Relax, It's Just Stress

You'd think a government with so much practice in keeping the populace alarmed by imaginary hobgoblins would have more of a talent for pessimism. Yet unemployment figures keep showing how this spring's "Stress Test" suffered from a 9/11-worthy failure of imagination. This isn't really news: At the time the stress test results were revealed the unemployment rate was already higher than what the Fed and the Treasury were projecting as the more-adverse possible outcome. What's striking is how the bad news continues to outpace the government's softball projections. The indefatigable Calculated Risk blog has the comparison and future projections in one of its handy charts:

Read the full story here. Since I presume the Kobayashi Maru storyline drags its slow length through the new Star Trek 11, I'd like to note that changing the conditions of the simulation is usually done by the people giving the test, not the people taking it.