Enough With This "Unexpected" Economic News Nonsense

It seems that the only people who think that the unemployment figures and other bad economic data reports are unexpected are the so-called experts polled by various news outlets and deliver headlines such as this. Week after week, month after month, we're treated to "unexpected" rises in jobless claims, unemployment rates, and various other economic news that is all consistent with an ongoing recession.

Wishful thinking by economists and media outlets that this is turning around so quickly is driving the "unexpected" headlines, even though the evidence continues to mount that the economy remains stuck in a recessionary atmosphere and that job losses are set to grow - again. In fact, we're about to be hit with an "unexpected" loss of more than 800,000 jobs that may never have been created in the first place for the period of April 2008 to March 2009. That would be the largest downward revision in decades.