ready, steady...

[solarbird]

Good evening. Most of this will be material from late last week that I didn't post about because of the torture obscenities of the US government. I'm still processing that - as well as the near-total lack of reaction to it.

The job report was much worse than expected, and worse than typically reported. As usual, you had the Birth/Death model making it less bad than it would've been otherwise. This is the same black-box no-explanation model that has added hundreds of thousands of theoretical jobs throughout this recession, and has gone negative only one month in the process. The U-6 - broad un- and under-employment - is up to 17.0%.

But if you look more directly at the data, as Karl at Market Ticker did, you see huge chops out of the "participation" number, and you see:

Civilian Labor Force: 154,879,000 to 153,617,000 this month.

Employed: 140,074,000 down to 139,079,000 this month.

That's a loss of 995,000 jobs, not 263,000, and the labor force contracted by 1,262,000 people!

This of course does not include seasonal adjustments and many jobs are genuinely seasonal. But, well, it still affects the amount of money people have.

However, the BLS seems to be preparing to admit that its numbers are severely damaged, with massive revisions coming in February regarding job losses in the first year of the recession - around 824,000 more jobs lost than actually reported by the BLS through March 2009. Mish has more, of course.

Automobile makers took it in the teeth last month as Cash for Clunkers ended, with almost all makers reporting worse than expected declines in sales. Hyundai, however, did much better than expected, with sales up 27%. Manufacturing climbed overall, but missed quite a bit to the downside, with the index actually falling while still remaining in the growth range. The service sector, by contrast, moved into expansion territory, with a robust pickup in September.

Consumer spending rose sharply on "Cash for Clunkers," even as income actually fell 0.2%, and the savings rate fell to 3%. This debt-based spending seems unlikely to be sustainable in the face of rising unemployment - still, even non-durable goods sales rose quite a lot, so who knows? MSN Money reports a bit of a surge in 'splurge'-type buying at retailers, so maybe.

Ben Bernanke is talking about how the US dollar is in no immediate risk. Talking up something in this context is usually a sign of need for reassurance. The Independent in the UK reports:

Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Is it true? I don't know! It's in the interest of several of these states.

As I'm writing this, I see in a bulletin (no link) that the Australian central bank is hiking its cash rate target by a quarter point to 3.25%. That will help the Aus$, as the Federal Reserve has noted yet again it has no plans to move rates up any time soon.

Calculated Risk summarises various emergency budget cuts in state governments as income taxes fall - New York State receipts are down 36%.

Elliot Wave International says stocks are headed sharply down, by the same indicator that they used to predict a couple of other major declines, but they're also known for missing bull markets. Yahoo Finance reports 500-600 more bank failures predicted over the next year, And I don't know anything about this blogger, but it is true that "insider" stockholders have sold heavily into this stock market rally, with a huge "sell" bias. Be warned.

Sorry this is a bit slapdash tonight, my heart's not really in it. Good luck tomorrow and the rest of the week.

Comments

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

I always appreciate your economics posts.

[solarbird]

Thanks.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

the torture obscenities of the US government. I'm still processing that - as well as the near-total lack of reaction to it.

Guessing people not reacting publicly fall into the following categories --

(1) Outrage overload--no, FUTILE outrage overload; this isn't the first or even the 12th announcement like this, and some people yell and scream, and it is mostly ignored, so have lowered the yelling on their priority list from sheer fatigue and sense of futility;

(2) Just plain overwhelmed by life and not paying attention;

(3) Already used to this and thinking of it as unpleasant, but business as usual and maybe sort of hoping it will change in the future but not thinking they can do anything about it so shoving it aside;

(4) Fans of the Obama administration who don't want to yell at him because they like him and think it validates the criticism of him from left and/or right, and hope something will change so it all quietly goes away, ideally on Obama's watch so he can get credit for it.

(5) Conservatives who hate Obama but are all for the torture yay! and/or wish they could have that job!

(6) Conservatives who hate Obama and don't like torture but realize Bush/Cheney started this and kinda wish it would all quietly go away.

(7) The vast horde of apathetic-with-no-excuses, who pretty much are never gonna get upset about anything unless it directly effects them in a way their brain registers, or the media drums up their Pavlov responses, so that they are more likely to join a media-led onslaught to lynch their neighbor for joining a terrorist conspiracy that never existed than they are to even notice that innocent people are being tortured to confess to things by a governmetn that knows they are innocent, and then the following government learns all this and tries to keep them locked up anyway.

I probably left something out, but basically, not surprised; this is somewhat worse and more outrageous than a lot of stuff before it, but I don't think anyone who didn't care about the other will care about this; they don't *want* to have to care.

And I just got back from searching five hours for a missing dog in the middle of the night who is finally home, and I've been up for over 21.5 hrs now, so I'll read the econ later. But yay Bandit home and unharmed! =)

[solarbird]

this isn't the first or even the 12th announcement like this
No, this is worse. I mean, what you have here is not just torture, not just torture of someone they thought was guilty and just couldn't prove it, but someone they new was innocent. They were specifically getting a false confession. And the Obama administration's willingness to use the fruits of torture for political purposes (covering up torture) is arguably a new level of evil - and if not (and it's arguably also not), then it's certainly a new level of evil for this administration, the non-opposition opposition that was supposedly going to stop and fix all this.

Point ceded, you are right

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

At least as far as things publicly revealed, this is a new level. I guess, for me, it just doesn't surprise; I kinda figured the Bush administration was doing this and the Obama administration had to know in theory, at least, even if they didn't know in actual fact. (also I'm constantly exhausted and on the edge of keeling over, so maybe I'm too tired to scream, tho that is hardly an excuse for journalists, who have really absolutely nothing that should be a higher priority than calling people's attention to this sort of thing).

And, well, you know I always thought Obama was a country club Republican with lower than average political ethics, and CCR's have never really cared about the civil liberties of non-Americans , and I always thought the majority of his fan club would follow him eagerly no matter what for quite a long time, so, really, not that surprised.

What I am disappointed at is that NO ONE in his administration is resigning over this. I get the whole "be a team player" thing, but who wants to be on a team that does shit like this? Yeah, his approval ratings are high right now but even if that's all you care about, maybe people should learn from Colin Powell. His rep is permanently and servedly tarnished, evne though it was done in service to a regime that had approval ratings as high as this one's, and for a cause people were actively behind at the time, because at some point reality finally kicked in. I hope it happens to these people too. And I get the whole "can change more from the inside" thing, but, um, some evidence of doing more good than you could do in your spare time while unemployed would be nice. For all that she's said some nice things at various points, I'm including Hillary in this -- she coulda said the same with at least as high a profile in the Senate or probably for that matter from a computer in a shack in the wilds of Northern Canada (tho I will give points to whoever keeps de-escalating things w/Iran). Seriously though, at some point you have to speak out if you're in a prominent position or you're part of the problem, and EVERY high profile official, or' even every official high enough to get noticed if they said or did something, in his administration who isn't resigning over this or shouting publicly about the badness is now without question part of the problem.

Re: Point ceded, you are right

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

probably an obvious typo, but that shoulda been "deservedly tarnished", just in case in case you thought I meant something bizarre by "servedly".

Oh, let me give some sarcastic reasons why, that I wouldn't be surprised to actually see trotted out by someone somewhere:

(1) We can't upset the blue dogs, and they like this stuff.
(2) We need to keep the Republicans on board so they won't trot out their big guns opposing health care reform.
(3) We still don't have the needed 65 votes in the Senate.
(4) Obama won't have a legitimate mandate to undo anything Bush did until he has at least 70 votes in the Senate.
(5) Because of all the Blue Dogs, we really need 80 democrats in the Senate before we. can see any change, and to accomplish that Obama has to keep moving to the right on *everything*.
(6) Most americans just care about being safe, and most think torture works, and therefore most will approve of this if you put it that way to them, and there is no possibility of educating them at all on this issue, and therefore to stay in power Obama has to do stuff like this, otherwise there might be another terrorist attack and then the Republicans would return to power and give more money to the big corporations and take away more of our civil liberties.
(7) We have to make compromises like this to get things done.

I was gonna do a top 10 list, but I can't think of any more.

Re: the economy -- there's not much realistic hope of doing more than containing the damage at this point. And even "containing the damage" is not exactly a well-defined, high probability propostion. I'm not saying more couldn't be done, but I see no will to do anything much helpful, or even any strategy other than "run around like headless chicken and throw things in random directions and spout Bush-esque 'it's gonna get better!' talking points and hope something sticks' " So, basically, either hope I am totally wrong or that we get really lucky somehow. Or maybe we are all just lacking in the intellectual subtlety and refinement needed to see how "jobless recovery driven by uptick in consumer spending without wage increases for those who have jobs" works. Cause I'm sure it's obvious to somebody.

further ps, sorry to spam your thread

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

yeah, I know, there are other reasons to be pissed off at Powell, going back to the early days of the Clinton administration, and those are very good reasons. But they're not what killed his rep with the general public. And certainly no one in the media cares about that now.