So, the financial crisis is over, is it? All that’s left is that minor annoyance, that lagging indicator called unemployment. Lag, lag, lag, who cares?

Apparently there’s some business economists who think the terminology is what’s lagging as they now view the unemployment rate as a leading indicator.

The climb in the September rate to 9.8 percent, double the level at the start of last year, leaves the U.S. saddled with about 15 million people out of work and with limited prospects. That will further hurt the housing market and weigh on the wages of those still employed, threatening to undercut the economic recovery, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

“Today’s unemployment rate is much more than a lagging indicator,” said El-Erian, whose Newport, California-based Pimco manages the world’s largest bond fund, in an e-mail after the Labor Department report on Oct. 2. “It is also a signal of future pressures on consumption, housing and the country’s social safety net.”

The job market tends to trail the economy in a recovery because companies hesitate to take on more workers until they are convinced the expansion will last. What’s different this time is the “large and protracted” rise in joblessness and the likelihood that it will stay high for years, according to El- Erian. That means unemployment will affect the economy going forward, not merely reflect where it has been.

Fifteen million is approximately the number of Americans unemployed at the worst period of the Great Depression. Then it was about 24% of the workforce. But percentages matter naught to the 15,000,000 workers trying to survive today. As well, counting the uncounted ‘discouraged’ workers and underemployed who’d like to be working full-time, we’ve actually got roughly 20 percent of our workers scraping by currently and the bottom has yet to arrive.

That not only will inhibit our spending habits, the chief driver of our economy, but it signals an era of political turmoil going forward as financial reforms, unemployment cures and financial stress alleviation plans get bandied about.

But how can meaningful reform of the financial system take place when the decisionmakers are still putting politics ahead of the economic well being of the majority of Americans?

The Great Depression offered valuable economic lessons. Balancing the budget and trade protectionism worsened the crisis so our president has wisely expanded spending and resisted protectionist endeavors. But it also offerred Republicans valuable political lessons. Like letting a Democratic president alleviate the suffering and lower unemployment even a little bit - as FDR did - made him seem a godsend to US voters, who elected him perpetually till death overtook him. And he’s been lionized ever since.

That’s the REAL reason GOP lawmakers want to prevent an affordable healthcare plan from reaching fruition unless they can build in flaws guaranteed to make it a costly failure. That’s why they’re resisting an unemployment compensation extension that will assist the worst-off laid-off workers. It’s more important to them to keep people suffering so they’ll vote more Republicans into office in 2010. They talk about compassion and reform but the only paychecks, jobs and expenses they’re interested in are their own.

Many Americans already know the system’s rigged in favor of the rich and powerful, whose poor decisions and reckless gambling created this economic dump. It’s always the poorest and least powerful who bear the greatest brunt of the pain caused by the greed of the guys sucking up the lion’s share of wealth before and after the dump.

However, it would be just as partisan to suggest George W. Bush or Republicans are solely to blame for the mess we’re in. Yes, they played a leading role in creating the fiasco but along the way, they found a few collaborators among Democratic lawmakers, especially members of the conservative Blue Dog coalition in the House. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act is a perfect cas in point:

The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, which was in 1999 the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities.Elizabeth Warren, co-author of All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan (Free Press, 2005) (ISBN 0-7432-6987-X) and one of the five outside experts who constitute the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has said that the repeal of this act contributed to the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009, although some believe that the increased flexibility allowed by the repeal of Glass-Steagall mitigated or prevented the failure of some American banks

Phil Gramm can take the lion’s share of blame but hurting workers are less concerned about who’s at fault and more concerned with getting it fixed so they and their families can survive.

Which isn’t going to happen if the GOP gets its way. And that goes back to the harder to fix problem that Tmothy Rutten identified as the moral bankruptcy that perpetuates the biggest and most longstanding economic lies.

Let’s consider a section of MSN Encarta’s description of the Great Depression:

But there was an underlying economic problem. Income was distributed very unevenly, and the portion going to the wealthiest Americans grew larger as the decade proceeded. This was due largely to two factors: While businesses showed remarkable gains in productivity during the 1920s, workers got a relatively small share of the wealth this produced. At the same time, huge cuts were made in the top income-tax rates. Between 1923 and 1929, manufacturing output per person-hour increased by 32 percent, but workers’ wages grew by only 8 percent. Corporate profits shot up by 65 percent in the same period, and the government let the wealthy keep more of those profits. The Revenue Act of 1926 cut the taxes of those making $1 million or more by more than two-thirds.

Once again, in the decade preceding our current financial meltdown, the similarities are profound, right through the huge tax cut George W. Bush provided the richest Americans just as he was plunging us into a costly major war. That wasn’t voodoo economics. It was Grand Theft Blotto.

And where there are legitimate reasons some workers now feel slighted that lead to further unhealthy social polarities, you can bet plenty of Republicans stand ready to exploit those divisions, because racism and xenophobia are not something they want to fix so long as they can exploit ‘em to their political advantage.

The solutions begin with real financial industry reform led by plain talkers like Elizabeth Warren. Arrayed against her, of course, are the too-big-to-fail greed merchants who caused our pain, the GOP and several blue dog Democrats.

Affordable health care and healthcare insurance reform are another integral part of the solution that draws the same powerful opponents.

The third part is the missing part of the stimulus, a great public works plan that subsidizes the need of millions of Americans to work and earn a means of living. But alleviating our pain might make voters too fond of President Obama, so the GOP can be counted on to resist that, too.

Ultimately, it boils down to where the best interests of my family, friends and neighbors lie. Neither political party nor the giants of industry are fully looking out for that. Not yet, at least. If the Dems produce a badly flawed healthcare plan, it could undo their support for decades to come. If financial reform turns out to be window dressing, some of us will see similar needless economic suffering again, within their lifetimes.

And if no [public works job creation program is in place by next summer, the November 2010 elections could cripple democratic chances to enact any successful changes for the duration of Obama’s term.

That’s the GOP’s wet dream and the nightmare the middle class and poor might yet endure. So yeah, the miserable curs known as Blue Dogs had better have Plan B ready - abandoning the party and the people they claim to represent and becoming greed-ingrained Republicans ready to tie widows to the railroad tracks… AGAIN.

And we’ll see how many voters will see through that GOP game plan which depends on you and me suffering even more.

(Note: I plan to vote against any politician - of either party - that won’t put the interests of Americans first. I don’t give a damn about political party-building strategy. It’s time the dog wags the tail again instead of the inverse that has left tens of millions hanging on by their fingernails. My interests aren’t greed but simple survival. And I think millions share my boat.)