As more people drop off of unemployment benefits, after 3 years of collecting unemployment, the already fake unemployment rate drops, almost like a rock.
Understand, there are no new jobs and the millions that were lost are not coming back. If you liberals / RINOs cannot understand this, I don't know what else to say to you.
Deer in Headlights
The government tracks who is ON unemployment. Once your unemployment payments stop, and you cannot receive any more, you fall off the government's unemployment list. So yes, in 2009 millions lost their jobs, after 3 years of collecting unemployment they used up all their payments and cannot get any more. There was not people being hired by the millions all of a sudden. It would take millions upon millions of people getting a job for the unemployment rate to drop so drastically. However, the real explanation of millions using up their unemployment explains the drop.
"The U.S. economy created jobs at the fastest pace in nine months in January, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 8.3 percent, its lowest level in three years, since just after Obama took office.
The report meant that unemployment has dropped every month since August, when it was 9.1 percent." - Reuters
The good folks at ZeroHedge [some schmo that goes by the name of Tyler Durden *sigh*][ no i'm not a fan Tyler ] explained it best, so as not to confuse the idiot public.
"A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.
This is the largest absolute jump in 'Persons Not In Labor Force' on record... and biggest percentage jump in 30 years."
Floyd Norris of The New York Times says:
"How many jobs did the American economy add in January?
The Labor Department estimated on Friday that the economy gained 243,000 jobs.
The department also estimated that the economy lost 2,689,000 jobs in the month.
The difference in the two numbers is in seasonal adjustment. Employment always falls in January, as temporary Christmas jobs end. So the government applies seasonal adjustment factors in an effort to discern the real trend of the economy apart from seasonal fluctuations. The actual survey showed the big loss in jobs. The seasonal adjustments produced the reported gain of 243,000 jobs.
A reason to doubt the number is that there has been a tendency in this cycle for the seasonal factors to overstate moves, in both directions. Labor mobility is down, as fewer workers quit to seek better jobs and employers both hire and fire fewer people than they used to do. If the seasonal adjustment was too large, then the gain should be smaller."
And for a real kick in the nuts, we have Numerian over at The Economic Populist reporting:
First, ever since the credit crisis of 2008, there has been a trend in the unemployment report that shows a declining participation rate in the job market. While a whopping number of jobs were created in January, a far larger number of people left the labor force - 1,752,000 in fact. The percent of the total working population who did not have jobs rose to 36.7%, an all time high. It’s no wonder the unemployment rate fell, when the denominator shrinks so markedly. The total number of people employed fell by 737,000. So what do you want to celebrate – the 243,000 who got jobs, or the million or so people who dropped by the wayside and are no longer counted in the data?
To put it bluntly, Obama is not your savior and there was no job creation that rocked 2 million strong in the month of January. People are not working, so much, that their not working dropped them off the list, to the tune of 1.2 million people gone off list. If you account for those people, unemployment is going strong at 10.9%. The numbers reported are faked.
Other than the manufacturing jobs, which were lost over a decade ago, the model for American jobs was not established on a solid economic foundation to begin with. There was no reason, nor call for service sector jobs to be a full 40% of the job market. call centers and consulting, was never a NEEDED niche, to base an economy on. Neither one generates any real revenue for the country. It is not something you can package, pass around and keep generating income from, like sugar, pork bellies or a circuit board.
Until such time as someone admits that the model is broken, there never will be recovery.
And, of course the rich and wealthy and upper middle class have no compassion / understanding of the job loss. Nearly 90% of the jobs lost in America were all entry level and or low paying jobs. What is really getting everyone's goat, and has become a huge backlash to all this, the question of illegal immigrants taking low paying and or entry level jobs is now in the sniper scopes of all of the state treasurers. The issue can no longer be ignored.
With this in mind, several states are now trying to pass / discuss an immigration policy to uphold enforcement of the immigration laws a la Arizona. So all the people gnashing their teeth and clawing their hair out over that state, need look no further than their own state capital to see the same legislation come to roost.
The problem really cannot be ignored. And, it is a definite solution to the jobless problem. Illegal immigrants take the low paying / entry level jobs; pay no taxes; AND to add injury to insult - send a whopping 80% of the income back home to Mexico, making it the 3rd base of Mexican GDP. Those figures cannot be ignored any longer in this economic debacle.
Written Letter to Senator Harry Reid, My State Senator
Senator Reid,
I was shocked that the entire debate over the unemployment bill, recently passed, was not in fact an extension of unemployment compensation, but simply an extension of the filing date.
I don't think you are aware of the real u-3 unemployment data. We are not at 16% nationwide with Nevada having an extra 3% lead over the nation, putting us at nearly 20% unemployment.
I have not been able to gain employment since the end of 2008 when my company laid off 2% of the work force nationwide and have not hired anyone back. I don't understand how you and the rest of congress can be so out of touch with the employment situation out here.
I don't understand how you all can approve tens of billions of dollars in relief to Haiti, on top of the regular billions you send them, yet not help to feed your own citizens.
It is a slap in our face.
I don't understand how you can require taxes on unemployment compensation, which amounts to 2 whole months worth of unemployment, when it is a paycheck to paycheck situation to begin with. Unemployment is a much lowered percentage of your regular pay rate. People have to feed families, pay rents, put gas in cars with that unemployment check.
How can you make speeches you are for Nevadans when you and your colleagues are making people homeless. I have read countless accounts of people who, after reading that the recent unemployment legislation did not extend the benefits themselves, say they are now "desperate". I can just imagine the suicide rate will skyrocket after the benefits run out.
The unemployment rate increased. Companies are not hiring. Businesses are not hiring. We are getting nothing from congress but rhetoric and political plays. And, I'm not falling for the scapegoat of Senator Bunning, it was an obvious ploy to use him.
We are dying out here while you and your colleagues refuse to take action. You refuse to force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Our savings is in the negative because of it. Who is going to put money into savings that generates less than 7 tenths of a percentage point? Citizens won't save and businesses won't borrow with artificially low interest rates, especially now that it is obvious the interest rates are not indicative of consumer savings.
Yet, you bailout Fannie and Freddie and AIG, while letters and phone calls pour in opposed to it. Yet, millions of Americans will starve due to no extension of the unemployment benefits. We all still vote. I don't understand how the congress can have such hubris. I don't understand how you can say you are for Nevadans, 3rd in the nation in unemployment.
Ask any political group [with a brain] and they all agree, "Obama is following lock and step with the policies set forth by George Bush." With a disproportionate representation in unemployment and severely disproportionate representation in incarceration, Blacks America is hemorrhaging from what everyone else sees as a slight slump in the economy. Reports across the nation show Black Americans showing 50% unemployment in some sectors, "last hired, first fired."
Blacks disproportionately go to prison [keyword disproportionately]
Blacks don't get job when they are qualified for them [keyword qualified]
Blacks pay more for insurance
Blacks are still being redlined [keyword still] (Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of, services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs,access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by community activists in Chicago. It describes the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate the area where banks would not invest; later the term was applied to discrimination against a particular group of people (usually by race or gender) no matter the geography. During the heyday of redlining, the areas most frequently discriminated against were black inner city neighborhoods. Through at least the 1990s this practice meant that banks would often lend to lower income whites but not to middle or upper income blacks.)
Blacks do not get access to mortgages, even when they have credit scores that are at or above the appropriate level. [keyword appropriate level]
Now we come to the Congressional Black Caucus.
The Caucus describes its goals as "positively influencing the course of events pertinent to African-Americans and others of similar experience and situation," and "achieving greater equity for persons of African descent in the design and content of domestic and international programs and services."
The CBC encapsulates these goals in the following priorities: Closing the achievement and opportunity gaps in education, assuring quality health care for every American, focusing on employment and economic security, ensuring justice for all, retirement security for all Americans, increasing welfare funds and increasing equity in foreign policy.
On its face, I, as a Black man, think the CBC is a complete failure, a failure the heights of which are boundless. The country which had hundreds of Historically Black Colleges to give Black Americans an equal footing and offer even remedial courses to give the poor and the illiterate Blacks a fighting chance, has seen them close in record numbers. Yet the CBC continue the regular congressional practice of adding pork and fat in legislation for their own, state, pet projects. Who cares if the bridge to nowhere gets funding if the local Black college shuts down, throwing tens of thousands of your own constituents back into the dark ages. [but I'm not here to point fingers, so you didn't read that]
In a show of solidarity and trying to appear as if they cared, the CBC came out to the press against the complete lack of attention to Black America as perpetrated by the Obama administration. For the record, I completely agree. For the list provided above, any president, with a heart, would bend over backwards to eradicate once and for all institutional racism which targets the second largest group of Americans in the nation. You can't build a solid tomorrow when whole segments of the population are targeted both by the private and public sector as scapegoats and a means to money launder ill-gained goods.
This administration turns a blind eye to a very obvious and sinister practice: target and make money off of Blacks. This isn't just a case of someone being racist. Racism at its core is nothing. You don't like someone because of their skin, so what. Go cry on someone's shoulder that cares. What I am talking about, and the data shows it, is that people have discovered they can target Blacks and due to government subsidies and programs, make billions of dollars off of it.
Incarcerating a Black person makes $30,000.00 yearly. An academic study in 2001 found the national and state average annual cost to be roughly the same, about $22,600. Adjusting for inflation, the current annual cost figure would amount to $28,200. The federal government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics says that 2,310,984 people are in state and federal correctional facilities. That implies an annual cost of $65 billion. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s more than global beverage giant Coca-Cola’s (NYSE: KO ( 57.24 ↓1.18 (2.02%)) entire annual revenue in 2008.
Do the math. If incarcerating Black people makes more money than Coca-Cola makes around the entire world, do you think just maybe those Blacks might not be as "criminal" as you think? Americans need to grow up. In business, these days, if you can get away with lying, cheating, and stealing AND make a profit doing it, you'll do it. If you can pass mandatory sentencing for petty crimes and misdemeanors, you'll do it. Everyone is aware that congress passes legislation according to campaign contributions. Why is it so bloody hard to understand that nearly every law is now passed that way.
Why are Blacks behind bars? It is statistically impossible that a population that is only 13% represented in the country, could represent 25% of the entire world population behind bars. There are FOUR times the amount of Black people in jail and prison in America than the rest of the world prison population combined. So why are Blacks in jail? Because it makes so much damn money. It makes an ungodly amount of money. It makes so much money you can't even count it nor understand the number.
It’s a $1.6 billion outfit based in Nashville that owns or manages half the outsourced prison beds in the country. It keeps the 44 facilities it owns and the 20 it leases full: In 2008, 2007 and 2006, its average compensated occupancy was 95.5%, 98.2%, and 95.0%, respectively. That’s far better and with a greater economy of scale than the nation’s hotels, which were only 58.5% full as of April 2009.
Can the same be said for higher insurance premiums for Blacks? That's a no-brainer.
Can the same be said for refusing to hire or readily firing Blacks? Ah, you have to remember that there's legislation.... remember way back when hiring Blacks was an issue? and they came up with this whole "Affirmative Action". It was supposed to make everyone equal. They had charts and graphs, figures and spreadsheets. Affirmative Action was supposed to cure Jim Crow southern America. But, what people didn't know is Affirmative Action only applied to corporation with government contracts and who received government money. So to make money they complied with Affirmative Action. So you comply by putting into plan to hire minorities and women. Hire them. Then fire them immediately after you have your money. The same is said of schools. Schools comply with affirmative action, then raise tuition for all students, which is their ultimate goal anyway. The more government money they receive, by barely complying, the larger their coffers become. No more Blacks are educated today than they did 25 years ago, in fact the numbers have gone drastically down.
Did the Clinton or Bush administration speak to these issues? No! Has the Obama administration spoken to these issues? Let's see what the Congressional Black Caucus has to say.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said that the administration hasn't done enough to target the African-American community when drafting economic recovery plans. African Americans, she said, have suffered a “devastation” during the economic downturn unlike the pain felt in other communities.
“When you have disproportionate pain, when you have the kind of devastation that we’re having in our community….You have to target legislation and actions so that you can deal with that devastation,” Waters said on TV One's "Washington Watch." “You have two sick patients. One has pneumonia and one has a cold. You don’t give aspirin to the one with pneumonia.”
Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) agreed. “It’s absolutely ludicrous to us that most Americans took a haircut in the recession,” Cleaver said. “African Americans took a beheading. To say that we’re going to ignore the community in terms of doing damage, but to say that we’re not going to target them [in the recovery is] ludicrous.”
“There’s no rift between the Congressional Black Caucus and the president and the administration,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). “I believe the president gets it.”
It has been said that President Obama is following the Bush policies succinctly. If you lay the two administrations plans side by side, you can clearly see that there is little to no deviation. Some even say that the Obama administration is the Bush policies carried to the next level, greater spending and more money laundering by Wall Street under the guise of these bailouts. Clearly the administration, that progressive whites and Blacks alike had hoped would put to wrest the question of racism and the complete subjugation of whole sectors of Black Americans has gone not only unanswered, but ignored.
In fact one reporter that asked President Obama, in his 100 days speech, directly "what will you do about the 50% unemployment rate of Black men in New york," was completely ignored.
The hand writing was on the wall way back then. We are now closing in on the one year anniversary of the Obama presidency, and nothing has been done, in fact it is now worsened with rising unemployment. The entire world expected president Obama to "clean up" America's long standing apartheid practices. The U.N. constantly spoke out against Bush not doing anything about the apartheid situation in America, and now they see with the Obama administration those speeches are falling on deaf ears.
It is a case of the first female to get a position of power so she overcompensates by being harder than all of her male predecessors. President Obama is going out of his way to avoid Black Americans. One political pundit said he is trying to avoid being looked upon as a civil rights activist.
Frankly, in my opinion, ALL of our civil rights and civil liberties and constitutional rights are being treaded upon by the Federal Reserve Bank, Wall Street, congress and this administration and state and local governments. We need a president to stand up for us and uphold the constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
However the patriot act is still in place and is being enforced in such a manner that people cannot even tell you they are a victim of it. White people think they have it great right now, but all of these atrocities are going to be visited upon them, then who will speak out for them?
Kudlow asks his guests, "will we recover from this recession this year"? I, like his guests say, not until 2010. To be honest, I don't think with this recent stimulus package we will even see a recovery in 2010.
Let's review that stimulus package briefly: reduce tax deductions on housing; reduce tax deduction on charitable grants; raise tax on capital gains, which is still a double tax on dividends. Who is he stimulating exactly? The middle class into the poor house? You can no longer claim the entire house deductions you could before. You can no longer claim money you give to charity entirely as you could before. What does this mean? What does this say? Don't give to charity and don't buy houses.
We have Madoff coming to light. But I warn you now, Madoff isn't problematic, but symptomatic of what people not only have done, but can do in this market. People are now buying dummy corporations, running them into the ground and then claiming the insurance and bailout money. Also, the SEC has yet to have a proper response to the credit default swap fiasco.
And, we have the worst week in market history last week and this week isn't showing much light at the end of the tunnel. Already the DOW is down 25%. While the government wants to demonize shorters, stocks are steadily falling. Even Cramer, is pessimistic about the outlook. Today he had another screaming match on CNBC, but can you blame him?
Meanwhile on the precious metals, I have it on good authority that gold and silver in particular are being devalued. That's actually good news for potential investors right now. While everyone is laughing at Peter Schiff and calling him names for saying gold is going to go to $2,000 / oz, Jim Rogers is nodding his head as are some of the major players over seas. In fact, one such overseas investor went through the history of the DOW itself and pointed out how everyone was skeptical that the DOW would ever break one thousand. The rest is history of course, but he equates that to the price of gold. Everyone is skeptical that it would ever hit $2,000 but frankly with $7 trillion being introduced secretly into the economy via these awful bailouts, inflation is just a matter of time. In fact, hyperinflation isn\'t as far fetched as people like to also poke fun
at Peter Schiff for saying. We\'re seeing a rally on the dollar right now but honestly, we all know the dollar is manipulated more than a teen girl on prom night. There is no chance, nor hope that this rally is happening strictly due to market demand. And, we come full circle to gold. Now how far fetched is it, when I say gold is being manipulated. Gold should be $2,000 / oz if not $3,000 / oz. We don\'t even know the real value of the dollar. How can we scoff at $2,000/ oz gold?
Will there be an economic recovery this year? Review the facts for yourself. The market has no confidence in the administration right now. Obama promises big changes, but no one knows what they will be. The best thing he could do right now is step aside and let the market take care of itself. Stop these insane bailouts which leave the investor scratching his head as to how truly valuate stocks. Let these companies go into bankruptcy so someone smart can come in and properly valuate the company worth. Have the SEC throw the book at Moodies for not requiring full reserves while doing these credit default swaps, yet still evaluating their bonds at AAA rating. And, finally he should bring our troops home ASAP, which is why he and the Dems were put into office to begin with.
Unemployment came out today for a new high of 8.1% more than 650,000 lost last month alone: business -180,000; financials -44,000; retailers -39,500; hospitality -33,000. This is the highest it\'s been in a quarter century, since 1983. Right now they estimate 12.5 million Americans are out of work.
I guarantee if we pulled all the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the two other wars we are secretly fighting and paying for, we wouldn't be inthis economic slump to begin with. The military budget is some 60% of GDP, that is unconscionable. Without that spending, we could really reduce taxes and strengthen the dollar. And, no ... no terrorists were even involved in 9/11. You can debate me on that one in the next post.
I've said it, and Jim Rogers has said it too, take your money out of the bank, which isn't earning that much money these days [1%-2%] which are then taxed anyway, go buy a home safe and put your money in there. This will actually help the country. Leave only enough to pay bills with, in your bank account. Purchase real money items like gold and silver. Or treat 90 day t-bills as a bank account with a small return. Always remember to have a 6 month emergency fund, this is what should be in your home safe.
