The Australian economy is growing and adding jobs and the unemployment rate is 5.4 per cent (having risen 0.3 points in the last month). But we avoided the recession courtesy of a timely and sizeable fiscal intervention followed up by strong growth in China (also courtesy of their significantly larger fiscal intervention (as a % of GDP)). But the treatment of the unemployed by our government is appalling. Across the Pacific, the US economy is starting to grow but only just adding jobs and not in sufficient quantities to reduce the unemployment rate and it is persisting at around 9.6 per cent. They didn’t avoid the recession and have laboured for nearly 3 years with the devastating consequences of it. The treatment of the unemployed by the US government is more than appalling. So it doesn’t matter if things are brighter or not, we still vilify the victims of the macroeconomic policy failure. That is what this blog is about. It is a depressing message!