I don't think banks and "consumers" leveraging 20:1 and beyond is a necessary part of the economic system, no. It only happened because of stupid deregulation.

Have you heard of the Glass–Steagall Act? It was created during the Great Depression in the 1930s to forbid crazy leverage at banks. The economy  worked fine without it for many decades until it was repealed in 1999. Without it, you can see the result...

No, the economy didn't work fine without it. If the economy worked fine in those intervening decades we wouldn't have had recessions on a regular basis. It's not the specifics of the sub-prime thing, it's the fundamentals of our economic system that drives people and businesses to seek money and profits in ways that inevitably lead to unstable economic conditions. Things are set up to create boom and bust cycles. Each boom and subsequent bust has a different proximate cause, but the ongoing cycle is the real problem. Every time the boom times roll around people delude themselves into thinking that this time the party will never end, but it inevitably does.

@ Numonex: Immigration is not the problem, if you think that's going to solve your woes then you are gravely mistaken. Immigrant bashing is the lowest form of electioneering. Fix the global economic and political systems and migration will disappear as a perennial political hot button issue.

You do realize that:

(1) The word "Fix" carries different meanings for different people, and.....

(2) Achieving such a goal would be, if not actually equivalent to, then at least as hard as, solving world hunger and achieving sustainable world peace....simultaneously? (i.e. both of those things would probably be fundamental requirements for such an achievement to have a chance of occurring)

First off recessions are a sign that the economy is functioning well ...

No matter how hard you try to prevent it, in an economy there will always be misallocations of resources that drive investment too heavily into one sector. Unlike a communist economy where this misallocation persists as long as the government chooses to invest in that sector, in a capitalist economy when consumers and investors no longer support this sector so heavily the resources are rapidly allocated elsewhere.  Now, you could try to correct this by preventing the misallocation of resources but in the process of preventing the dot-com bubble you would also prevent the existence of most of the good websites that exist today; or you could try to prevent the correction, and then companies like pets.com would still be worth billions even though their revenues were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their losses were huge.

Where this becomes problematic is when the downturn threatens the entire economy, and this can not happen unless people are investing with too much credit; and (for the most part) without heavy government interference it would be difficult/impossible to have too much credit. If it wasn’t for pseudo-governmental bodies like the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac keeping interest rates down and eliminating direct risk from lending practices, and the US government and activist groups pressuring banks to lend to people who didn’t qualify, it is unlikely that the sub-prime crisis could have existed.

Most recessions,  the ones happening on a regular basis, are inventory corrections which don't mean there's an inherent problem with the economy.

Nevertheless, you're not really answering the point I made. I just meant that wild deregulation and risk-taking are not necessary for a solid economy, in fact they're the opposite of what's needed.

this pretty much sums up how they work out the figure.

there are are few other things, that very form country to country, like if they worked part of that financial year, they are not considered unemployeed

They say that we have an official unemployment rate of about 9%. I strongly believe that about half of that figure are unemployable. They lack the smarts, the tact, the people skills, and the patience to work a full time regular job. These people have really nothing to offer the American workplace but our society tells us that every adult should work.

As unemployment continues to rise and government spending on social welfare continues to fall, these unemployables will grow in number. Many of you will say just leave them alone like they will turn into a punkin or dust if we do. If they are not able to take care of themselves someone else will have to or they will start to commit crimes, live on the street, move into Tent Cities, or just cause trouble.

Many of the unemployables may have done relatively well for themselves in the day when everyone worked in a factory or in agriculture and life was far less complex. Or even in theboom times during the late 1990s when there was a labor shortage, but today workers have to be more efficent and more skilled.

What are we going to do about the unemployables as the economy continues to fail and people need more life skills to function in our complex society?

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/655585-what-should-america-do-about-unemployable.html#ixzz0vBZgsAXp

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2010/06/13/what-the-unemployment-rate-doesnt-show/

Interesting trend in regards to low skilled and unskilled males aged between the ages 25 to 34. What the unemployment figures do not show is interesting. 

Since 1978 the unemployment rates of the unskilled/low skilled has increased. The number of these unskilled/low skilled workers not in full time employment has decreased from 76% to 60%. 

First off, most people who are legitimately unemployable would not show up in unemployment figures because they would be too old and infirm (most likely retired in the final years of their life), to young (children under 10), on disability, in a institution (retirement home, mental institution or prison), or the ward of another individual. Realistically, there is no argument that someone is incapable to do work but capable to manage their own life.

Now, personally if I was one of your 4% I would feel a little insulted being that people will severe mental limitations (think Autism and Down’s Syndrome) can effectively do a large portion of existing jobs; and yet you believe that someone who might be a little below average can’t find a job.

With that said, I don’t think that anyone would argue that society should take care of individuals who can’t take care of themselves (and have no one to take care of them); but I do think that few people would argue that the people you believe are incapable of taking care of themselves, and many people would doubt that it is the government’s job to take care of them.