National Inflation Association

National Inflation Association: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released unemployment numbers today for the month of February 2010. We saw a payroll decline in February of 36,000 jobs. If you discount the hiring of 15,000 temporary census workers, 51,000 jobs were lost. The official unemployment rate stayed the same at 9.7%, but including 'discouraged workers' the U-6 unemployment rate increased by 0.3% to 16.8%. Interestingly, the BLS revised payroll data for April through July 2009, which included the addition of 54,000 payrolls in April of 2009 for people that had been hired in preparation of the census. If the BLS can't accurately count the number of people hired to work for the census, NIA wonders how on earth these census workers will be able to accurately count the hundreds of millions of people living in this nation?

If you have recently watched any financial show on television, 90% of the guests talk about the 'economic recovery beginning to take hold.' NIA believes it is impossible for there to be an economic recovery when the imbalances that need to be corrected are growing larger than ever. Although U.S. consumer spending was up 0.5% in January, the U.S. savings rate fell to a 15-month low of 3.3%. In order for our economy to be on a road to recovery, we need to see a sharp contraction in consumer spending along with a savings rate north of 10%. The truth is, any positive U.S. economic data only serves as an indicator that inflation is beginning to take hold."