The SMIRK

[Nightshade]

Awesome mash-up of the debate on Wednesday:

[callmeslick]

awesome!

tell it to your fictitious Mexican uncle, and spare us.

[Nightshade]

awesome!

tell it to your fictitious Mexican uncle, and spare us.

Heh. I'll tell him you don't think he exists.

[woodchip]

Awww, comrade Slicks smartest president we've ever had couldn't handle someone lecturing him about his failed policies.

[callmeslick]

yup, failed so bad that unemployment after the Bush/GOP recession is finally under 8%. As promised. Tough to debate a guy with no specifics and a who is spouting lie after lie, as Romney was. Not to worry, the new employment and industrial output numbers will put that debate(which I admitted was lackluster for Obama) into the rear-view real fast.
An aside, it is a wonderful time for investors. I just moved around a smallish chunk of change last Friday, and have made 2K this week in 4 days! w00t, no wonder most old-money investors love Obama! He has delivered as well or better than could have been expected from that trainwreck the GOP spent 15 years getting us into.

[callmeslick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cCZFUj8IlM

"I know my Uncle, he's as honest as me......"

[CUDA]

yup, failed so bad that unemployment after the Bush/GOP recession is finally under 8%. As promised. .

How convenient right before an election

The numbers, however, are perplexing to CNBC, which notes that there are some oddities:

The report presented a slew of contradictory data points, with the total employment level soaring despite the low net number.

The falling jobless rate had been a function as much of the continued shrinking in the labor force as it was an increase in new positions.

But the government said the total number of jobs employed surged by 873,000, the highest one-month jump in 29 years. The total of unemployed people tumbled by 456,000.

The labor force participation rate, which reflects those working as well as looking for work, edged higher to 63.6 percent but remained around 30-year lows. The total labor force grew by 418,000, possibly accounting for the relatively modest net level of job growth.

Economists were expecting 113,000 more jobs and the rate to rise to 8.2 percent. Last month saw 142,000 new jobs as the rate dropped from 8.3 percent in July.

not to mention that the administration is requesting that defense contractors violate federal law and not send out law off notices 60 days before the impending lay-offs which coincidentally is a couple of days before the election. Imagine that

[callmeslick]

CUDA, why stretch the truth.? All the admin did was ask the employers to hold off on the notices, AND THE LAYOFFS, until after a deal is struck with Congress, which will more likely happen after the election. Nothing illegal suggested, who sells you this snakeoil?

from a Washington Times(not a liberal rag, agreed?) article:
Lockheed Martin's decision not to send them out comes after reassurances from the Office of Management and Budget that the Pentagon didn't plan on killing any contracts on Jan. 2,


....thus, no need yet for WARN act notification. Simple?

[CUDA]

CUDA, why stretch the truth.? All the admin did was ask the employers to hold off on the notices, AND THE LAYOFFS, until after a deal is struck with Congress, which will more likely happen after the election. Nothing illegal suggested, who sells you this snakeoil?

from a Washington Times(not a liberal rag, agreed?) article:
Lockheed Martin's decision not to send them out comes after reassurances from the Office of Management and Budget that the Pentagon didn't plan on killing any contracts on Jan. 2,


....thus, no need yet for WARN act notification. Simple?

riddle me this Batman. IF there is no chance that there will be layoffs then why is the Labor department offering to cover any legal fees that could be incurred by Lockheed Martin IF the layoffs come.

The guidance issued Friday told contractors that if the automatic cuts happen and contractors lay off employees the government will cover certain liability and litigation costs in the event the contractor is later sued because it hadn’t provided adequate legal warning to its employees, but only if the contractor abides by the administration’s notice and refrains from warning employees now.

HRM that's stinks badly of a political decision.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House today — one with political overtones — and announced it will not issue layoff notices to thousands of employees just days before the November presidential election.

Lockheed, one of the biggest employers in the key battleground state of Virginia, previously warned it would have to issue notices to employees, required by law, due to looming defense cuts set to begin to take effect after Jan. 2 because of the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the so-called Super-committee, which was created to find a way to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/20 ... f-notices/

[Tunnelcat]

Obama may have been smirking, but Romney was sweating, a la Nixon. So was that a handkerchief for all that sweat or a cheat sheet he sneaked into the debate?



Romney was also lying through his teeth the whole time and Obama never countered him either.

Even though Romney steered clear of or was saved from any comments about China, he made another comment that doesn't seem to have gotten on people's radar....yet. He wants to increase trade with Latin America to help out our economy. Well, doesn't he really mean he wants to offshore more of our jobs to Latin America? I mean, China's so corrupt now, all the corporations and investors are just itching to find some other country with cheap labor.

[Nightshade]

The jobs numbers sound a bit too good to be true:

"Sept. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent due to an extraordinary – but implausible – estimate of 873,000 #jobs in household survey,” said Holtz-Eakin on Twitter.

“The report presented a slew of contradictory data points, with the total employment level soaring despite the low net number,” said CNBC's Jeff Cox.

The Washington Post's Neil Irwin adds, "Weird that payrolls are exactly on forecast but household survey is far better."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/job ... 53731.html

[Tunnelcat]

Well, in my opinion, the Feds are hiding the true inflation numbers, so why not manipulate the jobs numbers?

[CUDA]

Romney was also lying through his teeth the whole time and Obama never countered him either.

please stop spouting the Democratic talking points. that's the new Democratic mantra. Obama get's his ass handed to him in the debate and looks weak and unprepared, and the Democrats only rebuttal to that fact is that Romney is now a Liar

prove he was lying through his teeth with a source that is unbiased. fact check says Obama told more false hoods than Romney did

[CUDA]

Well, in my opinion, the Feds are hiding the true inflation numbers, so why not manipulate the jobs numbers?

This is getting to be a habit

I think TC is actually a conservative in training

[Heretic]

"I'm a politician, and as a politician I have the prerogative to lie whenever I want."

As all politicians do.

[CUDA]

"I'm a politician, and as a politician I have the prerogative to lie whenever I want."

As all politicians do.

agreed. but the Democrats should start looking in the mirror before they start accusing the Republicans of lying

[Tunnelcat]

Romney was also lying through his teeth the whole time and Obama never countered him either.

please stop spouting the Democratic talking points. that's the new Democratic mantra. Obama get's his ass handed to him in the debate and looks weak and unprepared, and the Democrats only rebuttal to that fact is that Romney is now a Liar

prove he was lying through his teeth with a source that is unbiased. fact check says Obama told more false hoods than Romney did

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-1 ... lity-check

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... s-debunked

And if all he does is cut little subsidies like PBS, Planned Parenthood, etc., even the dreaded Obamacare, without raising taxes, he wouldn't even come close to bringing down the debt, especially if he gives more money to the defense department like he wants (and they've claimed they don't need). He WILL have to cut something BIGGER, like Medicare and Social Security. Look out for all those under 55.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3658

He's also assuming that the economic growth he will magically create will pay for what he wants, especially since he and his ilk were responsible for all our jobs going offshore in the first place. Fuzzy arithmetic indeed.

This is getting to be a habit

I think TC is actually a conservative in training

Well, I do own a bunch of TIPS, so I keep track of the CPI and what goes out of my pocketbook. More is going out of my pocketbook than the CPI numbers suggest. So someone is hiding something.

[callmeslick]

speaking of number manipulation, it was a hoot watching Jack Welch backpedal at about 250 mph from his suggestion that Obamas admin had doctored the employment numbers.

[Spidey]

Why would you need to manipulate unemployment numbers, when the people who have stopped looking for work, are multiplying at an alarming rate?

[Top Gun]

Why would you need to manipulate unemployment numbers, when the people who have stopped looking for work, are multiplying at an alarming rate?

Sauce?

[callmeslick]

Why would you need to manipulate unemployment numbers, when the people who have stopped looking for work, are multiplying at an alarming rate?

proof of this? Romney lied about it the other night, so feel free to set the record straight.

[Spidey]

Honest to god…you can’t find those numbers yourself.

[Top Gun]

You make the claim, you provide the data. That's how this game works.

[Tunnelcat]

The only story I found about employment numbers being doctored came from Jack Welch.

http://newyork.newsday.com/business/jac ... -1.4079284

Myself, I wouldn't believe anything that Jack Welch says. It's kinda like believing everything that Bill Clinton says.

[Spidey]

Fair enough...

So what sites do you trust?

Because “that’s” the game I refuse to play.

[Tunnelcat]

That's the problem, isn't it? We can all find some site or another to bolster our arguments, but how do we know what is "fact"? If there are any facts in politics, I'm not aware of any because both sides like to bury their sordid histories and actions as deep as possible.

[Spidey]

I get most of what I know on this subject from The News Hour, and The Nightly Business Report.

[callmeslick]

Honest to god…you can’t find those numbers yourself.

no, I can find numbers, but they indicate that the long-term unemployed(which includes those dropping out) has been flat at around 2.4 million for
the length of the downturn, holding pretty steady.

[woodchip]

And part time jobs are at 8.1 million. Convenient that part time work counts as much as full time. Also I have to wonder, if it takes 300k jobs a month just to keep even with population growth AND based on claim of Obama that he created 4 million jobs, isn't there a real net loss of 9 million jobs over a span of 45 months?

[callmeslick]

no, check your math, Woody.
Facts of the matter, though, have nothing whatsoever to do with Obama, Romney, et al, at least in the present tense. Our economy has become, over a 30 year period, fundamentally flawed. We are too addicted to cheap household goods, electronics and clothing made offshore. Computerization has led to a massive leap in productivity. We compete in a global marketplace, and have stopped innovating cutting edge technologies that turn into new industries at the rate we were. Unless the actual fundamentals of the direction and nature of the US consumption and production economies are radically altered(which will likely only happen with massive governmental infusion of resources, private investors won't fund it), you all can figure to look back on 8% unemployment as a 'best case' scenario. Period. Do I think one of the two Presidential candidates gets that fact, and actually cares about it?
Yep. Do I think the other one gets it, but doesn't worry because his class will do just fine? Yep, again.

[woodchip]

Math check...45 months x 300,000 = 13.5 million minus Obama's 4 million = 9.5 million lost. Seems pretty straight forward unless you got a better type math.

[callmeslick]

you are treating population growth as existing jobs. Your math is whacked. It does equate to the inherent pressure on the economy, although common sense indicates that less than 3.6 million new workers enter the economy every year.

[Spidey]

The numbers we all have been talking about are almost impossible to find or verify.

300 thousand is the number being bandied about to bring us back to full employment in x numbers of years.

Jobs needed to remain even are a damn hard number to calculate. (too many variables)

And JFTR I believe the numbers I was (therefore the people on PBS) referring to are the U4 thru U6 numbers. The guy was saying back in the spring, that “actual” unemployment numbers may be as high as 18 to 22 percent…and no I can’t verify those.

[callmeslick]

actually, the numbers are findable....difficult, but they are there. You have to slog though documents like this one:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/05/art2full.pdf

therein, you will find that the current US workforce over age 16 is about 160,000,000 and growing at a current rate of .8% per year,
and slowing down, to a projected rate of .6% annually by 2015(due to baby boomers leaving workforce, lower rate of immigration and reduction in birthrates). That would mean an expansion of around 2,050,000 people annually, or about 150,000 per month.

Also, to flesh out my issue with Woody's math: Let's take for example the little town in VA where I have one of my homes. The population is 850. Let's say 400 people make up the active workforce, and there are 370 available jobs. If 30 working age people move into town and 5 kids graduate from school, does that mean there are 35 jobs lost? Of course not, but it does mean you need to produce 33 jobs to keep the unemployment rate the same. Woody keeps saying that 9 million jobs have been lost, and that just isn't true.

Finally, to Spidey's final point: If one totals full unemployment, adds in underemployment and also folks eligible but not looking for work, the functional level is 22% or so, from the sources I value. This number has been rising, steadily, for over 15 years, accellerating from 2001 to the present. It reflects that hardcore, fundamental issue that I spoke of elsewhere with the US economy and is a function of outsourcing,efficiency growth, ever-increasing workforce, diminished skill levels and varies with short term economic trends, but the overall trend is a steady climb. This will prove, extrapolated out, to be terrible news for the average citizen who doesn't rely on investments and other capital gains for income. It is seldom addressed bluntly, in terms of what must be done, by any politician, because the average American would reject the medicine to cure this ill: 1)huge raise in revenue to government to 2) fund long-term investment in basic scientific and industrial research and infrastructure modernization, 3) increased protection of domestic production by forcing consumers to pay higher prices for common household goods, 4) overall lowered consumption of luxury goods by people who cannot afford them and 5) disincentivization of short term profit over long term growth, enforced via business and personal taxation codes.

[Spidey]

Good work, that’s pretty much the same number I came up with yesterday, after some 4 hours of “slogging”. (god, we should all be paid for this crap)

So applying those numbers…

The “official” U3 rate dropped .3 percent from Aug to Sep. (source Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The U3 official number is 14 million unemployed. (source Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The jobs number was 114,000 (source Bureau of Labor Statistics) 150,000 needed to remain even. (source slicks info)

Can the unemployment rate drop by .3%?

No…it can’t

Other months tell the same story, U3 remaining the same or falling with job numbers like June. (45,000) Jan & Feb should have given a drop…but not after that.

Explanation:

1. The polling of 60 thousand households is flawed. (possibility of not being able to reach the bulk of unemployed by landline?)
2. The job numbers are wrong.
3. There is a leak in the system (people leaving the market)

[Foil]

Nice! Actual research being done in E&C, good to see. Thanks for the summaries, guys.