It's so bizarre and so commonplace that the story rarely makes p.A-16 in the daily newspaper. Unemployment rises, Wall Street rejoices, and vice versa.

A rising unemployment means that businesses are downsizing. As far as Wall Street is concerned, the best possible of all businesses would be one that had no employees at all. Of course if all businesses had no employees there wouldn't be anyone with money to buy the products or services of the businesses. But we're talking long range here and if there is one thing Wall Street isn't -it's long range. They have people programming their buys 24 hours a day, taking "advantage" of the most minute fluctuations in markets around the world. Hey, down three quarters when the portfolios run to the billions - well, that ain't hay.

But, of course, when unemployment rises, soon thereafter there will be an increase in employment figures. Y'see, when someone who is earning, say, thirty five thousand, gets fired (oops, I mean downsized), and can't find another job for more than twenty thousand - a short fall of fifteen thousand - this requires that someone else in the family who hasn't been an employed person, has to find some work that will pay at least fifteen thousand. Of course that "someone" might well be a female espousal unit, who was available to take care of children, and other trivia. So, when this person in the family goes to work, someone else is going to get paid for child care, in one capacity or another. Thus the downsizing of one person results in an actual increase in employment. Three for one. Follow that? It sure makes stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics look good.

Interesting thing happened in our neighborhood the other day. A major employer announced that one hundred people will be released from positions with the company. But this company has a new wrinkle. Any one of that group of one hundred who will go to work at one of the social service agencies in town (e.g. United Way), will continue for one full year to draw full pay and perks from the Company, with allowable time off to search for a new job. Another part of the announcement indicates that some of these people may be offered other jobs within the Company, when it finishes the corporate reconfigurations set forth by the strategic structuring committee (SSC).

Now the way I figure this, the Company's CEO gets international credit for downsizing, and for instantly establishing, in the community, an expertly trained labor pool to draw from when the Company purchases Casey's Tool Works, and nails down that lucrative DOD contract to produce express bolting guns for pontoon bridge linkages, all of which is fully expected.

In fact, this is generally known throughout the community already. And so those one hundred people eagerly await their release, and the opportunity to serve their community in any one of a hundred service agencies desperately in need of people with skills equal to, or in excess of, those possessed by the existing Directors of those agencies. Sure they do. Lot of winking going on here, of course. Those one hundred people are counting on paid vacations for the next six months at least. No one expects the Company to close the Deal with Casey until the first of the year. Of course some of these one hundred may smarten up and become ranchers. Hell, ranchers, I'm told, are totally subsidized by the government, from now to Jupiter.