Michelle Chen at In These Times writes:

There's an unemployment line circling the globe that's about 80 million people long, stretching far into the next generation.

The International Labor Organization reports that the youth unemployment rate around the world edged up to a record high of 13 percent in 2009, more than one percentage point up since 2007.

Remarkably, relatively "advanced" economies have seen some of the biggest jumps in youth unemployment. Across the Developed Economies and European Union countries, close to 18 percent of youth are unemployed. Spain and the United Kingdom show high rates of "discouragement" among young workers slipping out of the workforce altogether, just as their governments embark on fiscal tightening programs that could shed yet more jobs.

According to the ILO report:

Youth unemployment rates increased by 4.6 percentage points in Developed Economies & the European Union between 2008 and 2009 and by 3.5 points in Central & South-Eastern Europe (non-EU) & [Commonwealth of Independent States]. These are the largest annual increases in youth unemployment rates ever recorded in any region.

While an unemployment crisis is swelling among American youth, especially youth of color, countless young people in poorer nations are far more desperate for any work they can get in hopes of staving off destitution. The ILO notes that "in developing economies, where 90 per cent of young people live, youth are more vulnerable to underemployment and poverty."

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:

Before the war begun, chickenhawk boosters claimed that nation's occupation and reconstruction would cost the US nothing -- it would be paid by Iraq oil revenues. Heck, even thoughtful war supporters like Tacitus assumed oil revenues would do the trick.

But the anti-war camp has been proven right -- under the best case scenario, Iraq oil revenues would not be sufficient to pay for reconstruction. ...

In any case, what meager oil revenues the US hoped to extract from Iraq will clearly be reduced by rampant vandalism and sabotage. It was all forseable. It was all obvious.

Except to those who wanted to get their war on.

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