Nemo?

So how will CNBC spin this into 200 dow points?

-- Livermore --

Switzerland hosts the CERN Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.

CERN's first big contribution was from a fellow called Tim Berners Lee, the WWW. Any spinoff from Livermore yet?

China has also a sustained fusion project of their own on Science Island.

i was going to post this on the last thread but tried to keep on topic. Now it's on topic. Woo hoo!

While [Austan] Goolsbee conceded unemployment numbers were higher than the 8 percent the administration had projected, he said that helps make the case for economic stimulus legislation enacted right after Obama took office in January.

He called the jobless numbers “a terrible number, but it’s a substantial improvement.” When asked whether the U.S. was bound for double-digit unemployment, Goolsbee said the economy continues to face a “rough patch” and jobless numbers are “likely going to be a little higher.”

Imagine how bad things would have been if we hadn't passed TARP and the ARRA!!!

"Do you think we might dip back into recession if borrowing costs for the US government start to climb quickly enough to curtail government borrowing? "

Incorrect line of reasoning. "Borrowing" costs will rise no matter what. Matter of fact, it is healthy. The key is keeping the short yields down, they blow now the game is up.

and recovery is not predicted on federal government spending, because frankly, outside the bailouts, there is not as much going on that hadn't been going on before. It is predicted on confidence and nothing else.

Well the 10y are stinkers.

With such a huge debt overhang a recovery requires workers productivity to be high enough to absorb the excess debt, and yet still be competitive with a foreign worker.

In order for American workers to be competitive in the Global space borrowing cost must be equal or lower. Won't be unless money is raised to pay down the debt.

A Star is (maybe) Born! Livermore could also becomes Nevermore - and who knows how much of CA.

My take is that it is probably better to have LLL working on fusion for power rather than fusion for bombs - but maybe this is both?

But I'd rather than the Lawrence Berkeley Labs (LBL - the former home of Energy Secy Chu) spending to keep CA afloat than LLL.

Is there a danger of 'meltdown' after the Star is Born? Maybe the Chinese and US are working toward a common wormhole through the earth?

What people forget is that unemployment leads recessions. What we've had so far is a bubble popping that just resembles a recession in some aspects. The recession starts now.

Who do you call when a new star is born in CA and its now feeding on the earth? Do TImmy/Ben have a team of starbusters on call?

CR,

That fourth plot would be very interesting with one addendum - a stacked bar for each period showing the contribution from the birth/death model...

Fake Jobs 

Can this "recession" end before the FED's balance sheet stabilizes or decreases? Economic growth based on a perpetual printing machine has no credibility.

I hope everyone reads Doonesbury today - Real estate lady is forced to eat at the soup kitchen...

And it also seems likely that the unemployment rate will continue to rise for the next 2 years or so since any recovery will probably be very sluggish.

Bingo !

Now couple this with Obamanomics where 1) The government champions funds 2) Funds champion corporations 3) Corporations champion markets and industries 4) The people ( American taxpayers ) get the tab which will fail because America and Americans are swimming in debt and you have the makings of a catastrophe ( like more severe and prolonged recession or depression )

Most Americans had better start making the gradual to a lower standard of living and suggest that most should also be recalibrating their American dream

Shadow,

thanks for the tip! That'll be hanging on the refrigerator.

Something tells me NBER will declare the recession over long before the recession is over.

This time its different!

Asset declines across the country led the job declines. It was not simply a business sector decline like Autos. Assets prices need to come back before we see a job recovery...

thank you for the nice charts. My guesstimate is that since the current unemployment numbers are far more comparable to 1982 than they are to either 1991 or 2001 that unemployment will continue to go up after the official end of the recession but only for a couple of months.

Fusion is like the horizon. It is an imaginary line that recedes as you approach. The problem with the National Ignition facility is twofold.

1) Breakeven is calculated based on the energy generated by fusion equaling the photon output by the lasers. However, this is not an accurate picture of the energy balance. Lasers are only 7% efficient (if that), so the actual photons put out by the lasers are only a tiny fraction of the energy input to the actual devices.

2) Once you achieve fusion, you have to get the energy in some form to produce work. This is the real challenge. By itself, fusion will only produce heat. Unless the laws of thermo-dynamics change, we need to use a working fluid to convert the heat to kinetic and then mechanical energy.. Then, we can worry about generating electricity (which is itself just a working fluid consisting of electrons). This is usually done with a Rankine cycle, which is only about 30% efficient, at best.

Fusion is far from viable. But we should keep trying.

Now for my on topic comment:

I think the irony of the entire situation is that the QE being conducted will squelch any recovery by causing higher interest rates and skyrocketing commodity prices. The lastest BEA report showed falling distillate demand and rising inventory. Oil went to $68/bbl. Imagine what it will go to once demand actually increases.

I would expect one couldn't project unemployment rate without taking into account some important industry dynamics. For instance, coming out of this recession I doubt the domestic auto industry will be a big help. Or, with the real estate industry still working off excess inventory, and shadow inventory lurking, I doubt if the residential construction industry will contribute heavily to employment figures. Nor should we expect to see the financial sector employment rebound as quickly as past recessions. Nor, if the change in spending habits (e.g. savings, use of credit) is more than transient we will probably see the retail sector slow to rebound. But, on the positive side, with states awash in stimulus money, there will be signficant hiring on infrastructure projects (e.g. construction, durable capital goods, commodities). And, there are new industries, such as alternative energy, which show some hope for significant employment in the long run. As most real-world phenomena, it is a complex dynamic. If I had to call it, I would say CalculatedRisk is conservative and we will see unemployment continue to rise (and or plateau) for at least two years.

Found this EIA site with data - couldnt make much of a conclusion from it though... The production figures are from refineries, which are shut down for repair and maintenance, designed to run at a certain pace, etc... output goes into storage which can expand and contract... It would be cool if we could find out exactly how much diesel was sold through pump dispensers each week... I'll look around and see if that info is out there somewhere...

U.S. Weekly Supply Estimates

Ok.. This is about fusion

How do we know that the ivy leaguers are right? Controlled nuclear fission was also supposed to be impossible until Meitner and Hahn showed otherwise. Lisa Meitner might be the only woman physicist who truly outhought her male contemparies.

dr munch
They will say by gosh it is over only we don't knowed it. Strike up the band, Happy Days are Here Again.

sportsfan,

Thanks for the L.A. times link. Grim picture. Will CA or MI be voted the biggest loser? Both states have years of misery ahead.

C.Coinz,

I got a kick out of the statement below from the EDD.

Their numbers actually showed an increase in employment in April, hence the drop in the unemployment rate from 11.2% to 11.0%, but they blame the feds' 'national adjustment model,' i.e., either the infamous birth-death rate or perhaps just seasonal adjustment games:

The April 2009 estimation cycle produced decreases in unemployment and the unemployment rate, and an increase in employment that ran counter to prevailing trend. Past briefing reports have observed that unusually large or counter-to-trend changes in California's monthly employment and unemployment estimates often are attributable to national adjustments which require that the sum of all states' estimates equal the national estimate. National adjustments had a strong influence on California's April estimates. In the absence of these adjustments, California civilian unemployment would have shown a slight increase, civilian employment would have shown a small-to-moderate decrease, and the rate would have been unchanged.

In sum, the national adjustment process made the April employment and unemployment estimates look better than they otherwise would have been.

Gotta keep the phony numbers flowing so everyone stays positive and smiley-faced about the future.

Forgot to add the link:

California LaborMarketInfo, Data Library

NBER will announce a recession end because they have a mechanical and increasingly inaccurate system
RobotoWorld, USA

On NIF: The issue with the NIF is that by the time it came online it was essentially already obsolete with respect to generating controlled nuclear fusion. While NIF was being built, scientists came up with a different concept to generate nuclear fusion using laser inertial confinement -- by employing a method called "fast ignition" which is theorized to be many, many times more efficient than the method NIF uses. The Europeans are proposing to build an experiment called HiPER (HiPER) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to try out this new concpet. NIF will still be useful for things like nuclear stewardship but as far as controlled fusion is concerned, the fast ignition method seems much more promising.

As for the economy: we're in for an L shaped recovery. There are no bubbles left to be blown with the ratio of total debt to GDP having reached a point where it simply can go no higher. Forget about lenders being worried about their return of interest, they now can't even rely on return of principal. With economic growth over the past decade being fueled mostly by debt tied to inflated asset prices (rather than "organic" productivity growth), GDP needs to be adjusted to a reasonable, sustainable level in the long term. Government needs to stop the nonsense and prepare folks for this eventuality instead of keeping the treasury and fed on a futile quest for another bubble to blow to get us out of this mess. The only way out is for people and government to start living within their means. It's as simple as that.

Fusion is like the horizon. It is an imaginary line that recedes as you approach. The problem with the National Ignition facility is twofold...

Good points Nuke. I'll add that the goal of the ignition facility is NOT to establish fusion as an energy source. It was principally funded as a way to study fusion as occurs in hydrogen bombs, without need to set off bombs. The scientists are principally motivated by understanding fusion in stars or as a fundamental process, but funding was motivated by weapons research.

I don’t think what is going on right now is just a recession. I think there is also an economic adjustment taking place. By that I mean an adjustment because of the globalization of the world economies. We are witnessing the rise of the middle class in China and India and the fall of the middle class in America. It has been masked by the credit explosion over the last 15 years but is definitely starting to surface. The GM and Chrysler Bankruptcies are prime examples. No matter how you slice it the wages here and abroad are going to have to be more closely correlated. IBM and other Tech companies will keep shipping jobs to India until we have an American IT workforce that can compete e.g., lower wages.

An adjustment is certainly happening, but no one will be much the wiser from reading anal ysts focusing on equities. Here's a good example, silliness from Glodmans, a hint a common sense from RBC, but - natch - no further quotes or digging from the journalist. Would it have been so hard really to call some cap markets sources and talk CD spreads on sov debt? Track a prime export or two along production path to questionable final demand?

FT.com / Companies / Financial Services - Emerging market equities outperform west

/edit - for instance, cursory glance at Russian pol/ec risk might turn up more like this:
FT.com / Lex / Macroeconomics & markets - Russian bond defaults

C

--Here's a good example, silliness --

Yeah, an FT article made up to fill the column space.

Still its pretty much a no-brainier that if you have to allocate capital, there are better choices than the American markets.

or if you have capital to allocate

Unemployment insurance running out is a huge issue in many states. The link below shows a map and the current trust fund amounts left by state.

Is Your State’s Unemployment System in Danger? - ProPublica 

Nice inflation vs unemployment charts here : http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/category/cpi/

Recovery by increasing employment through an engineered period of high inflation. Easy as π!

Here's the link to Doonsbury:
Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose

fat tale on Mean Time Between comment calls Suweeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Zow, shadow, just Zow.

I wonder what the military are doing in the lands of biology and chemistry.

The burnt out Cities being razed to be rebuilt, low class scum euthanized, companies being nationalized and shipped back to America, cutting off food to Asia. Efficiency restored, human toll vast.

The funny thing about the bankers, they would be one of the first euthanized and Wall Street liquidated. They are only as powerfull as the people they can con.

Amid Summers Nightmarish American Dream

-- The burnt out Cities being razed to be rebuilt,... --

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

What is work? The job I complete to make a wage and provide the necessary ingredients for survival? The effort I put into being a good partner and parent? The time I spend writing and thinking? If you paid me for the work I enjoy doing it would not include what I do for money. I spend a very large portion of the only real riches I own, my time, expending effort to gain someone else more wealth. What if I could wake up everyday and contribute the sweat of my brow to enriching someone else's life in a meaningful manner?

The US is a profoundly unhappy place. Why is that? Comparing the US to the happiest country in the world, Denmark, is a good start. Redefining life back to a community support viewpoint instead of personal enrichment through material acquisition and a deadening of the spirit.

Sorry for the OT. It's Sunday and I am having an existential moment.

And The Happiest Place On Earth Is... - 60 Minutes - CBS News

World's Happiest Places: Canada Made It, U.S. Didn't - ABC News

In Depth: World's Happiest Places -
Forbes.com

Summers Provides Quantitive Remuneration to the 19 Legions...

Hail Caesar!

Drudge has an interesting alert on front page:
NYT MONDAY: TENSIONS GRIP OBAMA ECONOMIC TEAM... DEVELOPING...

Re: Supreme Court and Chrysler BK
Don't they pretty much have to take the case? If they don't what the hell has happened to government... doesn't the Supreme Court have the prerogative to take the case at least?

If they take the case I'm sure they will punt on it... but this is just about as huge of a legal issue as you can get.

I am only lost&confused, however,:

I have never seen so many wallow in their own other peoples' misery, whether the misery is current or some time in the future.

You all bitch and complain about everything is going to H%LL, well get of your ass and do something...A lot of you rocket scientists should do something, if you think you are smarter than govt officials or Joe6Pack... Get off the bleachers and back into the game!

Quit bitching and complaining and get involved...

So much for what I think!

there are no Tensions gripping Obamanation.....

set an energy policy forward and cut loose the stimulata....reign dollars.

----from another comrade: "we were taking the x-ray film and getting it into the desert to process for the silver, my wifes mom said sell when the Hunt brothers had the corner, but we were too busy getting the film..."

-Lessons in life.

do you posses a unique selling opportunity?

Ok…my question is how do we have inflation if there is no wage inflation, doesn’t all that money just sit in banks if no one is out spending it?

"TENSIONS GRIP OBAMA ECONOMIC TEAM... DEVELOPING"

Obama: Man, these bailouts are crap. I mean, they suck. Just let them fail, we could use that debt to help people through the crisis to advert mass starvation and have are infrastructure rebuilt for when the next period of growth begins again.

Summers: Wah!! Stop it mutt, never talk like that in front of Larry Summers again

Geithner(geez is Larry a blowhard)...........

Obama: Don't talk down to me.....

Summers: I am the rep for Wall Stree mutt, what they want mutt does. Deal with that.

Obama: Man, my conscious is starting to bother me, I know I wanted the power, but I can't be like Bush or Clinton, I gotta do something right for the country

Summers: Your "doing right for the country" is not "acceptable". We will kill your auto revival hopes dead in the water for your little great lakes workers. What Wall Street wants, Wall Street gets. The Kennedy's thought they could run around us and control the situation "for the country"...........we corrected them. We would make sure you live the rest of your life in self-hatred and misery. Do you understand mutt?

Obama: I follow sir.

Geithner: Larry, mercy

Summers: shutup, who do you think is your powerslave?

Geithner: yes master

test

Holy dueling unemployment charts Batman!

Ritholtz Roundup of Employment Charts reprise: Roundup of Employment Charts | The Big Picture

Early 60s, there was quite an arbitrage trade going on... Until Treasury cut it off, you could cash in silver certificates for Morgan dollars that sold for $5 each as numismatic coins.

With controlled fusion, energy would probably be too cheap to bother metering.

Dow Jonestown cocktale:

Louis XVI Brandy laced with imaginary earnings

(from wiki)

Although Louis was beloved at first, his indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to eventually view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime

Sound like anybody we know?

Talked to a west coast coin dealer, located just south of Portland) on Friday (in biz for 20 years), when I sold him a small hoard of gold fractional coins and silver dollars (all proof coins) that I had purchased in the late 60's from the US mint - and found cleaning out a walk-in closet. He said was busy as a bee buying gold/silver coins from those taking profits from the runup. He said the purchase market for gold/sterling coins was fantastic - so there are more buyers than sellers by a big margin.

I wish I could believe that near-in inflation was nearly upon us, but other than the Fed printing money to inflate our debt away, I can't find any golden eggs about to be laid by the US economy that will stop the fall of econ. activity.

TENSION GRIP OBAMA ECONOMIC TEAM...

Makes sense after the Lewis & Cohan piece in the Times. Obama likes to talk about how trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is insanity. Hope he applies the same logic to his economic team. His second term is on the line.

U.S. printing money in a vacuum.
Companies cutting jobs
People buying pasta instead of steak
Where is the inflation?

I don't see how Obama changing his fin. team would change anything now. The banks are back in control after Paulson's TARP bailout and Timmy's alphabet soup. The story line has been written and the play will proceed with or without a cast change.

BTW: Whole Foods price today for ribeye steaks: $22.00/pound.

Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address

YouTube -

Jim,

are you kidding about the ribeye price? just picked some up for 6.97 lb...Whole foods must be heavy into green shoots!

After years of a costly war on oh so many fronts, imagine the Exchequer of the Treasury having to inform the PM that England was indeed not only broke, but borrowing to beat the band...

in 1917

hmmm. The whole concept of Whole Foods seems inflationary to me.

Brown flushed.

Koop....ya seeing the double's go away?

Bank Failure...What you say makes some sense to me. Investors chasing worthless stock with worthless dollars.
But in the so-called real economy...people looking for deals on steak.

Hey Juvie, you inspired me to order a copy of Juvenal from the bookstore. Of course they didn't have it in stock.

Prev. Threads:

Basel: by the way your post about NYC paying $90/night for an upscale housing shelter illustrates one of my critiques of Judge Gonzalez's reasoning in re Chrysler: the deep pocket Gov't, with no personal skin in the game, will overpay for many things, squeezing out other angry players.

liz,

Thanks, I get an antoninianus commish on every purchase. I know you'll enjoy it~

I think I saw this idea on a previous thread:

Why not use tax data to calculate employment numbers. We know, roughly, how much the average job brings in in payroll taxes every month. Divide that number by actual receipts and viola, a rough guess of employment. Better than mailing out surveys, tabulating the results, then adding 220,000 for good measure.

Yu is Ok who Hu with respect to the Hu-ligans of Futbal.

hahahahahahah, Juvie.

Pigged!!

SUEWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

"I would expect one couldn't project unemployment rate without taking into account some important industry dynamics. For instance, coming out of this recession I doubt the domestic auto industry will be a big help. Or, with the real estate industry still working off excess inventory, and shadow inventory lurking, I doubt if the residential construction industry will contribute heavily to employment figures. Nor should we expect to see the financial sector employment rebound as quickly as past recessions. Nor, if the change in spending habits (e.g. savings, use of credit) is more than transient we will probably see the retail sector slow to rebound. But, on the positive side, with states awash in stimulus money, there will be signficant hiring on infrastructure projects (e.g. construction, durable capital goods, commodities). And, there are new industries, such as alternative energy, which show some hope for significant employment in the long run. As most real-world phenomena, it is a complex dynamic. If I had to call it, I would say CalculatedRisk is conservative and we will see unemployment continue to rise (and or plateau) for at least two years."

fsleo: an excellent summary. Put another way, only government, or government-subsidized or -related jobs promise any near-term growth. So in a sense the growth potential of the U.S. is indirectly dependent on the willingness of the Chinese Government to continue buying and holding Treasuries. The Obama Administration is in a sense anticipating the Chinese backing away from Treasuries by concocting various tax increase schemes in order to goose federal revenues. However, these taxes, such as "cap and trade," will at the same time retard private-sector economic recovery.

Ineresting to note that Friday's "good" jobs report was worse than any single month in any of the last 3 recessions (well there were 2 in the 81 downtun that might have beat it, hard to tell on the chart. but close. Also the people who are out of wrk today have been pounding the pavement a lot longer than in past downturns. Its not just the number of unemployed, it is how long they habe been out of work.