If These are "Green Shoots" I Need a Parachute

This will be a fairly quick post, as posts of mine go. As of late, I've been obsessed preoccupied with the spike in U.S. treasury yields, and why we should be alarmed. Inflation is top of mind, of course. Still, as I researched my next post, I stumbled across these encouraging stats:
* May foreclosures were the third highest on record . . . but, oh happy day, they weren't as bad as they could have been.
* Unemployment is now at 9.4%. Except, umm, the absolute worst-case scenario under the banks' so-called "stress tests"? An inconceivable 10.3% -- that wouldn't, couldn't possibly occur until the end of 2010. Still, May's figures were better than expected . . .
But even the government is now acknowledging, finally, that the stress test numbers were based on a lot less "stress" than what we're now experiencing. Said Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressionally appointed TARP board, "We've already blown past the worst-case scenario on unemployment."
* California is, according to its State Controller, fifty days away from a total meltdown. (Losses in local services were a concern of mine back in December; plunging property values mean plunging tax revenues).
* And in a nod to my faithful lawyer mom readers: Cravath, Swaine, a major white-shoe law firm, is asking new hires to stay away for a year in exchange for $80k. Summer clerks who accept Cravath offers will be required to take a year-long furlough . . .
But in all of this lush greenery, a little lightness can still be found.
Job-seekers are resorting to novel resume tricks. These eye-catching moves include:
* enclosing a shoe with your resume. You know, so you can "get a foot slammed in the door."
* washing company cars in the company parking lot, gratis.
* getting a haircut from the barber patronized by the company's CEO. After all, barbers make great references.
* sending a cake in the shape of a business card with your picture on it. Who can argue with the old adage that the way to a CEO's heart is through his stomach?
* handing out personalized coffee mugs.
* refusing to budge in the lobby of the company where you want to work, until you get an interview. Like an "unemployed sit-in" . . . of sorts.
And who can blame these folks? After all, remember the unemployed financial banker who paraded up and down 5th Avenue in a sandwich board blaring "Will Kill Bernie for Food." He got a job, didn't he?

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