirety, (at link) and the pdf is where all of his graphs are, at the bottom. It's a very concise, clear and accurate speech with data to back it up.

(the animated gif was done by yours truly)

The point of this is while it's clear the Fed wants to Stimulate the economy further, I don't see how it's going to do that much, for I strongly suspect these labor arbitrage/globalization issues are hammering the middle class, as they have been for the last decade (30 years actually, but the last 10 have been severe). Maybe they can do something on currency, but I believe that's just to debase ours.

are good for the site, as long as the data/stats/facts are cited and accurate.

I'm pretty "geeky" myself, thinking mathematical equations and graphs scream "they are f&*kin! ruining this nation and destroying the globe!" by themselves.

;)

Well, while Geithner sings praises on TARP, to me they simply funneled the funds around and now it's the Fed, Fannie/Freddie holding the taxpayer bag.

Either way on this, to me, all trying to avoid prices going down back to levels people can afford the houses is a losing proposition. I think they could have bought everyone a 2000 sq. ft house in America for the amount of money that has gone into the entire mess.

Honestly, glad you looked at this because I didn't analyze it, but that's what Congress thinks their job is, to slip in very dense legislation, corporate lobbyists demands that no one figures out until at least the bill is signed into law, if not a couple of years later.