Untangling Credit Default Swaps

Much thanks to my buddy Shawn for telling me about some excellent youtube videos regarding a confusing topic - credit default swaps (yay...drawings!).

New York Lotto Commercial

I wrote about the lotto a couple months back (read it here). My friend Priya found this commercial for New York Lotto and I had to post it on the blog.

May Unemployment: The U-shaped Recession

The new unemployment numbers are out and again, The Census is responsible for 95% of the job growth in May (employers added 431,000 jobs in the month, Census hiring was responsible for 411,000).

If we read between the lines, we see a job growth of 20,000. In the coming months, those 400K Census workers will be out of work and looking for new employment (full-time, part-time or otherwise).

I'm sensing a little bit of U-shaped recession here. Some of you may have sensed/seen it for months. But for some reason, I just visualized the unemployment numbers increasing when those census workers are unemployed again. This high(er) unemployment may stick around with marginal movement here or there until one day year we climb out of it at a steady pace.

Looks like the 'U' in a U-shaped recession stands for unemployment.