It's not an unemployment problem!

I look forward to perusing the Federal Reserve Z.1 economic data when it is published each quarter. I am an accountant so I tend to look at the numbers a little differently than our nation’s cadre of highly paid Wall Street economists. The current numbers show some interesting facts.

Since 2003 disposable personal has increased 34% as our GDP has increased by about the same amount. Housing has increased about 2% as stocks have gone up 25%. The star performer in the investment markets has been long term bonds. Because of falling interest rates bond values have gone through the roof.

So in the past 6 years we had very good growth in our disposable household income and we made a ton of money on bonds. It seems crazy to me that our economists are comparing the last few years in our economy to The Great Depression. How on Earth do they come up with this stuff?

The reason that we have 10% unemployment now is because of monumental waste and greed in the system.

In the first quarter of 2010 each person’s share of total disposable household income was $37,000 per person per year. In 2003 it was $30,000 per person per year. So what we are going through now is not an income problem. From an accounting standpoint what we have now is an allocation problem.

And I would bet that the biggest impediment to the proper distribution of resources is the dysfunctional markets created by the government and the financial sector.

Pay in the unproductive government sector and the financial sector has increased at a much higher pace than the productive sectors of our economy. This is a zero sum game where the record profits and pay of employees in the heavily subsidized financial firms are taken from the unemployed factory workers.

There are record pay raises for the government’s favorites at the direct expense of the unemployed.

It's simple to understand if you are an accountant or unemployed.

It's impossible to understand if you are a Wall Street economist. Your $200,000 bonus depends on you not understanding it.