The spinning of the Bureau of Lies and Shams report on employment has begun. Past numbers are being revised dramatically higher. If this is true, how come retail sales sucked over Christmas? How come consumer confidence is plunging? If hundreds of thousands of people found jobs last year, how could GDP go negative? Inquiring minds want to know. Here is a link to the un-spun data.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm
Here’s what I see:
- The number of employed Americans went up by 17,000.
- The number of unemployed Americans went up by 126,000.
- Another 169,000 Americans left the workforce because their stock market gains have made them wealthy.
- The labor participation rate remains at three decade lows.
- 1.4 million Americans have left the workforce since February 2012.
- There are 250,000 more Americans unemployed than there were in September 2012.
- There are 6,000 less Americans employed than there were in October 2012.
- The unemployment rate went up to 7.9%.
So solly. I do not see a jobs recovery in these numbers. Propaganda and spin don’t provide paychecks to the declining middle class.
card802 says:
I’m sick and dizzy from all the spinning.
I only laugh now the situation has gotten so ridiculous, and I laugh at all those who believe you can have unemployment go up, GDP go down, profits go down, debt ceiling go up to wherever it ends up on March 15th and still have a positive DOW.
Fuck the DOW, I’m not invested in the DOW anyway.
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1st February 2013 at 11:34 am
tom says:
great job again Admin!
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1st February 2013 at 11:45 am
Clownbucks says:
The only problem with the DOW is that the PTB can cash in their chips at any time and the riff-raff is caught holding their shares at a loss so that the big boys can make money.
My belief FWIW and probably wrong, is that all the money the Fed printed is going into the market now. When the time comes, the serf owners will leave at its height, the Fed gets to sterilize all that money as the market crashes, money POOF, and the serfs who jumped on the runup egged on by the media and market shills get dropkicked. Again.
I’m too shellshocked by the last decade to jump into this.
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1st February 2013 at 11:48 am
JIMSKI says:
Today’s rally in stocks is based on bad numbers. It means another stim-our-ass is on the way. Anyone who does not jump in and buy now will be a sucker. Embrace the can and help kick it down the road.
I’m selling my gold and silver and moving into companies that will bank! Ok who makes the rascal?
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1st February 2013 at 12:35 pm
AWD says:
There is no better indicator of the lies and bullshit spewed by the government than the number of people that “have left the workforce”.
You can almost visualize the BLS drones sitting in front of their computers with excel spreadsheets open. I’m sure they first input the number of new jobs they’ve been told to create, then they work backward. They run the model, and then create the last number to make the data work: the number of people that left the workforce.
It’s perfect, because nobody ever questions the number, and there is no physical way to prove/disprove the number. Yet, a hundred billion in market cap was added today to stocks. Isn’t that the point, really? For the rich to get richer. Propaganda at it’s finest!
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1st February 2013 at 1:11 pm
Erasmus says:
It took decades for the Dow to achieve 14,000 in October of 2007. Then it spent fifteen months in a sharp dive that came to a shuddering halt around January 2009. From that point it has been encased in a channel heading north and it continues to go north.
The market has all to do with the Benny and the printer and with $85 billion coming off the presses each month. Do not bet against this market. This money has to go somewhere and tons of it will pour into equities. Fundamental statistics are important to understand the condition of the economy, but the market couldn’t care less.
Gloom and doomers have missed one of the great market moves of all time and will continue to miss it. The crowd is starting to commit and that means even more cash committed to equities. Where will it end….try 16,000 on the Dow for starters….and sooner than you may think.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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1st February 2013 at 1:27 pm
Erasmus says:
Excellent!!…I’ve gotten infinately many more negatives than positives and keep ‘em coming. If you trade you want to be on the opposite side of the mob all the time because the odds will be in your favor. Look, the world as we know it may indeed be coming to an nasty end but that has nothing to do with this market…maybe some market in the future or even near future, but not this market. This market is driven by piles of cash and you’ll get run over if you stand in the way. Go ahead and short the market, i.e., put your money where your cake hole is. Gloom and doom is a bullish traders best friend so don’t stop now.
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1st February 2013 at 3:01 am
Administrator says:
“you want to be on the opposite side of the mob” – immortal words of Erasmus as the market hits new highs
Think about that statement. Read the headlines in the paper today. Watch CNBC and the rest of the MSM.
That was a really funny statement.
I love the cash on the sidelines storyline. Tell it again.
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1st February 2013 at 7:38 am
Clownbucks says:
I’ll sit with my puny 5.1% CDs and 4.7% coporate bills. I was stupid enough to buy them just prior to the 2008 crash because everyone else said buy real estate.
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1st February 2013 at 8:41 am
Erasmus says:
Check out Stefan Keitel’s comments on liquidity being the driving force of the 2013 market.
https://infocus.credit-suisse.com/app/topic/index.cfm?fuseaction=OpenTopic&coid=118&lang=EN
Ok, he’s a fucking Swiss banker but in this case it’s hard not to agree. The big funds have missed this move from January of 2009 and look like complete incompetent assholes…which of course they are. I wouldn’t give a nickle to a big name fund but people are now and big time, and that money is heading into equities…as Stefan so informs.
It’s no more complicated then that. Not everyone is on food stamps. So, Admin, I ask again as I did around four or five months ago (alias Mr. Happy)….when we banged heads on market direction,…would you short this market now? If you shorted four months ago you’d now be on food stamps. Now you’ve got another chance with the market 1000 points higher…looks like a slam dunk to me.
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1st February 2013 at 9:49 am
Administrator says:
Already short Happy. Not on food stamps yet. Actually doing quite well.
I’m also long gold and silver, just as I’ve been since 2004. A 12 year bull market can do wonders for someone’s net worth. The S&P 500 has a negative real return over the last 14 years.
Liquidity was flowing like water in 2007 too. The price of stocks will always revert to their fair value based upon real earnings. Earnings are in decline. You’re really going against the herd with your prediction. ROTFLMAO!!!
Have you noticed what is kicking the stock market’s ass YTD?
Ethanol – up 13%
Unleaded gas – up 10%
Oil – up 8%
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1st February 2013 at 10:09 am
Administrator says:
“It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.”
― Robert J. Shiller
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1st February 2013 at 10:53 am
Administrator says:
By: Karl Denninger
The Bureau of Lies and Scams reported this morning…
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 157,000 in January, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 7.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Retail trade, construction, health care, and wholesale trade added jobs over the month.
That’s from the establishment survey. Benchmark revisions are also this month (January), which means that the number is frequently full of “hair” and the headline has to be looked beyond — more than usual.
But even “sans hair”, there is little to cheer about — the employment rate did not go down and 157,000 — assuming you believe the number (and you shouldn’t, as I’ll get to shortly) isn’t good. The workweek was unchanged overall and down for production and non-supervisory employees, now standing at 33.6 hours. That is considerably below “full time, 40 hours” — still.
Average hourly earnings, on the other hand, was up 5 cents for production and non-supervisory employees. That’s about the only good news, despite claimed revisions for November and December (which likely are where the spooge-fest came from in the futures.)
That’s where the good news ends.
Here’s the table from the household survey, unadjusted, which is what I use and always have.
Notice that both monthly and annualized are now headed southbound. While annualized is still positive, it’s going the wrong way — and the monthly numbers are horrible.
How horrible? Employed dropped by 1.446 million people!
Now to be fair this is usual for January to some degree. But make no mistake folks — the layoffs this January weredouble that of last year, when January was -737,000. The idea that this report is “strong” is just plain crap — or if you prefer, a lie.
Not-in-labor force moved too — the wrong way. 423,000 gave up last month alone.
The benchmark revision also added massively to population, taking it up 313,000 people, which is about double the monthly average. If you want to look at employment including the change in working-age population it’s about 1,750,000 fewer employed, population-adjusted.
We’re one tenth above last January in terms of the employment-population ratio.
In other words there has been no meaningful change in actual population-adjusted employment whatsoever over the last 12 months.
This report is a train wreck.
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1st February 2013 at 5:04 pm
Erasmus says:
Here’s what Kyle Bass said on Friday:
http://kylebassblog.blogspot.fr/
‘He said the Fed’s bond-buying program, which is aimed at stimulating stock prices and the U.S. economy, has skewed the relationship between stocks and bonds.
“If the monetary base is going to continue to grow at the rate it’s growing and the Fed holds rates where they are today, we’ve lost the correlation between stocks and bonds,” Bass said, “Stocks will continue going higher if we continue printing money.’
Anybody short out there??
Actually, if there is one thing that scares the crap out of me it’s the Dollar Index: US@DX:IUS. It’s showing an almost perfect Head and Shoulders and if that kicks in we’re in a totally different ball game. My bet is the equity market keeps going north (like Dow 16,000) but the threat of a huge dollar collapse, that can hit in a blink, will constantly be hovering over our heads. So this is a great equity market, but it ain’t risk free.
The Fed will try to support the dollar to keep it from crashing but that’s a different proposition in terms of size then intervening in the gold market. If the dollar wants to crash the Fed just ain’t big enough to stop that and we’ll know when it is crashing when it breaches the neckline of the Head & Shoulders. You don’t want to be anywhere near the equity markets when that happens. So my bet is that a crash of the dollar will happen but not yet. In the meantime the equity market marches north.
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1st February 2013 at 9:19 am
Administrator says:
I’m sure Erasamus will know when to exit stage left, just like he did in October 2007. Right Mr Happy?
Regale us about your impeccable timing.
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1st February 2013 at 9:39 am
Administrator says:
“Zimbabwe’s stock market was the best performer this decade – but your entire portfolio now buys you 3 eggs”
Kyle Bass during that interview
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1st February 2013 at 9:43 am
Erasmus says:
If you like I’ll happy to oblige. Here’s what I said this morning in a note I send every week to a gang of old trading pals I still keep in contact with :
DOLLAR…WARNING.
Check out the last chart on the dollar. We’re looking at a well formed Head and Shoulders sitting smack on its neckline. Worse, the Right Shoulder is also a perfectly formed Head & Shoulders…OUCH!!!. Clearly the privately owned criminal FED will do all it can to avoid a breach of the neckline assuming the geniuses there are aware of this formation. The dollar market direction cannot be controlled by the FED if the market itself intends to breach the neckline. The dollar market is simply to massive even for the FED. This is a very, very dangerous market development and when a neckline is breached it will happen in a blink…in this case bringing the dollar index down to the 74-75 level.
•
So the question is how long can the FED hold off a breach and what impact will there be on the equity markets? For sure the S&P and FTSE would head for Titanium (B) where they would find initial support. Will that support hold depends on the level of panic associated with the dollar crash.
•
Timing?? Looks to me like it is very close…like sometime this month
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1st February 2013 at 1:02 pm
Administrator says:
Erasmus
So you send out a warning like this and you are still long stocks?
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1st February 2013 at 1:22 pm
Erasmus says:
Yep still long.
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1st February 2013 at 5:03 pm
Erasmus says:
Yep still long. I sure ain’t going short…not yet anyway.
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1st February 2013 at 5:05 pm