Author: Darren Gersh, Washington Bureau Chief

The teen unemployment set a new record in October: 27.6%.

Faced with the scary job market, many young people are heading for college or graduate school. Most of the increase in college enrollment is at community colleges.

It makes sense. If teenagers and young workers can't find a job, they can ride out the storm and use the time to improve their skills.

The only problem is that many other young people have the same idea. With employers cutting back and more people going to college, we could face a glut of new grads in a few years.

In some sense, the added education only postpones the job market pain. And that pain is likely to last for a while. Younger workers are often the first fired and the last hired. The Economic Policy Institute's Heidi Shierholz thinks the soft job market could last for another five to seven years!

"[P]arsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens (for example, words), to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given (more or less) formal grammar."

Let us now learn to parse the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee statement.

To begin with, the Federal Open Market Committee -- FOMC for short -- sets interest rate policy. These 12 people have a lot to say about how much you pay for a mortgage.

The statement comes out at 2:15 after the FOMC meets. You can find a statement here.

The first paragraph of the statement usually describes the Fed's take on the economy. The major sectors of the economy -- employment, industrial production, etc. -- are usually discussed. Important economic trends are mentioned here.

The second paragraph is often the "inflation paragraph." The Fed opines on any "slack" in the economy. Slack is often a fancy way of saying lots of people are out of work. If there is lots of slack in the economy -- unemployment -- people can't find jobs or are worried about finding jobs meaning they are unwilling to buy much. That means businesses can't raise prices.

The final paragraph is traditionally the "balance of risks" paragraph. As the financial crisis took hold, the balance or risks became a balance of terror. This paragraph became devoted to listing all the ways the Fed is fighting the credit crisis. Look here now to find hints on how fast the Fed is "unwinding" the various credit supports it has put in place.

For the last couple of weeks, we've been having a huge national debate over what to pay people.

Ken Feinberg, the Treasury's Special Master, has weighed in on bailed -out banks. The Federal Reserve is getting into the act, asking banks to explain the relation between pay practices and risk.

Today it was the Supreme Court's turn to dip a toe into the national discussion.

The case at hand is Jones v Harris Associates. Jones and two other plaintiffs are individual investors. Harris Associates is the sponsor of the Oakmark Funds and the investment adviser, a common feature of the mutual fund industry. To manage the conflict of interest between the adviser and the fund it operates, the law requires compensation be set by an independent board of trustees representing the fund.

The shareholders in this case argue Harris' fees are excessive because they are twice as high as those charged to institutions for virtually identical advice. Harris -- and the mutual fund industry -- argue the advice and services are very different, justifying the higher fees.

Climate change is one of the most complicated subjects I have ever taken on. It involves intricate scientific topics and will likely have broad economic impact.

And clearly many Americans are having a tough time making up their mind on this topic. A recent poll by the Pew Center shows the number of people who think climate change is caused by human activity is falling. This alarms many scientists who consider the evidence to be clear cut.

Rather than opine on this, I thought I'd point readers to some of the sources I have found useful on this topic.

In general, Americans dislike their government. Washington is an epithet. A foreign land where people who are out of touch do silly things.

Get specific and Americans admire and respect their government. We honor the courage of our soldiers. We watch movies and TV shows about the exploits of our FBI agents.

Less glamorous, but still worthy of respect is the Congressional Budget Office. These are the wonks and numbers nerds who try to keep lawmakers honest by costing out proposals and asking the tough question: "How much will this cost?"

CBO will be answering those very questions soon on health care reform. CBO's answers will help determine whether the public option lives or dies. Even whether we get reform or not.

I ran into Don while I was waiting for the bus last night. Knows everyone. Always a kind word. That's Don.

After the usual talk about the kids and the family, Don started in about the economy. He was telling me that it's a different world in Southeast Washington, the heart of the African American community here. The recession is a depression there. Much higher unemployment and much higher rates of foreclosures.

My talk with Don brought home to me again how the Great Recession is not an equal opportunity hardship. If you live anywhere near where they make cars (or used to) you know this. If you are a teenager or member of a minority, you know jobs are non-existent.

And, if you run a small business, you know that credit is tight. The administration tried to help out small business today. Late, some small banks say. But the higher loan limits proposed for the SBA will help.

Many people commented on the $250 payment that Obama now backs for seniors. Since there was no inflation this year, there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security. The $250 check is supposed to "make up" for the non-COLA.

Let's just say that a lot of the comments have been along the lines of "What is the government thinking!" "$250 is not enough to keep up."

Some perspective:

From Medicare: Based on the bids submitted by Part D plans, it is estimated the average monthly premium that beneficiaries will pay for standard prescription drug coverage in 2010 will increase $2.

Under federal law, three our of four seniors will not see an increase in their Part B Medicare Premiums, because they are tied to the Social Security COLA.

Also, wages for most workers are DOWN 1.4% this year.

And yes, to answer one comment, this $250 payment appears to be going to all Social Security recipients, even those working and those making hefty incomes. Now, how Congress decides to pay for this is an open question. Some want to raise payroll taxes on upper-income taxpayers to offset the cost of this program.

Tomorrow the Social Security Administration will make it official: no 2010 cost of living increase for seniors. Why? Because there was no inflation over the last 12 months.

For more on this, check out this blog entry.

Today, the Obama administration jumped out in front of the news, announcing it will support a $250 payment to seniors (and veterans and the disabled) because they are "are struggling to make ends meet with retirement savings that have not fully recovered from their losses over the first year of the recession."

By that logic, wouldn't most of the country qualify?

The White House announcement avoids any mention of the COLA issue, except to say that the announcement is tomorrow. But this clearly sets a precedent for adjusting the COLA if the results are not politically acceptable.

How much do you pay for health insurance? Most people answer that by talking about the co-payment their employer charges them. Others talk about out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs and medical supplies.

But the real cost for most people is actually much higher. To economists there is little difference between the wages your employer pays and the benefits your employer provides. Both can be considered income, because both are compensation. So, even though employees don't see the entire health care premium employers pay on their behalf, all of that money is coming out of a worker's paycheck in the form of reduced wages.

This is a political problem now that Congress is trying to decide how much a typical American family should pay for health insurance. This debate falls under the heading of affordability.

Last week I ran a story talking about the growing pressure on the Obama administration to come up with new jobs programs.

This week the White House is responding.

But the ideas floated so far -- tax credit for new job creation, extension of expiring provisions -- makes me think the White House may be playing for time. These are the kind of ideas you float to show you care about a problem, but they aren't big enough to make a dent in our unemployment rate.

Since the stimulus package is still ramping up, it might make a lot of sense to just be patient.

And it is also possible the Obama administration wants to wait on a jobs plan until the time is politically ripe. Announcing something now would simply take the focus away from health care.