Lord of the Flies?

Actually, I always trust people posting on the Internet - their reliability and disinterested objectivity far exceeds the capability of any government agency. As for something being outside of a margin of error - seems like there is a lot of that going around these days, worldwide.

and the market is UP on this news? Hmm.. red by close?

One scary thing I noticed in your first chart: The employment recovery time to 0 has increased with each of the last three recessions--28, 31, and then 47 months. I'd hate to think we'll have to extrapolate from that trend!

John--I'll disagree a bit, although I acknowledge that US manufacturing capacity has declined tremendously in the last decade and more.

However, I think the cause of the growing lag in employment rebounds is primarily a function of demand destruction. Over the last decade, PI has remained stagnant if not dropped even when employment approached full employment and consumers were spending at historically high rates. Now, with massively growing unemployment and a shift in consumer value to greater savings, I think demand for both products and services will be down for years, maybe even a decade.

Even once we hit bottom in unemployment, it's going to be long and ugly getting back to something like full employment.

access to article

Recession to last till 2010-end: Roubini: India Today - Latest Breaking News from India, World, Business, Cricket, Sports, Bollywood.

Once upon a time "margin of error" referred to a straight tolerance (basically a 100% confidence interval), and what you're calling a margin of error was called a 95% confidence interval. In practice, there can be a huge difference between the two, not least because straight tolerances require a different sort of measurement process.

Kermit is dithering, just like our feckless leaders. About to jump down?

(thanks for the answer in the prior thread)

People here should check out the site "Front Porch Republic" Front Porch Republic
It has one interesting article after another that I definitely feel jibes with the overarching Calculated Risk mindset. There's an article today called "No Wealth But Life" that I think people here would like about past resistence to the destruction caused by the "monied interests" of New York bankers.

That is an interesting site. Nice layout, and very good content. Thanks.

Check out Simon Johnson's blog, Baseline Scenario. Somehow managed to avoid becoming a glibertarian day-trader chatroom.

LOL. Nothing like somebody who bashes intellectuals while using the word "sobriquet."

Hang on Elmo, Elmo hang on...

YouTube - HANG ON SLOOPY THE McCOYS

Wow NSA U6 is up to 16%

I should soon hit 20%.. and then the real fun begins!

Nothing like job losses of the 40's & 50's with recovery prospects of the 90's an 00's

The only way u6 gets below 10 in the next 5 years is for older folks headed straight for retirement, so go long cat food.

Dawg, in fairness, margin of error really just implies 95% certainty. So the numbers for every 20th month should be wrong on average.

I'd agree if the errors weren't near uniformly biased to preliminary underreporting. When you claim 95% confidence ±13% and your results are all bounded +14%/-3% you are doing something wrong.

Roughly, when the economy is improving there is little bias and it tends to low single percentage updates with an annual drift increasing over time until the annual adjustment renormalizes.

While I agree that his assessment of where we are is correct.....what I can't stand is the argument of not limiting the pay. That is a very large reason that we have this problem. When your paycheck is a direct result of the risks you take it's pretty obvious that limiting the end result will go much farther in preventing another round of throwing out any and all forms of risk management. I understand that fly's in the face of capitalism however when you don't get punished for failure (i.e the "bad" result of capitalism) you are asking for it to happen over and over again. After-all the author (who is usually very sharp and consistent) puts the result (bloated compensation) as the reason we won't have a return to capitalism if that is done. Sorry but that's putting the horse before the cart.

Ciao
MS

/cr/tard,

I reject this line of reasoning, as though there are other industries to soak up these brainchilds--barring a drug-cartel, where yes, the compensation can be fantastic.

I love reading about Eastern Europe -
(from the link) 'For the true horror to emerge, we need to turn to Eastern Europe for a minute or two. Nowhere has the credit boom been more pronounced than in Eastern Europe. And nowhere is the pain felt more now that credit has all but dried up. One measure of the credit fuelled bonanza is the deterioration of the current account across the region. Credit Suisse has calculated that in four short years, from 2004 to 2008, Eastern Europe’s current account went from +6% to -6% of GDP. That is a frightening development and is likely to cause all sorts of problems over the next few years.' Which is true, as far as it goes.

But here is some American based information -
'As of 2004, the net amount of U.S. liabilities, including Treasury securities, held by foreigners was equal to 29 percent of GDP. Our current account deficit was equal to almost 6 percent of GDP and growing, giving the United States the dubious distinction, Edwards observes, of being "the only large industrial country that has run current account deficits in excess of 5 percent."'
America's Unsustainable Current Account Deficit

And America's latest current account deficit? 'At 4.8 percent of GDP, the huge current account deficit indicates Americans continue to consume much more than they produce, borrow too much from the rest of the world.' U.S. Records Huge Current Account Deficit -- Seeking Alpha

Oh, never mind - America is obviously in much better shape than Eastern Europe, having gone from -6% to -4.8% in the same four years that Eastern Europe went from +6% to -6%.

This seems extremely unlikely due to structural changes in employment - those were factory/manufacturing jobs predominantly - now it is service sector employment.

Frazier just stumbled!

Rob Dawg says:
I'd agree if the errors weren't near uniformly biased to preliminary underreporting. When you claim 95% confidence ±13% and your results are all bounded +14%/-3% you are doing something wrong.

“If is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. --Upton Sinclair

Guy on CNBC yesterday told everyone to short.

Poem for the day:

Cagey Bee

No cleaner religion than numbers. No getting your self
Past phone calls to the broker. Of all things: the heart of it
Will betray you when you rake along at your most sure: after
Two billion beats, it’s lights out. The secret of the universe,

Whispered between lovers under clean sheets, might well mean
Cuddle me, cuddle me. A simpering whine,
Nonetheless, and fearful. Reeking of zinc (a base metal), unlike
A monetary transaction--not abstract, abject, abstruse or otherwise.

Metaphor after metaphor rains over innocent bystanders; they don’t
Stay in the place in droves, cars packed to the rooftops, white flags
Stutter at the sirocco—we’re just gettin’ started, try to pay
Attention, please. The fat lady’s coming, cherchez la, c’est la

Guerre. In vestment strategists suggest more tangible assets, inflatable
(Or prone to be)—copper, aluminum, tits too. Crush the shorts. Try to
Unwind their silver coated position. Actually, and coming clean for a moment, Procreation. To wit: every sperm, every cell, or zygote or splot—unto death

Of course--just acknowledge my authorship!

Unemployment can't be that bad. Everyone I work with has a job!

If you look at where the "real" money is in equities (mutual funds, 401K's, pension funds, etc.), far from everyone is shorting.

it is not what we are going to sell to others. It is all about what we are going to sell to ourselves.

Especially hilarious to those who haven't read the CBO assessment. Ignorance is such a laff riot!

From anecdotal stories and experiences, I would say that when there was a "lay-off" during the post-WWII to 1980 era due to cyclical business fluctuations, there was a decent chance in some cases of getting "called back" by the same employer. Haven't seen that in a generation.

"It works well for elections, why wouldn't it work for unemployment?"

The, "Are you employed?" Poll would be hard to spin and not very positive, I am sure.

must.....hold......yesterday's.......low

pathetic bounce IMO..

Ciao
MS

No kidding. He wanted the job. Well, he's got it. Doesn't mean he's entirely responsible for what's happening, but he has yet to demonstrate he has a clue what to do about it.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes:

Bush = Coolidge
Obama = Hoover
??? = FDR

Your mistake is to assume Hoover brought about the GD. He didn't. He was merely the man who stepped into the job at the wrong time, much like Obama. Coolidge's small government philosophy is analogous to Bush's time in office.

Classic CNBC

Kudlow: Obama needs to come to Wall Street and give a speech

Melissa Francis: My G - the Dow would go to 5000

We are all government employees now...

And our personal financial data is walking out the door and into the hands of identity thieves - it is the untold epidemic of the financial downturn...

ISR News: Data Is Walking Out the Door : Information Security Resources

Wow. GM getting hammered at $1.44. Karma baby. Maybe they should have fixed my truck under warranty.

On another note:

The bottom will be just that, a prolonged period of time, years, not months, where losses and gains stay within a narrow baseline band. We are so not there.

--bh

"Now it has to be ours, the whole world. Miami, all of it."

Scarface

AAPL going down. Told jyall! Did anyone see the Teleprompter in chief?

Unblvbl writes:

Looks like the curve on the current recession is starting to flatten a bit. If it follows pattern, we should see bottom sometime around third quarter. This recession continues to track the early 80s one very well. I think I'm back on the inflation bandwagon.

I disagree with your timeline. It's 1-3 years before massive inflation kicks in. Don't underestimate how this will continue to accelerate. This resembles 81 because of severity, but the underlying causes are different, and more veried, and the foreign-lendors that might help us are pouring cash into their own economies, not lending much to us.

Timeline is longer, result is same. Right now is still deflation, which is why dollar is strong, in addition to flight to safety. That will change.

--bh

Someone needs to do a wayback machine web widget that lists today's dow in date format, adjusted and unadjusted for inflation

E.g. TODAY'S DOW Jan 23, 1996

Would make our bloody grasping crawl backwards in time easier to watch... How fast are we accellerating backwards in time, etc.

My time machine is set to the pre-Ronnie years. Perhaps we'll emerge in the late '70s or early '80s after the destruction of leverage.

Oh well, at least the music was better then and houses will be affordable.

The Seinfeld Economy (GDP about nothing) is now official:

‘Seinfeld’ Stars to Reunite on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’

CR, I'm not complaining about the commenting tool, just providing feedback that I'm sure you've received.

This current setup is unusable. The paging and its interaction with threaded/flat makes keeping up nearly impossible since refresh also resets everything to page 1 in threaded mode.

I suspect that this is a blind alley. Blogger may be the culprit, since its commenting is abysmal, forcing a choice of 3rd party tools.

You may have to completely switch bloggging environments to get a workable system if Haloscan is abandoned, as it appears to be. JS-Kit is not a solution, and home-grown commenting is asking for endless problems that will exceed your patience and resources.

I'd suggest you look at Movable Type, or perhaps WordPress.

finally someone with a little foresight...
this doesn't just reverse on a dime and become the past...

Dead_Monkey_Bounce sez: The shovel ready projects in Massachusetts are reportedly on track primarily for summer starts.

Given the way this crisis is being "handled," and the growing mood in the country, there may be some shovel-ready politicians and banksters for summer starts, too.

Guest sed: Wow. GM getting hammered at $1.44. Karma baby.

And no one really wants to think the thought of where unemployment will head when (not if) GM collapses like a cigarette pack cellophane wrapper and takes its suppliers with it.

r
JimPortlandOR | Fri, 06 Mar 09 10:44:33 -0600 | #

jim, use the halo-ized version.

it is the closest to the real thing.

"use the meat bridge. it's right here!"
-meatwad

RD,

I think your observation of systematic bias in the error term for recent job loss estimates is acute, are there any hardcore statisticians out there who would care to test that?

Null hypothesis: There is no systematic bias in BLS job loss estimate revisions.

Your guess is as good as mine, the president, the vice president, any one in congress, anyone plowing a field, anyone teaching at Harvard or a fifth grader. It's the great unknown with a lot of talking heads who exceled in debate club.

A characteristic of recent recessions seems to be that job losses have not happened as early... but they have persisted longer than in earlier recessions.
I wonder if this is a characteristic of the type of jobs today compared to then? Or is this lengthening actually caused by government policy that tries to 'ease the pain' by denial, stalling and temporizing? The area under the curve is a sort of index of the pain - and it has not really improved from years past.
In either case, the chart so far looks like this time it may be both LONG and DEEP - the worst of both worlds.