Another sign that all the talk of recovery in the US economy is a crock with new figures showing that the average time it takes fired employees to find a new job now exceeds the length of their standard unemployment benefits. In other words, unemployment in the US now lasts longer than benefits. Worse still, personal bankruptcies have now topped one million. It's the first time that's happened since the new system came in to track the level of bankruptcies. The system is imploding and will require a major overhaul.

The latest data coincides with the official US unemployment rate hitting 9.8%. But of course, the real figures are a lot worse because, as this report points out, some 2.5 million unemployed Americans have simply stopped looking for work. The standard unemployment figures only counts those who are actively looking for a job.

As Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein says, the economic system no longer works for most Americans. "After nearly two decades of booms and busts that have yielded little in the way of economic gain for the typical household, Americans have developed a profound distrust of the markets, financiers, big business and the capitalist ethos."

The US economy needs major surgery, real reform. So far we haven't seen any of that coming.