Recent comments

  • You’ve likely run across the media blitz on Robert Reich’s documentary "Inequality for All".

    Naked Capitalism: "He didn’t just support NAFTA in 1993. He specifically claimed it would produce more jobs." Robert Reich also pushes for new immigration in an over-saturated job market, where H-1B visa are being used to displace American workers.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/robert-reich-inequalitys-intellec...

    Reply to: The Latest Never Ending Adventures in Corporatism Via the TPP   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Assistant US Trade Representative Barbara Weisel, who was responsible for negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), stated simply that "we have no position" on democracy.

    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/gordon-lafer-calls-attention...

    Reply to: The Latest Never Ending Adventures in Corporatism Via the TPP   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • The Current Population Survey (the monthly household survey) is a telephone poll of roughly 60,000 households conducted by the census bureau for the labor department.

    Years 2008 through 2013 would be 72 months multiplied by 60,000 households being surveyed --- or 4,320,000 surveys.

    Three questions:

    1) If someone doesn't have a landline phone, or the number is not listed in the telephone book, or the person being surveyed only has a cell phone, where does the Department of Labor get their telephone numbers from?

    2) Does anyone know of anybody else who has ever been called at home by the Department of Labor and asked if they were looking for a job? One would think that of 4.3 million ordinary Americans since the Great Recession, we would have heard from at least ONE PERSON by now.

    3) Or have the same 60,000 households been contacted every month for the past 6 years? If so, why haven't any of these people spoken up about taking this survey?

    If the Department of Labor would call me, I would ask them these questions...but so far, no one has called.

    Reply to: Change in Payroll Jobs vs Change in Employed Differs by Nearly 3 Million Since July   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • This was published in The New Yorker in May of 2005, from a poem written by Kurt Vonnegut about Joseph Heller, the author of the book, Catch-22:

    Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island.

    I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel 'Catch-22' has earned in its entire history?"

    And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."

    And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"

    And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."

    http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131127174451-15893932-kurt-...

    Reply to: Cash Hoarding becomes an Addiction   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • major changes from what we reported last month include sales at electronic and appliance stores, which were originally reported to have shown a 1.1% increase in November, have now been revised to show a 2.1% decrease; sales at furniture stores, which were originally reported up 1.2% over October and are now seen to have fallen 0.2%; building material and garden supply stores, which were originally thought to have seen sales increase by 1.8% and who've now seen their November sales gain cut to 0.4%...in addition, November sales at gasoline stations have been revised to show a 1.5% from the 1.1% drop first reported, the sales decrease at clothing stores was revised from 0.2% to 0.5%, drug store sales fell 0.3% instead of being unchanged, and non-store (online) sales were reported up 2.2%; they're now seen as having risen only 1.6%....however, sales at sporting goods, hobby book and music stores, which were first reported to have increased only 0.1%, have been revised to show November sales 1.1% over October's, and miscellaneous store retailers, whose sales were first reported to have dropped 1.3%, have been revised to show a sales increase of 0.8% in November..

     

    Reply to: Retail Sales Up 0.2% for December as Holiday Sales Grow By 3.8%   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • AMERICANS ARE AFRAID to comment; Even to Question Swiss Bank Hoarders....Mentally Conditioned so.

    Reply to: Cash Hoarding becomes an Addiction   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Seasonal adjustments take into account the holidays, weather, seasons and labor statistics are extremely seasonal. i alluded to it in the payrolls overview, but it wouldn't surprise me in least to see December payrolls significantly revised upward, that a host of businesses could barely function in the extreme cold, which was unusual for December. I haven't checked weather patterns to prove it, but I believe December was way out of the statistical norm.

    So, that's an additional monkey wrench one would see to explain a few months of divergence. The employment statistics are so whacked, I don't know why I do monthly differences for odds are they will be revised.

    Reply to: Change in Payroll Jobs vs Change in Employed Differs by Nearly 3 Million Since July   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • whatever the question is in IT, the answer pushed on us by Xander Group investments is that job needs to move to India so their 100's billions of India infrastructure development investments continue to grow 10-50% a year. And guess who also controls the board of directors in the corporate world via their capital funding rules? When you tell the CFO to shift everything offshore he can or his debt interest rate goes up, what does he do to protect his job ?

    Reply to: Obamacare Outsourced   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=r0c

    It shows historically the difference is much smaller than in the past.

    Change from a year ago is due to survey and timing differences plus benchmark timing. This difference will change in February as well as with benchmarks.

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=r0d

    If one looks at percentage change from a year ago for both series, see this graph
    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=LNU02000000#

    It also is within the historic norm. I can guarantee this will change dramatically next month as population controls are added in the CPS, so one really needs to wait until the data dust has settled before claiming divergence.

    Bottom line is employment jobs, annual, either survey is too low, both really say this.

    Reply to: Change in Payroll Jobs vs Change in Employed Differs by Nearly 3 Million Since July   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • i dont know if it means anything or not, but i do know that the two series moving in opposite directions by that magnitude is unprecedented in recent years just by glancing at the numbers...in 2011, households gained 295K jobs between july and december (unadjusted); last year unadjusted households only lost 66K employed over the same span, and the seasonal adjustments brought them into line with payrolls...but this year, even seasonally adjusted CPS data only shows a 301K gain in employed from july to december..

    Reply to: Change in Payroll Jobs vs Change in Employed Differs by Nearly 3 Million Since July   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Reminds me of when Skyler White said to Walter White in front of their money mountain in the storage locker, Please tell me...how much is enough? How big does this pile have to be?

    It becomes a power exercise instead of wealth accumulation. Business Insider is a huge proponent of wealth worship. It is disgusting for 99.999% of America will never see such wealth and admiration is just perpetuating the problem. All hail the king.

    Reply to: Cash Hoarding becomes an Addiction   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • They are two separate series, done at different time windows and employment is extremely seasonal. No surprise at all they would vary by large amounts and historically this has always been true.

    The BLS creates a research paper, link here (pdf), to compare payrolls against employed, i.e. CES against CPS.

    When removing seasonal adjustments you are going to see very wild swings and that really doesn't mean anything.

    Next month will be population controls adjustments and I'm sure that will flip people out so I'll run the math intensively to show it's not anything to be concerned over.

    Reply to: Change in Payroll Jobs vs Change in Employed Differs by Nearly 3 Million Since July   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • rjs likes to break down CPI further to get a feel for real retail sales see here.

    If you decide to do this for Q3 rjs, email me offline. I want to assist to get the graphs readable so people see your effort clearly.

    Reply to: Retail Sales Up 0.2% for December as Holiday Sales Grow By 3.8%   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • There ya have it and they have the population calculator. Everything I've read coming out of the Atlanta Fed has been calculated accurately, so he's going off of that.

    Possibly some spin research out of any Fed branch research division but I've yet to find it from the Atlanta Fed. They do excellent work and checking out their blog is a good idea, loaded with great analysis most are not looking at.

    Reply to: December's Dismal Payrolls Mark Recession Six Year Anniversary   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • There is some political spin to try to claim it is retirement, but any statistical analysis by age, using the correct time windows, which much be either annual or moving averages that are based on annual data, will show only about 0.1 percentage point in 2011, 2012 and the last calculation I did was for August 2013, on is due to retirement, the rest is 25-54 dropping out of the labor force.

    Folks, I take the time to calculate these things from raw data plus graph them and it takes all day.

    Consider reading them and trust the math. If I made a mistake, correct me but frankly labor participation rate is a simple math calculation and anyone with some basic math skills can verify the false claim the drop is due to retirement with similar math exercises.

    This is not theoretical, the data is there to simply do a reality check, crank the numbers.

    Bernanke acknowledges that in every press conference and he's right. Remember, this guy is a Professor, he can do the math.

    The math is the key anyone can spin numbers by adding statistical bias and wrong assumptions.

    Reply to: December's Dismal Payrolls Mark Recession Six Year Anniversary   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Dennis Lockhart, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

    "About 4 million more people than before the recession are unemployed today...Some of the decline in labor force participation since 2009 is due to the baby boomers retiring, but even among prime-age workers—those aged 25 to 54—the participation rate is down significantly. This suggests that other factors, such as low prospects of finding a job, are playing a role ... It's accurate to say the country has a large number of people in the so-called 'shadow labor force' ... There is also the issue of underemployment. Many Americans are working fewer hours than they would prefer because their employers are offering them only part-time work ...To sum up, these comparisons of employment data suggest that the labor market is not as healthy as the improved unemployment rate might indicate. The unemployment rate drop may overstate progress achieved...It's worth noting that wage and salary income growth remains weak."

    * In other words, nothing has changed for the last 5 years.

    SOURCE:
    http://www.frbatlanta.org//news/speeches/140113_speech_lockhart.cfm

    Reply to: December's Dismal Payrolls Mark Recession Six Year Anniversary   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • A case is being argued at the United States Supreme Court next week (the National Labor Relations Board v. the Noel Canning Company) to keep Obama from using a recess appointment fill a position. The Noel Canning Company (Noelcorp) is making a constitutional challenge to limit the president's executive power.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-cecere/two-eighteenth-century-fe_b_45...

    The National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, is a body composed of five individuals charged with investigating and preventing unfair labor practices and adjudicating disputes between labor unions and companies. Perceived by the business community from the outset as being overly protective of unions, the Board has long faced substantial opposition from the business world and members of the Republican party.

    http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2014/01/national-labor-relations-boar...

    Reply to: Who's Your Economy?   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • The entire post above is about Accenture - let me demonstrate with some sentences from there:

    **********************************************************
    **********************************************************
    But now the poster boy for labor arbitrage, offshore tax havens, and bloated, often failed government contracts is in charge, Accenture.
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    Accenture is one of the biggest offshore outsourcers of American jobs. In 2012 they used 4,037 h-1B Visas alone and are ranked #5 in using foreign guest
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    Accenture has more workers in India than any other nation. In 2012 they had 80,000 Indian workers, 35,000 in the Philippines and only 40,000 in the United
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    Accenture, like most BPO offshore outsourcers, saves money by underpaying foreign guest workers they import. Typically they pay 25% less for their
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    Accenture is systemic in their labor arbitrage of United States citizens. Of their imported H-1B foreign tech workers in 2005, they paid 15.3% less than
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    The situation is so bad they block out American contractors from obtaining government contracts by undercutting labor costs in addition to lobbying and
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    The Sunlight Foundation published a list of contracters making out like bandits on Obamacare. Accenture has already been awarded $2,136,175.98 just for the Affordable Care Act.
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    To obtain these contracts, Accenture spent $5,590,000 in lobbying along with $1,188,644 in campaign contributions in 2012 alone.
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    Accenture was one of those outsourcers pushing for the deal.
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    Accenture has quite a track record and not the good kind. They offshore outsourced taxpayer subsidized green jobs and were lined up to get those 2009 many contracts along these lines. They also have been fined by the DOJ:
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    Accenture LLP has agreed to pay the United States $63.675 million to resolve a whistleblower lawsuit, the Justice Department announced today. The
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    Accenture has agreed to resolve allegations that it received kickbacks for its recommendations of hardware and software to the government, fraudulently inflated prices and rigged bids in connection with federal information technology contracts.
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    Accenture has also been a poster boy for tax avoidance. In the U.K., they have been under investigation In 2005 they even managed to get their own special law introduced in Congress to avoid paying taxes:
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    Accenture is incorporated offshore and has been the subject of many a Congressional hearing on inverted companies incorporated in Bermuda or the Caymans to avoid taxes.
    *********************************************************
    *********************************************************

    To anyone versed in English sentence structure at all, the subject of every one of those is Accenture, not some self-concious H1-B Visa holder.

    Please feel free to point out where the subject is anything other than Accenture and their manipulative ways.

    Second - are you employed by Accenture? Or perhaps a low-paid H1-B Visa holder? This is the second or third post I have seen on the web where people seem to be defending Accenture's bad behavior - makes me wonder if they are getting some of their low-paid hirelings to try and massage their image. Theirs is not fair behavior, and, frankly, they are the enemy of things U.S. So much so that perhaps the White House might have done us a favor by hiring Al Qaeda instead of Accenture - at least their damage is limited to a building at a time instead of the lives of millions of workers.

    On the off chance that you work for Accenture, or are one of the H1-B workers employed by one of the other pirates, and feeling a little warm about all this, you should know we have a tradition here of people who are more concerned about their Master's house being on fire than their own - you can read about it here:

    http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2012/05/its-21st-century-but-house-negro...

    Third. That's an ironic username for someone taking the side of the corporation. But maybe that's just me seeing that.

    Good luck.

    Reply to: Obamacare Outsourced   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • that there are plenty of jobs, that it's just a bunch of people getting old and retiring?

    These seem awfully close together. It is funny that they can't get their messages straight, yet they take the same tone. Is this "repeat the lie often enough it becomes true" prop?

    Because from the stats here and at Mish's site and JOLT and BLS, it sure seems like there simply aren't enough jobs, companies are taking profits rather than invest, and that retirement is really, really not affecting the participation rate to the extent they would like for us to believe.

    We should be awash in old people laying around or driving their RV's up and down the street, but I see darn few that aren't working, or trying to. On the other hand I can't turn around without bumping into an unemployed 25-55 year old, also out of work.

    Reply to: December's Dismal Payrolls Mark Recession Six Year Anniversary   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • How come the lean is always at the worker's end, and the fat is always at the top?

    Reply to: Obamacare Outsourced   10 years 9 months ago
    EPer:

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