It’s framed like that all over, in newspapers and online, and it’s making smoke come out of my ears.  Guess who else a meager 69,000 ‘new jobs’ is  ‘bad for’???   Grrrrrrrrrr…….

It’s bad for the unemployed, underemployed and ‘discouraged workers’;  some estimate the Alternate Unemployment 22% figure (Williams explains his reasoning) as translating to as high as fifty million or even more, not the low-balled, massaged post-1994 reckoning  8.2% statistic the BLS gives out.

It’s bad for the 46 million Americans living in poverty, meaning a family of four has to earn less than $22,314 and an individual has to make less than $11,139, or about $30 per day.

It’s bad for the one-in-seven Americans receiving food stamp assistance (about $200 per month), and far worse for those of us going hungry, but not receiving aid.

It’s seriously hard for Americans who are too poor to get medical help, and are forced to wait until their conditions turned into emergencies or death sentences.  An estimated 55,000 of us died last year from lack of access to health care; how many will die this year?

It’s hideous for the unemployed parents of children who often suffer depression, permanent anxiety or simmering anger mixed with feelings of failure due to their inability to provide for their families.

It’s bad for the additional hundreds of thousands of Americans who are estimated to face foreclosure in 2012.

It’s hard for the folks who run food pantries and food banks in cities and towns across the country whose shelves are empty, and whose kettles are full of Stone Soup.

It’s even hard for the virtually self-employed, whose livings are often very dependent on those using their services having some disposable income to give them work, and who pay all their own SS taxes anyway.  (No breaks for the small-time entrepreneurs this country loves so well.)

It’s bad for graduates owning portions of an aggregate one trillion dollars of college debt, none of which burden is nullified by going into bankruptcy.

It’s bad for the 200,000+ public sector employees (h/t: ubetchaiam) downsized last year, with more on the way as ‘austerity’ budgets take effect.

It will be seriously bad for those long-term unemployed whose benefits are about to run out, while at the same time the public and hidden military budgets amount to close to a trillion dollars.

And it’s probably even bad for the folks taking jobs in the sector that was responsible for adding half of those 69,000 jobs: health care, many of which are likely over-worked, underpaid nurses and nurses’ aids.

Ach; we can afford new aircraft carriers that will head to the Pacific, you know, to show China we mean to rule the world, and probably to add some muscle toward ‘defending’ our soon-to-be new PPT signatory nation allies, but at least Obama and the Dems will fight to not let the Republicans cut the food stamp budget.  They are on the case, and I am thrilled!

Yeah; but the big story is that those numbers are ‘hard on Obama’ and his re-election chances.  And the other one is the prevalent opinion that The Ben Bernank will goose another QE soon, even as Pimco’s Bond-King Mohammed El Erian says:

“So there are consequences and I think the Fed at the end of the day will probably go along with QE3, but the benefits will be small in relative to the costs and the risks,” adds El-Erian.  (RT video here.)

And last but not least, please understand that I am furious that most of this suffering was avoidable, so I’m giving you this gloomiest-ever slideshow showing one man’s opinion about how bad economic conditions are.  When even Business Insider calls it the darkest scenario they’ve ever seen, you know to take some of it with a grain of salt, but this is former GLG Global Macro hedge-funder Raoul Pal’s “The End Game”.

We need to do all we can in our communities to help our brothers and sisters withstand the leanest and meanest of times that are on the way.  Love and share with all those you can, find local solutions as you collectively can.  And Occupy Everywhere, and talk to folks, and listen to them and their concerns.

Take yer pick: poignantly pissed off or defiantly outraged and confident (and fuck all fascists, by the by):