Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about Trump's jobs report and foreclosures.

The Trump administration has said that it's unlikely the public will ever see the economic numbers for October,

and blame the shutdown for that. Many believe Trump is hiding

bad numbers, especially since a lot of private data says the U.S. lost jobs in October. Trump has

been bragging about job growth, but the numbers say the U.S. hasn't seen job growth this week

since, well, the last time Trump was in office.

If you discount that year, and it would be fair to do so, because it was the year the pandemic took hold,

you have to go back to 2009 and the Great Recession defined numbers as bad as Trump's numbers through August.

Using August because those are the last numbers we have. While jobs numbers can be a good indicator,

we really don't have a clean and clear picture now. What other indicators do we have? Well, we mentioned the Great Recession. That's kind of

symbolized by foreclosed homes. When it comes to foreclosures as an economic indicator,

there are two numbers you can look at. You can look at foreclosure starts or completed foreclosures.

For once, those are exactly what they sound like, which doesn't always happen in economic language.

Starts are the beginning phase and completed foreclosures are the last phase.

In October, foreclosure starts rose 6% for the month. That's bad, but it's even

worse when you consider they've been climbing. Year over year, they're 20% higher. And completed foreclosures

jumped a whopping 32% year over year.

Those are big numbers.

That's a surge.

That being said, it's important to look at historical averages

because we're already starting to see people say it's echoing the housing crisis of the Great Recession.

...