About how hard it is to cover finance, economics politics these days for it is simply latest corruption, guaranteed no justice and move onto the next outrageous corruption agenda.
Ah yes, more of the same. This has been played out so many times it's 100% predictable. A job with the US Attorney's Office for SDNY leads to a job with a big law firm that then leads to SEC "Enforcement." What a farce.
See, don't be too aggressive fighting banking crime as a federal prosecutor then you can land a gig at a big law firm defending the very same banks. Maybe teach at Harvard on the side. Then, if you kiss their ass enough and use your connections to make sure they are never prosecuted, you can slip back into the government job "enforcing" no laws or become a federal judge. Then, switch right back to big law firms if you aren't a judge. . . and on. . . and on. Integrity? F Integrity. It's all about #1 and selling out the country and rule of law for wallet size. Let the games continue.
Notice how the feds never hire local or state prosecutors that have experience? Or how big law firms hire federal prosecutors most of the time? Check the cases the locals prosecute - they have far more skills and experience than the feds at all levels, from investigations to hearings, trials, and appeals from small time thefts to corruption, embezzlement, murders, robberies, drug trafficking, conspiracies, frauds, forgeries, organized crime/gangs, etc. No, it's because the feds are compromised completely. They only hire those who are compromised. It's not about fighting crime, it's about corruption and hiring fellow clowns that will go along with the BS circus without asking, "What the Hell are we doing and why is this deemed serving the public when it's clearly not?"
Whatever. Not sure how a terrorist attack that has foreign/immigration issues should speed up massive bills that weaken immigration controls, but hey, trying to think like morons only hurts my head. Anyway, I'm sure the terrorist attack will somehow increase budget requests by all alphabet agencies, even though it seems the feds' actions basically came down to using public videotapes, freezing frames, and then asking that the public figure out who the suspects were and tell the Feds who they were. In essence, the budgets could be cut to $0 and the crime would be solved by the public. If any law enforcement agency demands more $ as a result of this, it's time to vomit en masse. The public solved it, not the Feds. Not sure how much training or $ is needed to set up a tip line, but pretty sure it doesn't take thousands of Special Agents, months of "training" at Quantico, and tens of thousands of administrators and SESs and GS-15s to do it making six figures while working under 40 hours/week. Also doesn't take me being groped by TSA Agents on every single flight ever or my bags being searched at bus stations to stop.
Over the weekend, they claim one must act to pass this terrible bill due to the Boston Marathon terrorists. That is ridiculous. First, in the summary and as far as I have gotten in their lobbyist written 844 page disaster, this bill enables more potential terrorists getting into the country.
They are hell bent on passing this by claiming GOP lost not on their terrible, upside down super rich, corporate welfare agenda, trying to say black is white in economics, but because of the "Hispanic vote". They ignore how all of America knows GOP overall policies are an economic disaster for working America.
The claim is the "Hispanic vote" will be lost. I doubt U.S. citizens of Hispanic ethnicity are one issue voters, although corporate media pounds on the airwaves they should be. More Hispanics are economic voters and I sincerely doubt they want to be pushed out of their jobs further, receive lower wages further, anymore than any other American does.
Be aware, this is a lobbyist cheap labor hog fest, target technical workers #1. They are simply using "pathway to citizenship" tacked onto the cheap labor agenda in order to pass their global labor arbitrage agenda.
Also, in terms of overall labor supply, economics, two things which probably wouldn't hurt much for U.S. workers are legalization and giving people stuck on foreign guest worker Visas green cards (there is a backlog).
Now this would have to be done on a restrictive basis, but the reality is these workers are already here, already part of the current labor supply. In other words, changing their status, if restrictive and do not let the numbers swell, would not be a sudden influx to the labor supply and so the same terrible jobs crisis, status quo, wouldn't be as affected as the overall increases in imported workers that is in this bill.
That said, the opposite is true, if the labor supply was reduced by denying these people American jobs, that would force those jobs to be re-opened to American workers (unless of course the business can offshore outsource those jobs, but businesses have already offshore outsourced as many jobs as they could).
The seemingly bias against U.S. citizens these days for jobs makes me wonder how much innovation is going to waste. It's just disgusting as if Americans did not build up the entire tech sector in the first place, send a man to the moon and that is not because Americans are superior. they were supported, had stable careers, cheap education, opportunity to innovate. Nowadays Americans are being just labor arbitraged to the point assuredly that next "killer app" is sitting at the Starbucks making coffee instead of having a stable career in R&D STEM.
Just like Russia, when they collapsed and now Russia is a hotbed of hackers instead of the great Scientific society they were during USSR days, they were supported, think what you like about the Soviet Union itself.
Throwing away American talent, supporting U.S. citizens to create businesses, patent, build the next great technological shift is what these lobbyists and Congress are doing and one can bet that won't be scored into any "bill cost" by the CBO.
Alternatively one can take the three month sum for quarterly. Because it is a ratio, the "3" or average cancels each other out. (x/3 / y/3) = x/y
If you take just one month as a ratio to another month, then you must annualize it to the right power, in that case 12. So, you should get 5.15%, i.e. 5.2% annualized.
Annualized just means what is the change if the percentage change per quarter happened for an entire year?
So, the quarterly percent change is 286.6/283 -1 *100 = 1.27%
1.3% *4 = 5.2%
In other words, if the percent change per month or per quarter happened every quarter for that year, what would the annual growth be?
And with rounding the Fed is saying manufacturing output would then grow by 5.3% from October 2012 to October 2013 (Q4 to Q4) if the change between 2012 Q4 to Q1 2013 holds up at the same rate (which it won't).
The only weirdness here to me is the Fed reporting 5.3% annualized growth when I get 5.2%, but odds are that's rounding for they use spreadsheets, programs when running these figures with their own internal numbers and many significant digits of indexes that are not published.
Your excellent reporting on this serious issue and the resulting lack of jobs in the US for American citizens has been consistent and important. Sadly the power structure ignores the facts for their personal profit. We destroy our best and brightest on the alter of their greed. Watch this part of the "immigration" bill and the new horrible trade bill sail through Congress unobstructed.
On these issues President Obama is the wolf in sheep's clothing.
So, the traitors/criminals/asshats are collecting more bribes and destroying my country still? Damn, color me shocked. F'ing traitors, that's all they are.
In other news, IBM, a company I thought was based on computers, but apparently couldn't handle that, so it switched to consulting, then servers, then something or other, is getting even more clueless and decides that layoffs are the way to make profits. And JC Penney, a store, that, well, as a store, probably should keep retail space, is looking to unload real estate (not sure how that works for retail stores that actually need real estate, but I'm guessing it won't work out too well). I think JC Penney needs to hire Bain or McKinsey or Deloitte or KPMG to investigate whether or not a retailer should sell retail space. And after a few million in consulting fees, the consulting company can come up with the answer the CEO wants, whether or not it would make sense to anyone but the CEO and board (isn't that what big consultants do)?
So this is the USA in 2013. More people from overseas when American citizens can't find jobs, and corporate boardrooms that can't figure out what they do or sell looking to self-cannibalize and fire everyone in sight (outside the boardrooms of course) because this is what the "job creators" that can't create or sell or do anything themselves do when they need to seek immediate quarterly profits but haven't had an original thought themselves ever. But hey, never blame CEOs or boards or politicians. Job creators, baby, job creators. If they only received more tax subsidies, wrote more laws themselves, and received even bigger bonuses, all would be good! Corporate America 2013, it can't find its ass from its elbow, but damn it would make George Orwell scream in fear of its hate of privacy and average citizens. Now all those folks that warned IBM and JC Penney years ago about issues are surely unemployed and "overqualified" now. As far as politicians and HR and the MSM are concerned, they are dirt and unworthy of being called Americans. Oh, but the boardrooms and politicians, those geniuses are destroying companies and the country as we speak - congrats.
Annualized Formula (annualized is what it looks like if that quarterly change happened for the entire year).
(((x(t)/x(t-1)) ** (n_obs_per_yr)) - 1) * 100
To get Quarterly from Monthly is the average of the three months.
Q4 = 94.33
Q1 = 95.53
Q1.Q4 % change = 1.3%
Annualized, using the above formula, is 5.2%
((95.53/94.33)^4 - 1) * 100
^4 means raised to the power of 4 or "times itself 4 times"
x*x*x*x
The Fed uses more resolution on indexes so I imagine the 5.3% vs. 5.2% is just rounding error on the published indexes in the report.
I've chased down weird fed math many a time, and in their flow of funds, consumer credit they truncate instead of round but I can usually match their calculations so I'll assume this one is just more rounding error.
Gov. stats are tricky for they mix and muddle percentages, annualizations and so on.
the manufacturing index is at 95.7, up from 95.3 in December, yet the opening paragraph says "the index advanced at an annual rate of 5.3 percent in the first quarter"
Gold just crashed and burned but it really is unclear why and many are pointing to more market rigging to see a crash like that so fast. Gold is a commodity, but without that much utility.
Every headline is fodder for pumping the stock market (means nothing to Main Street, only TBTF playing with QE money). Bad economic news (e.g., unemployment, Euro Ponzi, etc.) = more QE and Fed intervention, thus, more free $ for banksters to inflate commodities and stocks with. And on the other hand, good news in jobs or other areas = good news to pump the stock market with. They can never lose.
It is by levels as initial claims has a side indicator of labor flows. You can only get UI if you're out of a job by no choice, i.e. layoff, firing.
Also, we have a larger population, even though the labor force has shrunk, we think that is because people have dropped out of the labor force due to no jobs to be had.
Bottom line 400k initial claims means very bad things are happening, as in jobs slaughter, 375k initial claims means layoffs are really still happening and there isn't much hiring.
350k initial claims means layoffs are not happening but there is little hiring. 325k initial claims means little layoffs and there is hiring going on.
Every week we see thousands of financial press headlines that are very often completely wrong, decoupled from the statistics or what it means and initial claims has to be the worse of the lot for this practice.
Traders go off of initial claims and why the ridiculous, misleading headline buzz.
1) Reuters earlier had a headline that said "Jobless data calms concerns on labor market" and basically said even though claims increased from last week, the increase wasn't as bad as it could have been, thus, things were good according to the article. Yup, things are bad, but since we're not all dead or in a nuclear war, hey, don't complain. Reuters didn't mention the labor participation rate or U-6 for obvious reasons.
2) Saw a study that said people that were between jobs or unemployed for any period of time would not get hired for jobs, but people in jobs but that had no relevant experience for another job would get hired for that job over a qualified unemployed person. Now how's that for American innovation!
People are only hired for jobs if they have a job, and people with skills or a desire to learn new things and help the USA are permanently locked out of their own country. Took some time off to learn new skills, took care of a dying relative, had cancer, or went back to school? Did your embezzling boss fire you because you wouldn't go along with theft or did he fire you because you caught him harassing employees? Did your factory close down due to the economy? Too bad, doomed to be homeless at any age. One doesn't need a jobs commission or laser-like focus or 5,000,000,0000 more visa openings to figure out what's wrong with this country and where it's headed.
Oh, history repeats itself time and time again. This game's been played out ad nauseum. Greece, Rome, China, Russia, Japan, the UK, the Middle East, and on, and on, and on. Specifics may change, but the plot's the same - a small elite ignore people with a clue and the game ends badly for the vast majority of people. And the small group of elite blame everyone but themselves. Let me go check the Hearst and Pulitzer papers to confirm this, sorry, I meant Bloomberg and Murdoch.
See, that's why the fools that were born into money or stepped on every living soul to steal and rape for their money hate an educated populace. That's why they bitch and rail again "liberal arts" (which, by the way, also include math, science, languages, and many other subjects). Because Thomas Jefferson's vision of an educated populace and a populace that didn't suffer tyrants would never tolerate the dolts we have now in business or politics. Those who read, ask questions, and don't think MSNBC and Fox and Bloomberg all have some sort of monopoly on information or knowledge are the key to DEMOCRACY and never tolerating the destruction of the USA.
Banksters destroying the middle class, "The Gilded Age," Hamilton and Carnegie and Rockefeller and Mellon and Ponzi, it's all been done. Fighting wars in Afghanistan that cost blood and treasure? It's been done by nation after nation. There are books in libraries that describe the very tactics and strategies to avoid. Russia? Check. India? Check. Britain? Check. Russia/Soviet Union again? Yup. Corporations running foreign policy? Gosh, sounds like the British East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. Military-industrial complex? It was such a threat we had a former General and President warning us about it in 1961 during his Farewell Address. France in North Africa? Hmmm, wasn't that only 40 years ago? Governments around the globe ignoring massive unemployment so that they can cater to their cronies and make them richer still? And that leads to wars?
History repeats itself because the folks in charge don't care and want drones that shut up and die.
The book is even better. That's what we need a modernization of The Grapes of Wrath for it is the same story in reality. The tech bust of 2000 alone was so underplayed, one literally could not rent a U-haul and the streets were lined with them like a wagon train, all going home to Mom & Dad busted.
Now we have third world cities all over while Wall Street cheers about home prices rising.
The scam is no one is ever responsible when it comes to facing a customer who's been wronged, or when law enforcement or someone else finally tries to hold someone in the corporation responsible, etc. It's always someone else's fault up the food chain or in some local office down the food chain, but damn if they don't know who exactly. "Well, I just file paperwork, I don't sign it." "Well, I sign it, but I don't mail it." "If I didn't sign these papers, my manager would yell at me, and his manager would yell at him." "The CEO isn't responsible, he answers to the board." "Well, we're responsible to the shareholders, and they are everyone." And so on. It's all crap.
Every single one of these people is responsible, they sure as Hell are responsible enough to collect $ on payday and bonuses and bribe Congress so that they can write their own laws and loot the Treasury and Fed, right?
If corporations are people too, then surely they can take responsibility like human beings. They can be jailed and fined and sent to maximum security prisons like humans without gobs of cash. They can be blamed for society's woes and screamed at for their sense of entitlement just like the people that are homeless and unemployed (although they never felt "entitled" and did nothing wrong). If they screw up, every person that gave an order or signed a paper or sent an email can be blamed for being an idiot or lazy.
Incorporation protects these criminals, but hey, if they want to be people too, by all means, everyone is responsible inside the corporate buildings then - enjoy! If the CEOs of JP Morgan or BOA want to name charities after themselves or make donations in their names (from corporate profits), then surely they like the spotlight and want to be held responsible for all they do, so by all means, they must be responsible because they want the credit and to be seen as the face of the banks.
I was booted out of my home in 2010. I had tried unsuccessfully over 20 times to send in the modification package. They(JP MOrgan Chase) kept losing it!! I sent 3 certified checks to JP Morgan Chase, which they cashed but could never find. Throughout this process of receiving letters I am told no JPMC does not list you as someone foreclosed on. I explain that they gave me 3 separate foreclosure dates, during bankruptcy proceedings. To this day April 2013 they are sending demand letters to the address foreclosed on telling me I have to prove valid homeowners policies. Funny, because the house was sold through the bank in 2010. But JPMC has no record of it? Really! We were all victimized once, now we are getting it again! Through this entire settlement process all information is cloaked in secrecy. We do not know where we fall in the categories unless we were told by JPMC the category we were going to fall. Because again, JPMC does not even have records they foreclosed, not even after losing my payments, records of my bankruptcy, etc. No one at all involved in this case knows anything nor can they tell anyone what is going on other than some checks were mailed if we received a post card we will someday get a check of unknown amount. This has been a horrifc run around! I have to wonder if no one knows who is getting what or when it will be paid out, are they just throwing darts at names. More frustration mounting on more frustration. Will it ever end?
Victimized not once but twice now!
You should see how funny everyone thinks it is when they try to cash their settlement checks.... No banks would cash them saying that there are insufficient funds on the account that the check is drawn. This ain't funny in the least!
About how hard it is to cover finance, economics politics these days for it is simply latest corruption, guaranteed no justice and move onto the next outrageous corruption agenda.
We are like witnesses to Rome, 100AD.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/new-leader-expected-for-s-e-c-enf...
Ah yes, more of the same. This has been played out so many times it's 100% predictable. A job with the US Attorney's Office for SDNY leads to a job with a big law firm that then leads to SEC "Enforcement." What a farce.
See, don't be too aggressive fighting banking crime as a federal prosecutor then you can land a gig at a big law firm defending the very same banks. Maybe teach at Harvard on the side. Then, if you kiss their ass enough and use your connections to make sure they are never prosecuted, you can slip back into the government job "enforcing" no laws or become a federal judge. Then, switch right back to big law firms if you aren't a judge. . . and on. . . and on. Integrity? F Integrity. It's all about #1 and selling out the country and rule of law for wallet size. Let the games continue.
Notice how the feds never hire local or state prosecutors that have experience? Or how big law firms hire federal prosecutors most of the time? Check the cases the locals prosecute - they have far more skills and experience than the feds at all levels, from investigations to hearings, trials, and appeals from small time thefts to corruption, embezzlement, murders, robberies, drug trafficking, conspiracies, frauds, forgeries, organized crime/gangs, etc. No, it's because the feds are compromised completely. They only hire those who are compromised. It's not about fighting crime, it's about corruption and hiring fellow clowns that will go along with the BS circus without asking, "What the Hell are we doing and why is this deemed serving the public when it's clearly not?"
Whatever. Not sure how a terrorist attack that has foreign/immigration issues should speed up massive bills that weaken immigration controls, but hey, trying to think like morons only hurts my head. Anyway, I'm sure the terrorist attack will somehow increase budget requests by all alphabet agencies, even though it seems the feds' actions basically came down to using public videotapes, freezing frames, and then asking that the public figure out who the suspects were and tell the Feds who they were. In essence, the budgets could be cut to $0 and the crime would be solved by the public. If any law enforcement agency demands more $ as a result of this, it's time to vomit en masse. The public solved it, not the Feds. Not sure how much training or $ is needed to set up a tip line, but pretty sure it doesn't take thousands of Special Agents, months of "training" at Quantico, and tens of thousands of administrators and SESs and GS-15s to do it making six figures while working under 40 hours/week. Also doesn't take me being groped by TSA Agents on every single flight ever or my bags being searched at bus stations to stop.
Over the weekend, they claim one must act to pass this terrible bill due to the Boston Marathon terrorists. That is ridiculous. First, in the summary and as far as I have gotten in their lobbyist written 844 page disaster, this bill enables more potential terrorists getting into the country.
They are hell bent on passing this by claiming GOP lost not on their terrible, upside down super rich, corporate welfare agenda, trying to say black is white in economics, but because of the "Hispanic vote". They ignore how all of America knows GOP overall policies are an economic disaster for working America.
The claim is the "Hispanic vote" will be lost. I doubt U.S. citizens of Hispanic ethnicity are one issue voters, although corporate media pounds on the airwaves they should be. More Hispanics are economic voters and I sincerely doubt they want to be pushed out of their jobs further, receive lower wages further, anymore than any other American does.
Be aware, this is a lobbyist cheap labor hog fest, target technical workers #1. They are simply using "pathway to citizenship" tacked onto the cheap labor agenda in order to pass their global labor arbitrage agenda.
Also, in terms of overall labor supply, economics, two things which probably wouldn't hurt much for U.S. workers are legalization and giving people stuck on foreign guest worker Visas green cards (there is a backlog).
Now this would have to be done on a restrictive basis, but the reality is these workers are already here, already part of the current labor supply. In other words, changing their status, if restrictive and do not let the numbers swell, would not be a sudden influx to the labor supply and so the same terrible jobs crisis, status quo, wouldn't be as affected as the overall increases in imported workers that is in this bill.
That said, the opposite is true, if the labor supply was reduced by denying these people American jobs, that would force those jobs to be re-opened to American workers (unless of course the business can offshore outsource those jobs, but businesses have already offshore outsourced as many jobs as they could).
The seemingly bias against U.S. citizens these days for jobs makes me wonder how much innovation is going to waste. It's just disgusting as if Americans did not build up the entire tech sector in the first place, send a man to the moon and that is not because Americans are superior. they were supported, had stable careers, cheap education, opportunity to innovate. Nowadays Americans are being just labor arbitraged to the point assuredly that next "killer app" is sitting at the Starbucks making coffee instead of having a stable career in R&D STEM.
Just like Russia, when they collapsed and now Russia is a hotbed of hackers instead of the great Scientific society they were during USSR days, they were supported, think what you like about the Soviet Union itself.
Throwing away American talent, supporting U.S. citizens to create businesses, patent, build the next great technological shift is what these lobbyists and Congress are doing and one can bet that won't be scored into any "bill cost" by the CBO.
Alternatively one can take the three month sum for quarterly. Because it is a ratio, the "3" or average cancels each other out. (x/3 / y/3) = x/y
If you take just one month as a ratio to another month, then you must annualize it to the right power, in that case 12. So, you should get 5.15%, i.e. 5.2% annualized.
Annualized just means what is the change if the percentage change per quarter happened for an entire year?
So, the quarterly percent change is 286.6/283 -1 *100 = 1.27%
1.3% *4 = 5.2%
In other words, if the percent change per month or per quarter happened every quarter for that year, what would the annual growth be?
And with rounding the Fed is saying manufacturing output would then grow by 5.3% from October 2012 to October 2013 (Q4 to Q4) if the change between 2012 Q4 to Q1 2013 holds up at the same rate (which it won't).
The only weirdness here to me is the Fed reporting 5.3% annualized growth when I get 5.2%, but odds are that's rounding for they use spreadsheets, programs when running these figures with their own internal numbers and many significant digits of indexes that are not published.
Your excellent reporting on this serious issue and the resulting lack of jobs in the US for American citizens has been consistent and important. Sadly the power structure ignores the facts for their personal profit. We destroy our best and brightest on the alter of their greed. Watch this part of the "immigration" bill and the new horrible trade bill sail through Congress unobstructed.
On these issues President Obama is the wolf in sheep's clothing.
"To get Quarterly from Monthly is the average of the three months."
i took growth from the end of the 4th quarter to the end of the 1st quarter to the 4th power and ended up with an annualized growth rate around 1.7%
i see your explanation of what the Fed did there but it still seems counterintuitive to me...
So, the traitors/criminals/asshats are collecting more bribes and destroying my country still? Damn, color me shocked. F'ing traitors, that's all they are.
In other news, IBM, a company I thought was based on computers, but apparently couldn't handle that, so it switched to consulting, then servers, then something or other, is getting even more clueless and decides that layoffs are the way to make profits. And JC Penney, a store, that, well, as a store, probably should keep retail space, is looking to unload real estate (not sure how that works for retail stores that actually need real estate, but I'm guessing it won't work out too well). I think JC Penney needs to hire Bain or McKinsey or Deloitte or KPMG to investigate whether or not a retailer should sell retail space. And after a few million in consulting fees, the consulting company can come up with the answer the CEO wants, whether or not it would make sense to anyone but the CEO and board (isn't that what big consultants do)?
So this is the USA in 2013. More people from overseas when American citizens can't find jobs, and corporate boardrooms that can't figure out what they do or sell looking to self-cannibalize and fire everyone in sight (outside the boardrooms of course) because this is what the "job creators" that can't create or sell or do anything themselves do when they need to seek immediate quarterly profits but haven't had an original thought themselves ever. But hey, never blame CEOs or boards or politicians. Job creators, baby, job creators. If they only received more tax subsidies, wrote more laws themselves, and received even bigger bonuses, all would be good! Corporate America 2013, it can't find its ass from its elbow, but damn it would make George Orwell scream in fear of its hate of privacy and average citizens. Now all those folks that warned IBM and JC Penney years ago about issues are surely unemployed and "overqualified" now. As far as politicians and HR and the MSM are concerned, they are dirt and unworthy of being called Americans. Oh, but the boardrooms and politicians, those geniuses are destroying companies and the country as we speak - congrats.
Manufacturing monthly index, in order
Q4 Q1
93.2 94.5 95.3 | 95.0 95.9 95.7
Percent Change formula:
((x(t)/x(t-1)) - 1) * 100
Annualized Formula (annualized is what it looks like if that quarterly change happened for the entire year).
(((x(t)/x(t-1)) ** (n_obs_per_yr)) - 1) * 100
To get Quarterly from Monthly is the average of the three months.
Q4 = 94.33
Q1 = 95.53
Q1.Q4 % change = 1.3%
Annualized, using the above formula, is 5.2%
((95.53/94.33)^4 - 1) * 100
^4 means raised to the power of 4 or "times itself 4 times"
x*x*x*x
The Fed uses more resolution on indexes so I imagine the 5.3% vs. 5.2% is just rounding error on the published indexes in the report.
I've chased down weird fed math many a time, and in their flow of funds, consumer credit they truncate instead of round but I can usually match their calculations so I'll assume this one is just more rounding error.
Gov. stats are tricky for they mix and muddle percentages, annualizations and so on.
the manufacturing index is at 95.7, up from 95.3 in December, yet the opening paragraph says "the index advanced at an annual rate of 5.3 percent in the first quarter"
that does not compute..
Gold just crashed and burned but it really is unclear why and many are pointing to more market rigging to see a crash like that so fast. Gold is a commodity, but without that much utility.
Every headline is fodder for pumping the stock market (means nothing to Main Street, only TBTF playing with QE money). Bad economic news (e.g., unemployment, Euro Ponzi, etc.) = more QE and Fed intervention, thus, more free $ for banksters to inflate commodities and stocks with. And on the other hand, good news in jobs or other areas = good news to pump the stock market with. They can never lose.
It is by levels as initial claims has a side indicator of labor flows. You can only get UI if you're out of a job by no choice, i.e. layoff, firing.
Also, we have a larger population, even though the labor force has shrunk, we think that is because people have dropped out of the labor force due to no jobs to be had.
Bottom line 400k initial claims means very bad things are happening, as in jobs slaughter, 375k initial claims means layoffs are really still happening and there isn't much hiring.
350k initial claims means layoffs are not happening but there is little hiring. 325k initial claims means little layoffs and there is hiring going on.
Every week we see thousands of financial press headlines that are very often completely wrong, decoupled from the statistics or what it means and initial claims has to be the worse of the lot for this practice.
Traders go off of initial claims and why the ridiculous, misleading headline buzz.
1) Reuters earlier had a headline that said "Jobless data calms concerns on labor market" and basically said even though claims increased from last week, the increase wasn't as bad as it could have been, thus, things were good according to the article. Yup, things are bad, but since we're not all dead or in a nuclear war, hey, don't complain. Reuters didn't mention the labor participation rate or U-6 for obvious reasons.
2) Saw a study that said people that were between jobs or unemployed for any period of time would not get hired for jobs, but people in jobs but that had no relevant experience for another job would get hired for that job over a qualified unemployed person. Now how's that for American innovation!
People are only hired for jobs if they have a job, and people with skills or a desire to learn new things and help the USA are permanently locked out of their own country. Took some time off to learn new skills, took care of a dying relative, had cancer, or went back to school? Did your embezzling boss fire you because you wouldn't go along with theft or did he fire you because you caught him harassing employees? Did your factory close down due to the economy? Too bad, doomed to be homeless at any age. One doesn't need a jobs commission or laser-like focus or 5,000,000,0000 more visa openings to figure out what's wrong with this country and where it's headed.
Oh, history repeats itself time and time again. This game's been played out ad nauseum. Greece, Rome, China, Russia, Japan, the UK, the Middle East, and on, and on, and on. Specifics may change, but the plot's the same - a small elite ignore people with a clue and the game ends badly for the vast majority of people. And the small group of elite blame everyone but themselves. Let me go check the Hearst and Pulitzer papers to confirm this, sorry, I meant Bloomberg and Murdoch.
See, that's why the fools that were born into money or stepped on every living soul to steal and rape for their money hate an educated populace. That's why they bitch and rail again "liberal arts" (which, by the way, also include math, science, languages, and many other subjects). Because Thomas Jefferson's vision of an educated populace and a populace that didn't suffer tyrants would never tolerate the dolts we have now in business or politics. Those who read, ask questions, and don't think MSNBC and Fox and Bloomberg all have some sort of monopoly on information or knowledge are the key to DEMOCRACY and never tolerating the destruction of the USA.
Banksters destroying the middle class, "The Gilded Age," Hamilton and Carnegie and Rockefeller and Mellon and Ponzi, it's all been done. Fighting wars in Afghanistan that cost blood and treasure? It's been done by nation after nation. There are books in libraries that describe the very tactics and strategies to avoid. Russia? Check. India? Check. Britain? Check. Russia/Soviet Union again? Yup. Corporations running foreign policy? Gosh, sounds like the British East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. Military-industrial complex? It was such a threat we had a former General and President warning us about it in 1961 during his Farewell Address. France in North Africa? Hmmm, wasn't that only 40 years ago? Governments around the globe ignoring massive unemployment so that they can cater to their cronies and make them richer still? And that leads to wars?
History repeats itself because the folks in charge don't care and want drones that shut up and die.
The book is even better. That's what we need a modernization of The Grapes of Wrath for it is the same story in reality. The tech bust of 2000 alone was so underplayed, one literally could not rent a U-haul and the streets were lined with them like a wagon train, all going home to Mom & Dad busted.
Now we have third world cities all over while Wall Street cheers about home prices rising.
The scam is no one is ever responsible when it comes to facing a customer who's been wronged, or when law enforcement or someone else finally tries to hold someone in the corporation responsible, etc. It's always someone else's fault up the food chain or in some local office down the food chain, but damn if they don't know who exactly. "Well, I just file paperwork, I don't sign it." "Well, I sign it, but I don't mail it." "If I didn't sign these papers, my manager would yell at me, and his manager would yell at him." "The CEO isn't responsible, he answers to the board." "Well, we're responsible to the shareholders, and they are everyone." And so on. It's all crap.
Every single one of these people is responsible, they sure as Hell are responsible enough to collect $ on payday and bonuses and bribe Congress so that they can write their own laws and loot the Treasury and Fed, right?
If corporations are people too, then surely they can take responsibility like human beings. They can be jailed and fined and sent to maximum security prisons like humans without gobs of cash. They can be blamed for society's woes and screamed at for their sense of entitlement just like the people that are homeless and unemployed (although they never felt "entitled" and did nothing wrong). If they screw up, every person that gave an order or signed a paper or sent an email can be blamed for being an idiot or lazy.
Incorporation protects these criminals, but hey, if they want to be people too, by all means, everyone is responsible inside the corporate buildings then - enjoy! If the CEOs of JP Morgan or BOA want to name charities after themselves or make donations in their names (from corporate profits), then surely they like the spotlight and want to be held responsible for all they do, so by all means, they must be responsible because they want the credit and to be seen as the face of the banks.
I was booted out of my home in 2010. I had tried unsuccessfully over 20 times to send in the modification package. They(JP MOrgan Chase) kept losing it!! I sent 3 certified checks to JP Morgan Chase, which they cashed but could never find. Throughout this process of receiving letters I am told no JPMC does not list you as someone foreclosed on. I explain that they gave me 3 separate foreclosure dates, during bankruptcy proceedings. To this day April 2013 they are sending demand letters to the address foreclosed on telling me I have to prove valid homeowners policies. Funny, because the house was sold through the bank in 2010. But JPMC has no record of it? Really! We were all victimized once, now we are getting it again! Through this entire settlement process all information is cloaked in secrecy. We do not know where we fall in the categories unless we were told by JPMC the category we were going to fall. Because again, JPMC does not even have records they foreclosed, not even after losing my payments, records of my bankruptcy, etc. No one at all involved in this case knows anything nor can they tell anyone what is going on other than some checks were mailed if we received a post card we will someday get a check of unknown amount. This has been a horrifc run around! I have to wonder if no one knows who is getting what or when it will be paid out, are they just throwing darts at names. More frustration mounting on more frustration. Will it ever end?
Victimized not once but twice now!
You should see how funny everyone thinks it is when they try to cash their settlement checks.... No banks would cash them saying that there are insufficient funds on the account that the check is drawn. This ain't funny in the least!
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