"I made the near-fatal mistake of atttempting to take my afternoon walk at the local mall. The place was CRAWLING with sheeple, all frenetically shopping for Easter--that holiest of merchant days.
First, I was nearly run down like a stray dog in the parking lot by the Denali-driving-cell-phone-yakking-soccer-moms.
Having survived only by using my previous football tackle evasion skills, once I was finally inside I literally could not walk more than one mile per hour, as the fat hordes were cluttering the mall, many pushing strollers. In fact, it looked like some science-fiction nightmare scene of mass migration of buffalo tethered to Graco baby buggies.
Then of course, there was the five-hundred sheeple line of soccer-moms and their brats(all dressed up in hundred-dollar outfits they will never wear again) waiting impatiently to sit on the Easter Bunny's lap and have their picture snapped for fifty bucks.
Not to mention that each and every store had dozens of dolts lined up--all waving their charge cards like they were in some sort of bizarre auction--to buy the useless easter clothes, cards and candy.
Finally, the food court. God save us all. If I saw one obese cow sucking down pizza and soda, I saw a thousand.
That was it. The last straw.
I managed to wriggle my way past the tonnage of sheeple flesh and out of the mall, back through the guantlet that is the parking lot and finally, mercifully, home."
a penny for your thoughts: i've been looking at these job reports with a somewhat cyncial eye because of the bls' birth-death model used in the report (which is nothing more than a forecasting technique akin to driving your car through the rearview mirror), but i'm wondering one other possibility: is it possible that the construction numbers are misstated (and have been misstated for months)because we've had a significant number of undocumented persons filling those jobs? would appreciate your thoughts...
There is no way these jobs numbers are not bogus at this stage, what a travesty. What's amazing to me is how they are being discussed as real. Just taking the 3.3 million people (including contractors) who work in residential construction alone we can see that completions between Sept-Feb are already down 18.4% and sinking fast. That's over 600,000 jobs. Even if much of this represents reduced work for contractors rather than job loss, the effect is the same. To think the job market added 54,000 construction jobs in March is patently absurd. I have gone through and posted about 40 recent news reports in the comment section here to illustrate this.
CR
You have been saying since Jan. that a hugh number of residential construction jobs would be lost. Now you're saying a couple hundred thousand jobs, that's a rather modest revised prediction. What I see around Cincinnati is that the residential builders had cut their operations down to nothing by late last summer. There are no more residential jobs to be lost around here.
Your graph of residential construction employment would be more instructive if you included the Clinton economic cycle. In Jan 01 we were in the depths of the Clinton- Gore recession. By starting Jan 01 you imply that construction jobs will fall all the way back down to that level. But the economy is obviously not in a recession with 4.4% unemployment. How much did residential construction drop during a similar period during the Clinton years?
James,
According to the NBER, the last recession did not start until March 2001, which would be 2 months after Bush took office. It is distorting reality to refer to it as a Clinton Gore recession. Employment growth was far stronger in the Clinton years than in the Bush years.
The Bush policies must have been really kickin' in after the first two months of Bush's term to have caused a recession so soon after entering office. Bush's monetary and fiscial policies must have been on steroids to have had such an impact so quickly. We can call the Bush policies Barry Bondsonomics!!! F-Yeah!!!
about CC and consumer behavior:
post by Rasputin over at Prudent Bear Chat.
"I made the near-fatal mistake of atttempting to take my afternoon walk at the local mall. The place was CRAWLING with sheeple, all frenetically shopping for Easter--that holiest of merchant days.
First, I was nearly run down like a stray dog in the parking lot by the Denali-driving-cell-phone-yakking-soccer-moms.
Having survived only by using my previous football tackle evasion skills, once I was finally inside I literally could not walk more than one mile per hour, as the fat hordes were cluttering the mall, many pushing strollers. In fact, it looked like some science-fiction nightmare scene of mass migration of buffalo tethered to Graco baby buggies.
Then of course, there was the five-hundred sheeple line of soccer-moms and their brats(all dressed up in hundred-dollar outfits they will never wear again) waiting impatiently to sit on the Easter Bunny's lap and have their picture snapped for fifty bucks.
Not to mention that each and every store had dozens of dolts lined up--all waving their charge cards like they were in some sort of bizarre auction--to buy the useless easter clothes, cards and candy.
Finally, the food court. God save us all. If I saw one obese cow sucking down pizza and soda, I saw a thousand.
That was it. The last straw.
I managed to wriggle my way past the tonnage of sheeple flesh and out of the mall, back through the guantlet that is the parking lot and finally, mercifully, home."
CR,
a penny for your thoughts: i've been looking at these job reports with a somewhat cyncial eye because of the bls' birth-death model used in the report (which is nothing more than a forecasting technique akin to driving your car through the rearview mirror), but i'm wondering one other possibility: is it possible that the construction numbers are misstated (and have been misstated for months)because we've had a significant number of undocumented persons filling those jobs? would appreciate your thoughts...
There is no way these jobs numbers are not bogus at this stage, what a travesty. What's amazing to me is how they are being discussed as real. Just taking the 3.3 million people (including contractors) who work in residential construction alone we can see that completions between Sept-Feb are already down 18.4% and sinking fast. That's over 600,000 jobs. Even if much of this represents reduced work for contractors rather than job loss, the effect is the same. To think the job market added 54,000 construction jobs in March is patently absurd. I have gone through and posted about 40 recent news reports in the comment section here to illustrate this.
Winter (Economic and Market) Watch » Challenger, Why Even Bother?
CR
You have been saying since Jan. that a hugh number of residential construction jobs would be lost. Now you're saying a couple hundred thousand jobs, that's a rather modest revised prediction. What I see around Cincinnati is that the residential builders had cut their operations down to nothing by late last summer. There are no more residential jobs to be lost around here.
Your graph of residential construction employment would be more instructive if you included the Clinton economic cycle. In Jan 01 we were in the depths of the Clinton- Gore recession. By starting Jan 01 you imply that construction jobs will fall all the way back down to that level. But the economy is obviously not in a recession with 4.4% unemployment. How much did residential construction drop during a similar period during the Clinton years?
James,
According to the NBER, the last recession did not start until March 2001, which would be 2 months after Bush took office. It is distorting reality to refer to it as a Clinton Gore recession. Employment growth was far stronger in the Clinton years than in the Bush years.
The Bush policies must have been really kickin' in after the first two months of Bush's term to have caused a recession so soon after entering office. Bush's monetary and fiscial policies must have been on steroids to have had such an impact so quickly. We can call the Bush policies Barry Bondsonomics!!! F-Yeah!!!