Prepare For More-Confusing Economic News.

Today everybody was all warm & fuzzy in the newsrooms over the slight dip in continuing unemployment claims. It's as if the recession is ending and there is light coming from the end of the tunnel!

Hold on there.

That's a freight train coming right at us.

Unemployment lasts 6 months. 6 months ago, the mass layoffs started. Records show that a record HALF of everybody who took unemployment and ran it out the full 6 months, used it up and fell off the back end of their unemployment checks.

To rephrase: half the people laid off in the January jobs massacre, did NOT find a job before their unemployment insurance checks ran out. They now have $0 income, and they still have credit cards that are maxing-out fast as well as car notes and mortgage debt that is not going away. If you think these people are going to be making a significant addition to the main driving force in the US economy (consumer spending) you are smoking crack.

In the coming months, you may expect all of the following:

The number of people on unemployment will continue to rise, perhaps slowly perhaps dramatically, depending on when the double-dip hits

The state-controlled press will spin the falling number of continuing claims as hard as they can to try to convince you the economy is not caved-in still

Mortgage foreclosures to formerly-"good" borrowers will increase

Credit card defaults will skyrocket

The economy will NOT pick up steam any time soon, even if the double-dip does not hit very hard if at all

The "journalists" on the major networks will continue to fawn over the Obamas and try to distract you from all of the above with puff-piece journalism.

You heard it here at Mish's Global Economic Analysis Blog first.