STEPHEN GREEN ON THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: It Sucks To Be An American: Welcome to the New Normal, comrades. “Gallup reported late last week that their estimate of the country’s unemployment rate in January is far more dire than Washington’s rosy 6.6% figure. That’s up four tenths of a point since December. Worse, though, is Gallup’s estimate of the underemployment rate, which now stands at 18.6%. The payroll to population rate fell almost a full point from December, to 42.0% from 42.9%. That’s the lowest ratio of Americans with paychecks to those without since March of 2011. Nice work if you can get it, but increasingly we can’t. And for all those without, it does indeed suck to be an American. What might be most remarkable of all is that in this era of hope and change, we consider 6.6% unemployment to be pretty good. Welcome to the New Normal, comrades. . . . Washington, I might add, continues to do just fine. The politicians vote for their own perks and pay raises. The lobbyists get their fat paychecks for getting the politicians to write the loopholes benefitting America’s ‘connected class’ of big banks, financiers, particular tech companies, Hollywood, and of course the legal profession. For them, it’s pretty good to be an American — if we can still really call them that.”