Will the US economy have "absorbed" the financial crisis by Feb. 2010?

Please clarify the 1) US Unemployment Rate
for January 2010 may not be lower than 7.6%, the January 2009 rate.
(as released by http://www.bls.gov/cps/)
I would think you would want it lower than 7.6% to settle as "Yes". or am I reading the question incorrectly?

ups, yes, greg

Can't you just feel the optimism in this question (and the betting)! :p

Hey Frog: I don't understand what you mean by the optimism of the question. I would think these would be reasonable benchmarks to determine whether the "stimulus" package President Obama is about to sign will do what it is intended to do.

As far as the betting... well, that's why we play HubDub!

Will "not be lower than 7.6%" be corrected? I misread this as it was intended.

First time I am really hoping my heartfelt prediction is absolutely wrong.

Can we get this fixed? I think the intent was "may not be higher than 7.6". We are talking about things getting better to settle as YES. Am I wrong on that? I kind of hate to bet on a question that is unclear... (great question though!).

Seems to me that the economy would have begun its recovery in the next year if the government did absolutely nothing to "fix" the problem. My bet reflects my sense that it will recover in spite of the massive debt that we're creating, which is on top of the already massive debt we've accumulated. My crystal ball is really cloudy on this one. Great question though.

@Nooz: Perhaps you confused my comment as anything but sarchasm. I'm about as doomer as they come. I think we'll be lucky to come out the other side of this thing in anything less than five years. Fortunately, I've stocked up on popcorn already so I can watch The Grapes of Wrath unfolding in my front yard even after I can't afford to have cable anymore. <again, sarchasm...or maybe just good precautions>

As for the stimulus, it's moving the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. This ship is going down and I'm glad somebody's trying to throw out a life preserver, but ultimately, no plan now can undo the damage done by the failure to regulate mortgages and Credit Default Swaps (CDS). We're about to enter an extended period of deleveraging that our great-grand kids will read about in school...

"I don't want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems, nor does it constitute all of what we're going to have to do to turn our economy around.

But today does mark the beginning of the end."

(Barack Obama, signing a $787 billion economic stimulus bill into law)

Will it be so?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/usPoliticsNews/idUKTRE51G5X720090217

Is it the beginning of the end of the downturn or is it the beginning of THE END?

...moving the chairs on the deck of the Titanic and the band plays on...

... or is it the beginning of the end of the beginning ....

oh-oh

Well that is so factual! Well I do hope that we can resolve the problem and as well to regain the economy. But aside for that issue, are you familiar with Stephen Hawking? Stephen Hawking is among the best known physicists of all time. He introduced advanced physics to the masses through his work. It was Stephen Hawking that more or less proved the existence of black holes. The author of, "A Brief History of Time," has fallen ill, and has been placed in hospital care. At age 21, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. The disorder is incurable and slowly paralyzes the body, and short term loans don't make a difference. (Bringing them up regarding ALS is pointless.) He is expected to recover, and since his books keep selling, Stephen Hawking won't have to worry about mortgage loan modificationa.To read more visit http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/04/20/stephen-hawking-ill/.

free fake money!

Obama’s Science Adviser Called for ‘Zero Economic Growth’
http://cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51809

At a time when it was popular among environmentalists to talk about capping pollutants, John Holdren was writing about placing “caps” on the U.S. economy itself--and working toward “zero economic growth.”

Holdren, who is now President Obama’s top adviser on science and technology policy, wrote in the 1970s that it would be “entirely logical” to cap the Gross National Product--the total productivity of the American economy.

“It is by now abundantly clear that the GNP cannot grow forever. Why should it?” Holdren asked in a 1977 college science textbook he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, titled “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment.”

“Why should we not strive for zero economic growth (ZEG) as well as zero population growth?”
...

John Holdren musta been a hippy in his early years. :O)

And the president's science and technology adviser once endorsed giving trees legal standing in court. Cybercast News reports White House Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren made the comment in a book, “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,” which he co-wrote in 1977.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,535949,00.html

Euro Gains for Third Day as Report Shows German Economy Expands

Come on USA, you can do that too!

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aF0DSrh98iI8

gonna get two of the three, but unemployment is NOT going to drop below 7.7, that much is pretty well guaranteed, so I don't get why folks are still betting on Yes....