BLS – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

CONSPIRACY OR CHAOS?

“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening – Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.” – Alan Moore

Alan Moore, the renowned graphic novel writer, and author of the dystopian classic V for Vendetta, politically identifies as an anarchist. His view that all political states are an outgrowth of anarchy, with the biggest gang taking control and dictating how things will be run, is manifested in V for Vendetta. As an anarchist, you can understand why he is doubtful of conspiracy theories and an all-powerful entity controlling the world. He believes in a chaotic world competing gangs position themselves to gain power and control.

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“We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation – that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice.”- Alan Moore

The Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta has been adopted by anarchist groups around the world, including: Anonymous, WikiLeaks, and the Occupy protestors. Moore’s positive view of the Occupy movement was based on his belief ordinary people had the right to reclaim what had been taken from them by criminal bankers. The initial impetus for the Occupy protests was the destruction of Main Street USA by Wall Street sociopaths, who not only escaped prosecution for their crimes, but were bailed out by the taxpayers they had pillaged and further enriched as captured politicians enabled them to get even bigger.

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NAVIGATING THROUGH THE STORMS

Several weeks ago I had to drive west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to pick up my son after his sophomore year at Penn State. I’ve made this trip a dozen times over the last few years, since this is my second son attending Penn State, with a third starting in the Fall. It’s a tedious, boring, protracted, four hour trek through the rural countryside of the Keystone State. During these trips my mind wanders, making connections between the landscape and the pressing issues facing the world. I can’t help but get lost in my thoughts as the miles accumulate like dollars on the national debt clock.

More often than not I end up making the trip in the midst of bad weather. And this time was no different. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a meandering, decades old, dangerous, mostly two lane highway for most of its 360 mile span. Large swaths of the decaying interstate are under construction, as the narrative about lack of infrastructure spending is proven false by visual proof along the highways and byways of America.

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WHERE’S TRUMP’S TWEET ABOUT THESE HORRIFIC JOBS NUMBERS?

Well that was a bigly miss and doesn’t fit the economic recovery narrative. It fits the Atlanta Fed GDP number of under 1% in the first quarter. The previous two months of jobs gains were revised lower too. So much for that record level of consumer confidence. If these confidence polls were accurate, why would retailers be closing 3,500 stores and declaring bankruptcy at an astounding rate?

Wages remain stagnant. The number of jobs for people between the ages of 35 and 54 actually declined. To give you a real perspective on this awesome economic recovery, the household report shows the country has added 1,699,000 jobs in the last year. That’s 142,000 per month – pretty pitiful considering the working age population grew by 1,646,000 over the same time frame.

Here’s the best part. Over the last year 35 to 54 year olds LOST 319,000 jobs, while those over 55 years old gained 881,000 jobs. So Americans in their prime working years are still losing jobs, while Boomers who didn’t save enough for retirement are being forced to work in low paying Obama service industry shit jobs. The Boomer retirement meme is complete and utter bullshit.

As a cherry on top, the number of people holding multiple jobs went up 138,000 in March to a new all time high of 7.96 million. Of the 1.7 million jobs created in the last year, 503,000 were from multiple job holders.

Trump’s cackling about all the new jobs, declining national debt, and soaring stock market is about to be thrown back in his big fat orange face. Starting a war to distract from domestic policy failure is the oldest trick in the book. It ain’t gonna work this time. Bannon should explain The Fourth Turning to him.

March Payrolls Crumble: Only 98K Jobs Added Despite Slide In Unemployment Rate

by Tyler Durden

Apr 7, 2017 8:35 AM

And so the reflation trade is dead once again.

So much for that blockbuster ADP report. As we cautioned previously in our payrolls preview, the big risk to today’s payrolls report was to the downside, mostly as a result of the unseasonably cold March weather, and moments ago the BLS confirmed that indeed something snapped in March when only 98K jobs were added, roughly half of the 180K expected. This was the lowest monthly jobs number since May of 2016.

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STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

If you prefer fake news, fake data, and a fake narrative about an improving economy and stock market headed to 30,000, don’t read this fact based, reality check article. The level of stupidity engulfing the country has reached epic proportions, as the mainstream fake news networks flog bullshit Russian conspiracy stories, knowing at least 50% of the non-thinking iGadget distracted public believes anything they hear on the boob tube.

This stupendous degree of utter stupidity goes to a new level of idiocy when it comes to the stock market. The rigged fleecing machine known as Wall Street has gone into hyper-drive since futures dropped by 700 points on the night of Trump’s election. An already extremely overvalued market, as measured by every historically accurate valuation metric, soared by 4,000 points from that futures low – over 20% – to an all-time high. Despite dozens of warning signs and the experience of two 40% to 50% crashes in the last fifteen years, lemming like investors are confident the future is so bright they gotta wear shades.

The current bull market is the 2nd longest in history at 8 years. In March of 2009, the S&P 500 bottomed at a fitting level for Wall Street of 666. In a shocking coincidence, it bottomed on the same day Bernanke & Geithner forced the FASB to rollover like mangy dogs and stop enforcing mark to market accounting. Amazingly, when Wall Street banks, along with Fannie and Freddie, could value their toxic assets at whatever they chose, profits surged. The market is now 240% higher.

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WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I exposed the establishment narrative of a strong economy as rubbish by providing hard data regarding imploding gasoline usage, failing bricks and mortar retailers and plunging restaurant sales.

“Inflation may indeed bring benefits for a short time to favored groups, but only at the expense of others. And in the long run it brings ruinous consequences to the whole community. Even a relatively mild inflation distorts the structure of production. It leads to the overexpansion of some industries at the expense of others. This involves a misapplication and waste of capital. When the inflation collapses, or is brought to a halt, the misdirected capital investment—whether in the form of machines, factories or office buildings—cannot yield an adequate return and loses the greater part of its value.Nor is it possible to bring inflation to a smooth and gentle stop, and so avert a subsequent depression.” – Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson

Inflation is the opium of the masses. The establishment’s interest in dumbing down the masses through government controlled public school indoctrination couldn’t be clearer than examining the chart below. The average non-thinking, math challenged, iGadget distracted, media controlled pawn thinks their household income has risen by $6,000 since 2008 because they have no understanding of Fed created inflation.

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Can Truth Prevail?

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

According to official US economic data, the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has expanded for 22 quarters, raising real GDP 12.1% above its high prior to the 2008-09 economic contraction. Yet, US manufacturing output and US industrial production have not recovered to their pre-contraction high.

So what is driving the real GDP growth? In my opinion, the rise in real GDP is an illusion produced by the under-measurement of inflation.

As I have reported on many occasions, John Williams of shadowstats.com has concluded that changes in the way that the government approaches the measurement of inflation has, in effect, defined inflation away.

Formerly, if a price of an item in an inflation measure rose, the inflation rate would rise by the price times the weight of the item in the index. Today, if a price of an item in an inflation measure rises, that item is removed from the index, and a lower cost item substituted in its place.

A second way that government has contrived in order to undermeasure inflation is to declare price rises “quality improvements” and not count the higher price as inflation.

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IT’S CALLED STAGFLATION

Two posts on ZH this morning tell you everything you need to know about Obama’s economy. Real wages are stagnant, just as they have been for the last eight years. In addition, the BLS drones are no longer able to hide the true inflation affecting average households across the nation. Even their “fake numbers” show inflation at 3.6% over the last four months. We know that is bogus, and the true number is in the 5% to 7% range for real Americans paying rent, health insurance premiums, heating their homes, and filling up their gas tanks.

But the Fed continues to keep rates near 0% so Goldman Sachs can report record earnings and average pay of $338,000 for their “doing God’s work” bankers. When you have no wage growth, while your expenses are rising rapidly, you’ve got STAGFLATION. It’s the worst possible economic situation for deplorables living in the real world outside the bastions of the elite in NYC, DC, LA and SF.

Numerous low, middle and high end retailers have reported atrocious holiday sales and earnings. This contrasts with the bullshit reports from the National Retail Federation and the US government saying holiday sales were solid. Kohls, Macys, Sears, and now Target have admitted their business absolutely sucks. They are closing stores, laying off employees, and slashing their earnings estimates. Does that happen when an economy is booming, as our esteemed president has been crowing about on his farewell tour?

Do you trust your government or do you trust the reality of your bank account and what real businesses operating in the real world are saying?

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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

I stopped trying to predict markets back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Wall Street bankers, and their propaganda peddling media mouthpieces colluded to rig the markets to benefit the elite establishment players while screwing average Americans. I haven’t owned any stocks to speak of since 2006. I missed the the final blow-off, the 50% crash, and the subsequent engineered new bubble. But that doesn’t stop me from assessing our true economic situation, market valuations, and historical comparisons in order to prove the irrationality and idiocy of the current narrative.

The proof of this market being rigged and not based upon valuations, corporate earnings, discounted cash flows, or anything related to free market capitalism, was the reaction to Trump’s upset victory. The narrative was status quo Hillary was good for markets and Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric would unnerve the markets. When the Dow futures plummeted by 800 points on election night, left wingers like Krugman cackled and predicted imminent collapse. The collapse lasted about 30 minutes, as the Dow recovered all 800 points and has subsequently advanced another 1,500 points since election day. Krugman’s predictive abilities proven stellar once again.

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4.6% UNEMPLOYMENT – NOW THAT’S FUNNY

I haven’t written many posts about the BLS bullshit unemployment propaganda for months, because it’s like beating a dead government horse. It seems Obama wants to go out on a high note of falsity. The BLS hilariously reported a 4.6% unemployment rate this morning. The last time the rate was really that low, wages were soaring at annual rates around 4% and interest rates were 6%.

We are lost in a blizzard of lies. Wages FELL in November. They are up a pitiful 2.5% over the last year – BEFORE INFLATION. With real inflation exceeding 5%, average Americans continue to see their standard of living fall.

Here are a few data points the cheerleaders and propaganda artists working on the corporate media shows will not readily reveal:

The working age population increased by 219,000, while the number of employed Americans rose by 160,000. This translated into a plunge in the unemployment rate from 4.9% to 4.6% because supposedly 446,000 Americans considered their lives so carefree and financially secure they decided to willingly exit the labor force. I guess their Trump stock market gains have put them on easy street.

The labor participation rate has dropped from 63% to 62.7% since March, back to 40 year lows. Surely a sign of a strong labor market.
Since March, 1.6 million Americans have left the workforce, while only 765k found jobs, but the unemployment rate has hilariously fallen from 5.0% to 4.6%.
The bullshit birth death excel spreadsheet fake jobs adjustment year to date has been 869k jobs. These fake jobs created by fake small businesses account for about half of all the new jobs reported in 2016. It’s a fucking joke.
The number of people between the ages of 45 and 54 (you know, prime working years) employed dropped by 147,000 in November and are 3,000 lower than last November.
The number of full-time workers fell by 628,000 in November, while the number of part-time workers rose by 678,000. Now you know why wages are falling. Shit Obama jobs are replacing real production jobs.

It is surely a great sign when multiple job holders are up by 511,000 in the last year. People always take a 2nd job when things are going great. Self-employed Ebay entrepreneurs have also risen by 266,000 in the last year.

I could go on, but at this point what difference does it make. If you actually believe the bullshit being spread by the BLS, you probably voted for Hillary. So it goes.

Anyone with a functioning brain (eliminates CNBC pundits and bimbos) knows the true unemployment rate is north of 20%.

INFLATION ABOUT TO EXPLODE HIGHER

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” ― Lysander Spooner

We all know the BLS artificially suppresses the CPI through bullshit substitution adjustments, quality adjustments, and various other incomprehensible hedonic adjustments made by government apparatchiks at the behest of their politician bosses. Some obscure theoretical academic calculation called owners equivalent rent accounts for almost a quarter of the CPI weighting.

It has no relation to reality as it has increased by only 12% since 2012, while the Case Shiller Housing Price Index is up 52% over the same time frame. The median price of existing home sales is up 30% over the same time frame. It also has no relation to rent increases, as they have gone up 22% nationally since 2012. It’s essentially a made up number by goal seeking bureaucrats doing the bidding of their establishment masters.

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HILLARY: DECEIT, DEBT, DELUSIONS (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I addressed the deceit of Hillary Clinton and politicians of all stripes as they promise goodies they can never pay for, in order to buy votes and expand their power and control over our lives.

I created the chart below for an article I wrote in 2011 when the national debt stood at $14.8 trillion, with my projection of its growth over the next eight years. I predicted the national debt would reach $20 trillion in 2016 and was ridiculed by arrogant Keynesians who guaranteed their “stimulus” (aka pork) would supercharge the economy and result in huge tax inflows and drastically reduced deficits. As of today, the national debt stands at $19.7 trillion and is poised to reach $20 trillion by the time “The Hope & Change Savior” leaves office on January 20, 2017. I guess I wasn’t really a crazed pessimist after all. I guarantee the debt will reach $25 trillion by the end of the next presidential term, unless the Ponzi scheme collapses into financial depression and World War 3 (a strong probability).

The total disregard for the most perilous issue confronting the nation by politicians of all stripes is a national disgrace, proving beyond a doubt the elite ruling class has no conscience, no sense of morality, and no loyalty to the common people or future generations. The sociopaths who act as if they are in control addressed the 2008 global debt meltdown by adding tens of trillions in new debt to an already unsustainable system, setting the world on a course towards total financial collapse and world war.

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