Peter Orszag: Sometimes when you cast the 12 sided di you’re bound to end up a loser.

Washington- After an unexpected drop in unemployment -from 10 percent to 9.7- during the month of January administration officials appeared eager today to get ahead of this trend and augment its momentum.  Making this momentous task even more arduous than it first appears is the fact that this decline in unemployment was curiously wrought by a nation that over the course of that month lost 570,000 jobs while gaining only two.  To explain how exactly that might be done The Vitamin Press recently spoke with White House uber genius, and inspiration for Steve Carell’s character in The Forty Year Old Virgin, Peter Dick Orszag.

The Vitamin Press: Thank you for joining us Dr. Orszag.  It is an honor to be speaking with you on this topic.

Peter Orszag: Sure, sure.  Lets just make this quick ok.  There is an episode of Super-friend’s coming on this afternoon where Sinestro discovers that he can exploit The Green Lantern’s weakness in the face of the color of yellow by driving around in a school bus and Aqua Man falls in love with a can of tuna-fish.  Also I’m planning on playing some Everquest down in the Lair and checking out some back issues of the SI Swimsuit Edition that I’ve been collecting over the years while eating cheese puffs and updating my facebook account and monitoring my Wikipedia page for vandelism.  So, suffice it to say, I’ve got a busy day planned and I don’t want to spend to much of it explaining the virtue and dynamics of command control over the economy to you.

The Vitamin Press: Alright then, lets get started.  I am somewhat confused as to how 570,000 jobs can be lost, two jobs can be added and that somehow translates to a drop in aggregate unemployment form 10 to 9.7 percent.

Peter Orszag: Are you a genius sir?

The Vitamin Press: Pardon.

Peter Orszag: Are you a genius.

The Vitamin Press: Well, no.

Peter Orszag: Then why, in fact are you even worrying with this.  You obviously don’t have the acumen to understand the finer dynamics of this system so why then are you so concerned with them.  In fact it would be so much better for you to spend your time concerned with things that are far more important to a person of you inferior intellect.  Things like those cool Superbowl commercials, Taylor Swift and who is going to win the Grammy’s.

The Vitamin Press: Yes but surely you are not suggesting it takes a genius to understand that a loss of 570,000 jobs and a gain of 2 jobs makes for an overall loss of jobs.  The question then becomes how does the unemployment rate drop from 10 percent down to 9.7 percent given that underlying reality.

Peter Orszag: I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.

The Vitamin Press: I don’t need the point to be dignified.  I need it to be explained.  I honestly don’t understand how the administration came to their conclusion and I am interested -as I’m sure our readers are as well- of discovering that.

Peter Orszag: I don’t think I like your tone.  You are not serving unity.  You are refusing to conform the the goal of non-anti-devisiveness.  You are being mean spirited and hateful.  Hatemonger!  There is a law against hate you know, it was attached to a military appropriations bill and signed into law by President Buraq Obama.  I’m going to be bringing this up with my good friends Eric Holder and Janet Nopalitano very soon just like Captain Justice did when he he informed the Galactic Council of Super Buddies about the nefarious counter activities of Rogue Infiltrator who was only pretending to be a Super Buddy but in reality was a member of The Legion of Bad Super-powered Villains, Aliens and Mythical Creatures!

The Vitamin Press: Bringing what up?

Peter Orszag:  Don’t worry about that now.  Just remember that freedom of speech isn’t free.  It carries with it the responsibility to say only those things that are responsible, reasonable and that are congruous with the state sanctioned truth.  And if it is discovered that you have deviated from those all important principals it becomes the obligation of the state -the moral responsibility in fact- to protect its citizens from your foul lies and untruths by shutting you up just like Captain Conundrum did to the Crimson Turnipfarmer  in Tales of Adventure Beyond the Stars and Fantastical Imaginations Vol 67 issue 12 . . . and not the American version either but the extremely rare Japanese one with the solid red back cover instead of the normal advertisement page.

The Vitamin Press: Alright then.  So back to the question . . .

Peter Orszag:  Did I miss something here?

The Vitamin Press: Miss something?

Peter Orszag: Did you suddenly become a genius over the last five minutes?

The Vitamin Press: Only by comparison.

Peter Orszag: What was that?

The Vitamin Press: Uh nothing.  No, I didn’t become a genius in the last five minutes.

Peter Orszag: Well then I thought we agreed that if your not a genius like me then you didn’t need to be asking those questions.

The Vitamin Press: You agreed to that, I didn’t.

Peter Orszag: What’s the difference?

The Vitamin Press: Well . . .

Peter Orszag: Anyway like I was saying what would be the point of trying to explain to you that the reason unemployment has decreased while jobs have not increased is because we are measuring unemployment by the metric of how many people are applying for unemployment insurance . . . and those numbers have dropped significantly over the last month.

The Vitamin Press: Yes, but isn’t that because their “benefits” have run out and not because they’ve gotten jobs?

Peter Orszag: And again you need to leave the critical thinking on economics to the experts.  After all I was the head of the CBO -that’d be the Congressional Budget Office- and I think I know a thing or two about what I’m talking about.

The Vitamin Press: Strangely enough I am familiar with the CBO.  You were the guys that failed to see the market meltdown or to do anything to stop it.

Peter Orszag: That, well that wasn’t my fault.  I mean who knew that creating an artificial real estate bubble by forcing banks to loan money to people who could never pay that money back while Rahm Emanual was stuffing nine million dollars -from the resultant credit default swaps- down his pants wasn’t a good idea?  There was like only a one in 20 bajillion chances that wasn’t going to work out well and you can’t fault me for that.  Sometimes when you cast the 12 sided di your bound to end up a loser.