The key to good business writing is the frame.

In other words, how do you take arcane figures and put them into an easy-to-understand context that's smart, useful and memorable?

Our friends at Quartz nailed that task today, with a post titled "The US Fed had a greater profit than Apple and Exxon combined last year."

Catchy headline: check. Interesting topic: check.

The skinny?

The Federal Reserve turned a profit last year of $89 billion dollars, its best year in history.

As Quartz points out, the combined profits of Apple and Exxon — America's two most profitable companies — top a little more than $82 billion.

So how did the Fed do it?

Economic crisis, of course.

Friday is the big day of the week for watchers of the US economy.

The Labor department will release its latest check-up of US unemployment, the most important measure of the world's largest economy. 

Why is this one report so important every month?

People don't spend if they don't have jobs. And the US economy is driven largely by consumer spending. So any economic recovery begins in your wallet, and hence, in the labor market.

It's also important right now in the context of the 2012 presidential election, as President Barack Obama will argue that his administration has done an effective job bringing the US economy back. The GOP candidate, which increasingly appears will be Mitt Romney, will no doubt attack Obama on jobs.

So Friday's report will provide further ammunition to both sides, and give the rest of us another data point to chew over. 

Ahead of that key report, our friends at the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog have posted this handy interactive map, which offers a state-by-state breakdown of the broader unemployment measure called the U-6 rate.

The U-6 rate includes those Americans who would like a job, but who are so discouraged by the weak labor market conditions that they have dropped out (and are, accordingly, not be counted).

Click here for the interactive map, and see below for the screen grab (the Journal won't let me embed it here, unfortunately).

The darker the blue, the deeper the problems:

The Federal Reserve is doing its best to do nothing.

That's the quiescent word out of Washington, D.C. today, as Ben Bernanke and team said they would leave US interest rates at "exceptionally low levels at least through late 2014.”

While noting some improvement in the overall labor market, the Fed gang pointed to a still-high unemployment rate, as well as the weak housing market and slowing business investment.

So it'll try to keep things going in the world's largest economy, by keeping rates low.

Here's the money quote, pulled from the latest Federal Open Market Committee notes:

To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with the dual mandate, the Committee expects to maintain a highly accommodative stance for monetary policy. In particular, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that economic conditions--including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run--are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through late 2014.

But, as usual, I prefer my economic arguments in easy-to-digest rap form.