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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: regli who wrote (69817)	9/15/2006 7:15:54 AM
From: ChrisJP	Respond to of 110194

It was the mid-70's when you couldn't buy a job. Things started turning around in 1978ish. Of course I have a biased view because I graduated with an engineering degree in 1979, but I went to work just outside of DC and at the 1000 employee IBM location I worked, there were people 1 year older than me, 2 years older than me and then 8 years older than me. Chris

To: regli who wrote (69817)	9/15/2006 10:38:01 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

If I'm way off so was most of the country because there were weekly articles about the high unemployment level during that time period. Also, tell it to Hubert Humphrey and the rest of the Congress who were convinced we were having a national unemployment crisis in the late 70s requiring passage of a special bill to bring relief to the jobless. The figures routinely published in the paper were in excess of 6% (in excess of 10% by 1981) but much higher for certain age groups and educational groups. The Phillips curve was popular back then and it was commonly believed in economic circles that if the unemployment rate dropped below 5% then inflation would become a problem (this wasn't proven wrong until the mid nineties when rates dropped below 4% along with the inflation rate). This was the primary reason the Humphrey Hawkins legislation was passed in the first place, the Congress wanted the Fed to stop pursuing monetary policy that they saw as destroying jobs in favor of fighting inflation, to pursue a policy of stable prices and full employment. Here's a relatively objective analysis which might explain our bifurcated views: frbsf.org