Amid All the Hoopla

The Feds reported a 5.4% unemployment rate. Woo-hoo! Let the good times roll! Happy times are here again, yada, yada! Except that a record number of Americans are out of the employment pool altogether who would like to be in it - precisely 93,194,000 of them. That's a participation rate of 69.45% which is the lowest since 1977 and Jimmy Carter's Days of Malaise. 

What does it mean? There's not a lot of strength in the economy. Essentially, the Fed is floating the economy with funny money or, more graphically, the U.S. is living on credit cards and someday the credit will be cut off and the bill will be due. That's not something the politicians like to talk about. 

www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-08/americans-not-labor-force-rise-record-93194000