Jobs, Today’s Recycled Gibberish

Recount the billions of dollars wasted on this … Wasn’t the porkulus originally about $9oo Billion, and for what?

What did we get for the money other than some bankrupt carcuses of dead companies littering the landscape.

All hat no cattle… In fact he no longer even talks a good game, it’s just recycled gibberish.

Rather than Helping the Poor, Higher Tax Rates Redistribute Rich People

From Employment to Savings, Bad Government Policy Is Undermining the U.S. Economy »

I almost feel sorry for the Obama Administration’s spin doctors. Every month, they probably wait for the unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics with the same level of excitement that people on death row wait for their execution date.

This has been going on for a while and today’s new data is another good example. As this chart indicates, the White House promised that the unemployment rate today would be almost down to 5 percent if we enacted the so-called stimulus back in 2009. Instead, the new numbers show that the jobless rate is 7.9 – almost 3.0 percentage points higher.

I enjoy using this chart to indict Obamanomics, in part because it’s a two-fer. I get to criticize the Administration’s overall record, and I simultaneously get to take a jab at Keynesian spending schemes.

What’s not to love?

Compare to other modern recessions …

Chart from the Minn Fed.

 

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs … Part Time Is In

Total employment in the U.S. has recovered to about the halfway point of its previous high. Looked at this way, the Less Bad Recovery is chugging along, but at a very slow rate. Total employment, at 143.28 million, sits roughly in the same place as it did in 2005.

However, a recent chart from Jacob Goldstein at the NPR blog is useful, as it shows how singular and unusual the Great Recession has been during the “recovery” phase compared to other post-war recessions.

Goldstein writes:

 How much worse is it this time? Here’s the answer: In previous postwar recoveries, the number of jobs was about 7 percent above its previous peak by this point, on average. In other words, if this had been a typical recession and recovery, the U.S. economy would now have roughly 10 million more jobs than it did at the previous peak. In fact, there are now three million fewer jobs.

Print fiat money till you drop …

ISM-Chicago Business Survey

The ISM-Chicago Business Survey, a regional view of the national economy, is a time-tested, market-moving report. The CHICAGO Report is available to subscribers 3 minutes before its release to the public 8:45 a.m. CT on the last working day each month. The Chicago Business Barometer, summarizing current business activity, also is known as Chicago Purchasing Manager Index or Chicago PMI. The Barometer is considered to be a leading indicator of the USA economy.

April 2013
April 2013:  The Chicago Purchasing Managers reported April’s Chicago Business Barometer fell 3.4 to 49.0, a 3-1/2 year low.  Except for a minor gain in New Orders, all Business Activity measures weakened in April with five of seven now in contraction. BUSINESS ACTIVITY: SUPPLIER DELIVERIES, PRICES PAID, and PRODUCTION: all lowest since 2009; ORDER BACKLOGS: ten months of contraction in the past 12 months; EMPLOYMENT: third month over month decline. BUYING POLICY:  CAPITAL EQUIPMENT longest since August 2012; MRO SUPPLIES shortest in five months.
Download the full report.

“Dr Copper” is in contract mode … ‘Dr. Copper’ Tells Markets the Party’s Over: Albert Edwards

The price of copper has traditionally been one of the very best indicators of the future performance of the U.S. economy. The fact that it is down nearly 20 percent so far this year has many analysts extremely concerned…

Copper’s downward trend foreshadows a stock market collapse, according to Societe Generale’s famously bearish strategist Albert Edwards, who said equity markets will riot “Japan-style.”

“Copper is acting exactly as it did when I wrote about the impotence of liquidity in the face of the (then imminent) 2007 recession. Once again it is giving us an early warning that liquidity will not save risk assets: time to get out of equities,” Edwards wrote in his latest research note, on Thursday.

Three-month copper prices rallied 2.45 percent on Friday morning in London,but the metal is down 18.6 percent so far this year.

Commodities trader Dennis Gartman agreed with the view that downward movements in copper and other base metals are a bad sign for the global economy.

“The base metals do speak loudly, and they’re speaking very bearishly,” Gartman, who edits The Gartman Letter, told CNBC on Wednesday.

A PMI below 50 is recession ahead leading indicator.

Isn’t today the jobs, jobs bobs speech #1001. I wonder what another teleprompter seance is going to do? I suppose the sequester did it, but you already know the power of the sequester, didn’t you.

Employment-Population Ratio 2013

The truth is that there simply are not enough good jobs in this country to support a housing recovery. If we were having a jobs recovery, the percentage of working age Americans with a job would be going up. Sadly, that is not happening…

 

ANEMIC: GROWTH AT 0.4%

Here is your funny numbers for the day … Consumer spending down, no surprises there.

Final Q4 GDP Misses As Personal Consumption Slides Once More

US ECONOMY EXPANDS AT 0.4 PERCENT RATE‘

The U.S. economy grew at a slightly faster but still anemic rate at the end of last year. However, there is hope that growth accelerated in early 2013 despite higher taxes and cuts in government spending.

The economy grew at an annual rate of 0.4 percent in the October-December quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was slightly better than the previous estimate of 0.1 percent growth. The revision reflected stronger business investment and export sales.

Analysts think the economy is growing at a rate of around 2.5 percent in the current January-March quarter, which ends this week.

Note the last line “analysts think”

How about QE doesn’t produce growth just lower your currency valuation. And that’s reality.

• Jobless Claims Rise For Second Week In a Row

You make sense of the rest of the fake numbers, I give up.

Fed Projects High Unemployment Into 2015

OK so today the Fed says they are going to keep on printing. Until the economy improves.

The latest on the recovery.

WASHINGTON– The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that the U.S. economy has strengthened after pausing late last year but still needs the Fed’s extraordinary support to help lower high unemployment.

In a statement after a two-day meeting, the Fed stood by its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent, as long as the inflation outlook remains mild. And it says it will continue buying $85 billion a month in bonds indefinitely to keep long-term borrowing costs down.

Read more at manufacturing.net …

But apparently they didn’t tell the same story to those who know better. You see how it works? Differing stories for different audiences.

Let America Get Back To Work …

There is going to be a rumble.

Not one to shy away from voicing his opinion, CNBC’s Rick Santelli on Friday clashed with his colleagues over topics that included Quantitative Easing, unemployment, and Fed’s supposed plan to revive the U.S. economy.

“Five years into this crisis, I think it’s all disappointing,” Santelli said, referring to recovery’s slow pace. “It would take five years at the present job rate to get to where we were before the crisis.”

Indeed, as noted earlier on TheBlaze, although today’s unemployment numbers are heartening, there’s still a lot a work that needs to be done before we can get back to pre-recession employment levels:

Watch the video here …

The Dow Hits An All-Time High! Translation: A Bubble Is Always Biggest Right Before It Bursts

Fools market …

Reckless money printing by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has pumped up the Dow to a brand new all-time high.  So what comes next?  Will the Dow go even higher?  Hopefully it will.

In fact, it would be great if the Dow was able to hit 15,000 before it finally came crashing down.  That would give all of us some more time to prepare for the nightmarish economic crisis that is rapidly approaching.

As you will see below, the U.S. economy is in far, far worse shape than it was the last time the Dow reached a record high back in 2007.  In addition, all of the long-term trends that are ripping our economy to shreds just continue to get even worse and our debt just continues to explode.  Unfortunately, the Dow has become completely divorced from economic reality in recent years because of Fed manipulation.  All of this funny money that the Federal Reserve has been cranking out has made the wealthy even wealthier, but this bubble will not last for too much longer.

What goes up must come down.  And remember, a bubble is always biggest right before it bursts.

(Read More….)

Don’t Expect Consumer Spending To Be the Engine of Economic Growth It Once Was

Here is what the Federal Reserve says about consumer spending … Statist view of the world, all money belongs to government.

The Fed Writes … Obama does:

Can American consumers continue to serve as the engine of U.S. and global economic growth as they did during recent decades? Several powerful trends suggest not, at least for a while. Instead, new sources of demand, both domestic and foreign, are needed if we are to maintain healthy rates of growth. Unfortunately, this won’t be easy because consumer spending constitutes the largest part of our economy, and replacements for it—more investment, more government spending or more exports—either can’t be increased rapidly or might create unwanted consequences of their own.

How We Got Here: The Consumer-Driven U.S. Economy

It is no exaggeration to say that consumer spending was the dominant source of economic growth in the United States during recent decades. For example:

• During the 10 years ending in the last pre-recession quarter (third quarter of 2007), inflation-adjusted personal consumption expenditures (PCE) grew at a continuously compounded annual rate of 3.47 percent, while overall inflation-adjusted annual growth of gross domestic product (GDP) averaged only 2.91 percent.
• During that period, the remainder of the economy—consisting of investment (I), government purchases of goods and services (G), and net exports (NX)—grew at only a 1.70 percent inflation-adjusted annual rate.
• Expressed in terms of its contribution to average quarterly real GDP growth during the decade ending in the third quarter of 2007, PCE accounted for 81.3 percent, while the other components (I, G and NX) contributed only 18.7 percent.
• Over the quarter-century ending in the third quarter of 2007, consumer expenditures grew, on average, at a 3.50 continuously compounded annual rate, while the rest of the economy (I, G and NX) grew at a 2.79 percent annual rate.
• PCE accounted for 70.8 percent of average real GDP growth during those 25 years (1982: Q3 through 2007: Q3), while all other components (I, G and NX) contributed
  29.2 percent.

Consumer spending accounts for a majority of spending in all advanced nations. What makes the U.S. experience of recent decades unusual is that the share of consumer spending in GDP was relatively high already before it began to increase substantially further during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. In dollar terms, PCE’s share of GDP in the third quarters of 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007 were 62.5, 65.9, 66.7 and 69.5 percent, respectively. (See Figure 1.) Thus, consumer spending was a large and increasingly important part of the American economy during the decades preceding the recession and remains so today.

Economy Shrinks … Obama & Pals Blame Republicans

Another ‘who woulda thunk it’ moment: The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus. The economy shrank from October through …

And here the Republicans wanted to avoid the blame, by being nice.

Get outta here! You mean with businesses fretting over the unknown cost of ObamaCare, with taxes being raised for almost every American, and government spending continuing to spiral out of control that our economy is contracting?

Shocking!