Anyone who lives at the southern tip of Vancouver Island in the city of Victoria knows how splendid the month of September is. I suppose it is why it reminded English settlers so much like home.

What is it like to be the sole survivor of a horrific accident? A great chart on the owners and producers of gold. Notwithstanding the better than expected job numbers on Friday, President Obama has an unemployment nightmare. Thinking about two of capitalism's pillars, the market and companies. Is one home better than two?

Notions that the Fed has no more ammunition is spurious, they can print money and buy whatever they want. And studying the successful and positive can put you in a happi state of mind.

The glories of September in the United Kingdom.

The summer's gone – and everything's suddenly coming back to life.  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/september-song-its-time-to-celebrate-the-queen-of-months-2070111.html

The son of one of our best friends survived a horrific car crash last week on the Malahat Highway that instantly killed the driver, his best friend. What's it like?

What does it feel like to be the only person to survive a plane crash, a boat wreck or an ambush? Sole survivors tell their stories. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/04/only-ones-sole-survivors-near-death

The countries that own and produce gold.

http://www.moneychoices.com.au/blog/whos-got-all-the-gold-and-whos-mining-it-infographic.php

President Obama's unemployment nightmare is a combination of two things. Unnecessarily positive spin on the impact that the fiscal stimulus bill would have on the unemployment rate -- don't predict what you don't control -- and the tremendous structural adjustment underway in the US economy that is keeping the unemployment high and will for a long time to come.

The good news, Friday's job report was better than expected.

Higher-than-forecast U.S. private job gains may reduce pressure on Federal Reserve policy makers to add monetary stimulus this month without closing the door to a move later this year, economists said. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-03/federal-reserve-under-reduced-pressure-to-add-stimulus-after-jobs-report.html

Related good.

The unemployment rate increased to 9.6% in August from 9.5% in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The economy lost another 54,000 jobs during the month. This might all sound like relatively bad news, but today's report actually provides some reason for optimism. The job losses were fewer than the 105,000 economists expected. The private sector also added more jobs, as temporary Census worker firings continued to skew the numbers downward. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09/despite-unemployment-rising-to-96-a-glimmer-of-hope/62472/

But only good because it was against highly dismal expectations. The adjustment remains a post-world war II horror story.

For the current employment recession, employment peaked in December 2007, and this recession is by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms, and 2nd worst in terms of the unemployment rate (only early '80s recession with a peak of 10.8 percent was worse).

 

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/09/august-employment-report-60k-jobs-ex.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CalculatedRisk+%28Calculated+Risk%29 

Related bad.

As the U.S. economy limps toward the second anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, anemic growth has left unemployment near 10 percent, with little prospect of improvement soon. Little wonder that, with midterm congressional elections coming in November, Americans are angrily asking why the government's hyper-aggressive stimulus policies have not turned things around. What more, if anything, can be done?  http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20100904a1.html

The politics of unemployment are not good for the Democrats, and really bad for the President.

If that was Barack Obama’s summer of recovery, Americans will be relieved to see Labour Day.  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/konrad-yakabuski/obamas-recovery-summer-feels-more-like-a-winter-of-discontent/article1695992/

That casts a pall over the life of the whole Administration.

Barack Obama promised a new beginning when he became president in 2008. After the ideologically driven incompetence of the Bush years, we were mainly prepared to believe him. Yet politicians that promise root and branch change will nearly always disappoint and, with Mr Obama, disillusionment has been swift to arrive. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/7980787/Barack-Obama-is-locked-in-a-lose-lose-situation.html

One part of the debate that has yet to catch fire is how coddled public sector unions are compared to the day-to-day hand-to-mouth existance of everybody else.

This weekend we celebrate Labor Day in a country divided between two kinds of workers. The first is the private-sector worker, the vulnerable one who rides the business cycle without shock absorbers. The second worker, who works for the government, lives a cushioned existence in which terminations take years, pension amounts are often guaranteed, and recessions are only thunder in the distance. Yet worse than this division is the knowledge that the private-sector worker will pay for public-sector comfort with ever higher taxes. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467642879738582.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Interesting take on the market and companies in the great recession.

Capitalism has spawned two great organising mechanisms: markets and firms. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6b14456-b6c2-11df-b3dd-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss

The argument for one home for Palestinians and Israelis to live. Nothing like a little mischief article as new talks begin. 

"Where is the Palestinian Mandela?" pundits occasionally ask. But after these latest Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington fail -- as they inevitably will -- the more pressing question may be: "Where is the Israeli de Klerk?" Will an Israeli leader emerge with the former South African president's moral courage and foresight to dismantle a discriminatory regime and foster democracy based on equal rights?  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090204665.html?wprss=rss_opinions

The Prudential Bear reminds us that central banks can do whatever they want to the currency because they can print money to buy whatever they want.

And Ben knows.

Word on the street is that the Fed is now "out of bullets." Many economists fear that in its efforts to spur recovery, the Fed may have already exhausted its array of monetary ammunition and it has nothing significant left to fire at t he steadily advancing recession. They believe that because interest rates are already near zero and Fed policies have failed to inspire banks to expand commercial and consumer lending (despite ample reserves), the tools traditionally employed by the Fed have been rendered impotent.   http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/guestcommentaryview?art_id=10433

Finally, David of Victoria sent in this interesting lecture about the science of happiness. Are you a unicorn?

Shawn Achor from Harvard University speaks on "Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Potential." Shawn Achor describes the approach of positive psychology, the research behind how people can change, and the dramatic effects of positive psychology upon productivity, health, relationships, creativity, and success rates.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8DngXKtvEQ