Get ready for it: Another economic collapse is coming.

[Selatius]

30. One way to drop unemployment numbers is to remove people from the labor market.

If a person is discouraged but is ready and able to work and is classified as discouraged for more than a year, I believe the person is removed from the labor force and is not counted. If we added them back into the unemployment numbers, the numbers are probably worse than either the U3, the one commonly reported in the news, or the U6 measure of unemployment that the BLS reports on a monthly basis.

Other major indicators are not really showing much improvement. Housing starts are still essentially bottom-bouncing, but that's probably because of the huge glut of foreclosed homes in the market that are yet to be sold.

And the problem with any pick-up in economic activity at this point is that gasoline prices are going to rise up, and that will not help any recovery, and since it takes fuel to move food from the farm to the store and then your refrigerator, food prices will jump up as well, and I guarantee you most employers do not give pay raises that meet rising cost of living, at least those employers who do not have to negotiate with a labor union anyway.

If economic activity is picking up not because weekly incomes are rising but because now it's easier to put it on credit, such activity will not be sustainable. The bill will come due on that borrowing.