The truth was bitter: I was penniless and jobless, and the country was in a recession.
But the longer developed nation economies look weak and jobless, and the longer China's economy oozes almost imperceptibly toward rebalancing, the likelier a real trade blow-up is going to be.Some on the left are fairly sanguine about the effects of a fall-out with China.
In our special report we look at the challenges facing today's young and jobless, and the attempts to overcome the problem.
But it also risked creating a backlash among Mr. Malema's supporters, many of them young and jobless and with no niche in the post-apartheid economy, who are drawn to his strident calls for nationalization of the mines that have enriched South Africa's elite.
They build and maintain schools, repair streets and help the jobless and the elderly.
Is it "quaint" when Iowans tell campaigning politicians that we are worried about the economy, fearful for our sons and daughters serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, frustrated by the rising cost of health care, and concerned about the jobless and the homeless?
The movement gained most of its soldiers from the madrassas, or Islamic religious schools, that had mushroomed near the Afghan-Pakistani border during the war and that had become gathering points for what Mr. Rashid calls "the rootless and the restless, the jobless and the economically deprived with little self-knowledge".
They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare.
Brighter spots — Iraq's economy is projected to grow 7percentthis yearare— are offset by problems: millions of Iraqis still don't have clean water and medical care, thousands are jobless and the Iraqi Army, while improving, cannot defend the country on its own.
It would be an added bonus if healthy food were cheaper than junk food but the public health experts know exactly the cost of the low self-esteem, loneliness and insecurity that come from being jobless, and the damp, cramped housing that can wreck a whole family's health.
And although I was jobless, and the country was rotting on the dollar it was founded on and I had no way of taking care of my pregnant wife or sick son, I knew, somehow, everything would be all right.
