Wait a minute. I thought the surge was working.

I made history! - sort of...

I'll say. The shortest "first" post ever. A record that will never be broken

no

CR,

Typo, I don't think 2,636,000 jobs were lost in September. That would really be a circuit breaker release.

I'm watching Bill Gross on the financial propaganda network (CNBC).

He's finally seeing the light. Too much debt + venal bankers = deflation. No recovery anytime soon. Japan at best.

somebody want to run defrag on that graph so we can finally get all those blue bars in one, aesthetically pleasing place on the graph?

I've got CA at 14-15 peak in my projections.

We'll be lucky to eek out a lost generation like Japan at this point. It wasn't necessary but at every turn our masters in the highly regulated financial markets and their equally powerful and meddlesome conspirators in our limited circumscribed powers federal government have made the worst of every possible decision.

CR........Was the employment rate AS USED in 1982-3 and as shown on the graph the same as is used now? Re. the changes during Clinton.

Investment advice: go long blue ink.

Angry Saver, who didn't know this would happen? POTUS even said he knew the correct choice was the Swedish model but it wasn't feasible in this country (wonder why marxist marxist marxist)

Obama Says No Way On The Swedish Model

The 824,000 revision is due to overstating the birth\death model. They revise it every 6 months in January and June. The birth\death model is the number of jobs, in net, that newly formed and newly folded small businesses are creating. I'm not surprised at the size of the revision in that the morons at BLS think that large businesses have been shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month while simultaneously small businesses have been adding jobs.

I would think that adding 824k to the number of unemployed should put the U3 rate very close to 10%.

What is U6 at?

The real battle will start soon, when AIG or a TBTF bank holding co runs out of cash.

Congress can no longer hide behind hoocoodanode, and people are paying attention.

BSR,

Well put.

From the looks of the red line in the second graph, more of that stimulus money should have been spent on some good second derivative.

Is going to be considered permanently unemployed or merely discouraged?

Seriously, we need to see a significant bump in hours worked before we can expect job losses to stabilize.

Almost forgot, rode down 5th Avenue last night.

/17% for U6 /

Some would place it at 20% already, but if official numbers place it at 20% that's my fish flopping on the shore moment to run for the hills.

I have spoken to a small sample of individuals who are articulating their desire to hedge against a US collapse via emigration. There is a range regarding the definition of collapse, say from madmax to simply a country in steady decline where individual hard work will be rewarded with a lollilop sticker and a whopping tax bill along with declining services.

There will be brain-drain. Intellectual capital for a variety of reasons is diminishing as well and this is a very negative feedback loop.

more jobs could be created if we had the olympics every year...

RD,

As I understand it, works 1099 and is therefore uncounted, however is entirely on the SES payscale.

Folks, let me the first............if it feels, looks, smells, and tastes like a Depression.....guess what - it IS a Depression.

Even BB has concerns now?........

"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke yesterday said the expansion may not be strong enough to “substantially” bring down unemployment, indicating the central bank will be slow to drain the trillions of dollars it’s pumped into the economy."

U.S. Economy: September Job Losses Exceed Forecast (Update3) - Bloomberg.com

Number of "New Entrants" that are unemployed jumped 15% SA in the past two months. A lot of college grads will be waiting a long time for work. Talked to a new grad on the plane the other day who told me only 20% of his graduating class had work (although obviously some had gone on to further schooling).

The household survery keeps showing that the work force is shrinking. That's bad news for asset values. Seriously. Absent the Fed, the stock market (S&P 500) is below 500 and house prices would be down another 25% and still falling.

Can you believe we left Bernanke, Summers, Geithner and all the existing bank (mis)managers in place? How can we expect a recovery when these venal idiots are covering up their past mistakes and looking out for their own interests. And CONtrary to what Bernanke says, the interests of Wall St. are counter to the interests of Main St.

This is NOT capitalism!

Good morning everyone. Nice bit of cold water thrown out this morning. In reference to Kermit, I heard a rumor that Elmo was seen talking to some shady characters and the words frog and cement shoes were overheard. If I was Kermit, I be scared.

In a rush so took a taxi. The driver said, "but they say on the news...'
But he looked troubled when I told him I'd lived here all my life.

Mike in Long Island, Rob Dawg,

Wars are a much quicker and easier way to stimulate an eCONomy.

I pity the average Afghan.

If the economy was a PC it would need to be rebooted into Safe Mode so the bad drivers could be found and eliminated, yet maintain some functionality.

yeah, but the problem may be the OS itself, especially if it's a PC...

The Birth/Death adjustment was an addition of 34K jobs ( Fake Jobs  - go past the 2008 figures for the 2009 ones ) - not so much fantasy in this months figures, IMO

-skk

I see that the U6 figure has already been reported upstream. That's good to see.

Basel Too,

Can't do anything about the American OS at this point. Not without a lot of real blood. We need to patch, identify, and delete at this point.

nova wrote:

If the economy was a PC it would need to be rebooted into Safe Mode so the bad drivers could be found and eliminated, yet maintain some functionality.

There are increasing rumors of a massive SP scheduled for release Nov 2010 and a whole new OS in Nov 2012.

Mike in Long Island, Rob Dawg,

Wars are a much quicker and easier way to stimulate an eCONomy.

I pity the average Afghan.

How stimulative has the current Iraqistan venture been?

RD,

There are increasing rumors of a massive SP scheduled for release Nov 2010 and a whole new OS in Nov 2012

No, just a new box and new price tag. Same old OS.

I was thinking last night about whether there is a direct correlation between the erosion of infrastructure in a nation and the rise of separation anxiety regarding individual states. I am amazed at some of the bile being spit out lately regarding the old North/South and even some East Coast/West Coast arguments. Proves the country is under stress like we haven't seen in a while. It makes the idea of bubbles even more interesting...they wall paper over so much more than we realize.

Rob Dawg (homepage, profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Fri, 10/2/2009 - 9:07 am

Infrastructure doesn't generate jobs like it did in the first GD. Handing out shovels and sandwiches worked in the 30s but today it would be years before the environmental impact report for a single east-west TIE line could be ready for a 6 month public comment period. Even once these projects start one worker does 20 times the work that we saw in the 30s so jobs generation is far less immediate.

This can be seen by the Great Wall of Mexico. You have huge barrier lengths being put up with no environmental review or forward planning, and it's just a Hughes contract to put Chinese-mfg cameras on top of a bunch of pre-poured slabs. Big flip, you can ruin vast stretches of wilderness in no time, while generation no appreciable employment.

There's also a good point to be made that many of these kids of projects have reached a saturation point. Payout on the nth transcontinental railroad is not as high as payout on the 1st. There's a reason environmental impact and review is making these unprofitable, there really is just a limited use for yet another limited access connector; there is some stuff that can be done, esp with eliminating bottlenecks in electrical and broadband, but by and alrge, humans are very efficient at picking the low-hanging fruit and 60 years of civil engineers since WW2 have done their jobs.

As someone who lives in a place that's probably close to America's highest infra renewal cost per square mile due to deteriorating bridging spans of like age, the big need is what the state doesn't have -- money. It's not lack of productive capital or human capital or resources holding these projects back. Plowing vast sums into them would primarily generate debt load.

The tone is set for the next several months.

Thankfully, I no longer have CNBC in my office.

I'm sure they're harping on "noisy data series" or some other blather to try and deflect from the hideous numbers, though.

How stimulative has the current Iraqistan venture been?

Mike,

I'm pretty sure we're on the same page, so humor my rants. To clarify what I meant:

It was very stimulative for a while. A big CONtributor to the housing bubble as excess government spending fueled liquidity.

Of course stimulating the eCONomy for a short period is NOT the same as creating wealth. Unproductive debt leads to impoverishment. And we've got unproductive debt in spades.

No, that was BR, not RD. =) We can be distinguished by the fact that he likes the A-4 Skyhawk, while I like the Jaguar and Alfajet.

Perhaps Bernanke's legacy will be proving that no amount of money can buy you out of a credit collapse and debt deflation. Not his own money, of course.

BZ,

My apologies. I like the P-51 myself.

RD,

Valid point regarding why infrastructure spending cannot have an immediate impact, although I'd fight the line that the environmental studies themselves are unnecessary. Necessary but retardent. Intelligent growth requires push/pull between impacts consequences and public good. Nothing wrong with that.

But another note here is that the fed cannot make it so people stay in their homes, and in the same breath expect people to show up to various infrastructure projects geographically removed from their domicile. Mobility and homeownership have a relationship.

Frankly, if we get to the hoards of landless, ownerless citizens who are so desperate as to locate away from family to hold that shovel, mix that cement, we are in a world of hurt. In the absence of a large number of the citizenry hedged in a decline by sitting on agricultural land, I see no precedent for curing civil unrest outside of traditional historical venues--mass mobilized warfare, prisons/workcamps, genocide, or failed state (you may select 'all of the above'). Infrstructure projects using highly mechanized and automated devices (think about how freeway blacktop is poured) will not suck up enough labor. Second, the nature of that labor, while productive to infrastructure itself does nothing to stimulate a rich economy that can make use of the infrastructure. Having good infrastructure won't create a better microchip, a novel chemical compound, a more efficient widget...whatever. In some ways, going too heavy on the shovel-ready projects is another misallocation, not that shovels are unnecessary and infrastructure not important. What is disturbing to me is not that simply large number of the construction sector has been cut-down. That sector can be reallocated with shovels. It's the gross loss of high-intellectual value jobs, engineers, designers, R&D specialists that are being rapidly diminished. Survival, 3 square meals and a place to put your head at night are necessary to survival, but then we're Haiti.

Education, already piss-poor will continue to turn out a large pool of shovel-educated citizens, and the American Dream will involve becoming the Foreman.

grrrr.

oooh. CIT is up 10%

AIG getting smacked around. Who would own that dog...

Here's a sure sign of the coming economic armageddon... I am drinking instant coffee this morning.

Japan--we can never have what Japan has/had. They were exporters into bubble economies the last 10 years--we're importers in a depressed world. Either the world rebubbles us--with or without our consent, or, everyone relives the Great Depression.

nodhannum (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Fri, 10/2/2009 - 9:37 am

BH, the brain drain has already started. I have three folks that I know who have bought property in Chile and now have Chilean green cards. I have prepared the ways already here as I am married to an asian. As my lovely wife likes to tell me...the smart rabbit has "three holes".

Don't expect to come back or maintain ownership of any property you leave here.

KC, wonder why we can't go that way. After being in Sweden a number of times when I was a bachelor, I found that I loved swedish models.

blackhat wrote:

I have spoken to a small sample of individuals who are articulating their desire to hedge against a US collapse via emigration.

Ireland's salvation? Please bring cash.

ughh, watching CNBC. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis doesn't seem to be up to task...

Unemployment: Stress Tests, Unemployed over 26 Weeks, Diffusion Index

vonbek777
but,but,but i always drink instant coffee!

I have a book on my shelf that becomes more interesting by the day.

Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America
Mark Ehrman
Published: 2006

America! Love it or leave it!

Ireland has a program where second generation descendants can get citizenship. My grandmother and grandfather both came over, so I started to investigate it. Only to discover both of my brothers had already completed the process.

I think a lot of people are taking note of where their nearest exit is.

"It's the gross loss of high-intellectual value jobs, engineers, designers, R&D specialists that are being rapidly diminished"

Most kids couldn't add a set of primary numbers with both hands and feet.......and you thought the dumbing down of America's kids was just some right-wing-nut propaganda pamphlet. Lets face it - the level of knowledge taught to a child coming out of most public schools is abysmal. Parents are as much to blame as the schools and lets also thank the Department of Education, another successful FedGov agency, the NEA (or as is previously known: the National Teachers' Association) with 3.2 million dues paying members, who have worked tirelessly to further their stated goals: "to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world."

I have often thought that due to the failure of our public school system, it ought to be abolished. Lets just call it what it REALLY is: Day-Care. Take the kids out of school and teach them how to use a shovel - that's all they'll have to learn when they finally realize there are NO JOBS during this, our 20-year "jobless recovery".

kidbuck wrote:

If a government cold intelligently direct resources Cuba and Zimbabwe would both be paradise on earth.

Bankers not looking to good at it at this point either...