(1) About today's BLS unemployment report: As you have probably heard, the U.S. economy added 290,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate still went up, to 9.9%. This is because of discouraged workers returning to the job market. This is the official ("U-3") rate; I wasn't able to quickly find the expanded ("U-6") rate, which includes discouraged and involuntarily-part-time workers (see this article for an explanation), but you can look for it yourself at the BLS's Employment Situation Summary.
Frequent D&S blog contributor Bob Feldman sent this report based on the new BLS data:
Black Female Worker Jobless Rate Jumps To 13.7 Percent
(2) About those three people who died in the bank during the street protests in Athens--the report was that anarchists threw a firebomb into the Marfin Bank, Mitchel Cohen posted something quite informative to lbo-talk, the list-serve of Left Business Observer, a couple of days ago: it seems it is not so clear who is responsible for the deaths:
Find the Greek original here, on Indymedia Athens, where we found the incredible poster for the Athens May Day week of "struggle, self-development, and memory" (rough translation), that ran with Mike Epitropoulos's article from our current issue.
(3) Also related to the Greek debt crisis, and debt crises more generally (and also originally posted at lbo-talk), an analaysis from Julio Huato that I found quite useful:
That's all I have for now--I hope the blog is fixed by next week so I can post more regularly. —CS
