The Glass If Half Full?

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver doesn't believe that the unemployment rate will hit ten percent:

[T]he conventional wisdom seems to be that the odds are about 2:1 in favor of unemployment hitting 10.0 percent in at least one month between now and next spring. While that’s certainly possible, I’d posit that the actual odds are more like the reverse – 2:1 against double-digit unemployment. That doesn't mean that I'd run out and buy stocks, which are already trading at a price that would imply they've fully priced in something between a U-shaped and V-shaped recovery, or that I'd cancel my plans to go back to school to go out and find work. But I think we've grown so accustomed to bad news that we've forgotten how to recognize good news when we see it; leading indicators have been turning upward for months now, both in the United States and in other countries, and now we finally have a jobs report that reflects that optimism. A lot of folks think I'm making too much of Friday's employment numbers; I'll take 2:1 that they're making too little of it.