It's Jobless Thursday

Initial unemployment claims rose by 5,000 to 333,000, though the less volatile 4-week moving average fell to the lowest number in almost 6 years.

Continuing claims rose slightly.

It's not a bad report, particularly when compared to Greece, where the May unemployment number was revised upward to 27.6%:

Greece's jobless rate hit a new record high of 27.6 percent in May, official national data showed on Thursday as the country staggers under austerity linked to its international bailout.

Record joblessness is a nightmare for Greece's two-party coalition government as it scrambles to hit fiscal targets and show there is light at the end of the tunnel after years of unpopular tax rises and cuts to wages and pensions.

Unemployment rose to 27.6 percent from an upwardly revised 27.0 percent reading in April, according to data from statistics service ELSTAT and was more than twice the average rate in the euro zone which stood at 12.1 percent in June.

This is grim, and the two mainstream parties have absolutely failed to do anything to fix this, and it is highly unlikely that they can do what it takes, given that step one is to stand up to German politicians spinning morality tales.

That leaves us with the left leaning SYRIZA party, or the the Fascist, nativist, and racist Golden Dawn party (see the party symbol on the right).

If history is true to form, the 1930s, it's going to be the Fascists who win this, and given that we are already seeing Fascism lite in Hungary, this has very unpleasant historical echos.