Unemployment on an Exponential

That looks awefully close to an exponential to me...

This NYTimes article talks about how people are starting to talk about this as a demographic shift. What does that mean to you? This article basically asserts that so many jobs have been lost, so many sectors of the economy have been abandoned by companies, so many jobs have been relocated, that we are seeing a paradigm shift. Do you agree? Or is this all just overblown drama for a power grab by Washington at the hearts of Americans? 

All administrations use fear to get what they want. I have to say this crisis erily reminds me of Sept. 11th and a newly minted rookie president who used that event to lock down on civil liberties, clamp down on freedom of the media, regularly infringe on privacy,  and grow the military- things that the Republicans are all about. Now, we have a rookie president using an economic crisis to get what he wants, more social services, more government spending on the poor, more money in education, more money in health care, and a larger governement role in the daily lives of its citizens- things that the Democrates are all about.

Now, here's the rub; look at that list and compare them. Do we want a government which has priorities of defense and privacy infringment, or a governement that wants to support the health and education of its citizens? 

Not much of a choice if you ask me. 

The question still remains, is this a fundamental paradigm shift? How long will we have rates of unemployment over 6 or 7%? Some people are saying that we won't see a 2006ish job market until 2012 (NPR this evening- I think the comment came from David Brooks, but they had two economists on so I'm not sure.) I don't know about ya'll but that scares the shit out of me...