Get a job

Well the new employment stats are in and yes, we lost more jobs again and the economic outlook appears grim. Or should I say "still appears grim". The economy shed 85,000 jobs, unemployment stayed at 10%, the workforce dropped by 661,000 as people quit looking for jobs, underemployment rose to 17.3%, and I accidentally made eye contact with a homeless man on Grant Street. It was totally awkward.

But lost in all the whinging about "Oooh the misery" and "I can't feed my family" and "I have no money" and "When I look at my husband his head morphs into a delicious looking roast turkey and I start comically salivating" is this bit of good news:

The latest monthly snapshot of the national job market released by the Labor Department on Friday provided one potentially encouraging milestone: Data for November was revised to show that the economy gained 4,000 net jobs that month, in contrast to initial reports showing a loss of 11,000 jobs. That marked the first monthly improvement since the recession began two years ago.

Yeah, that's right: at some point in this miserable economy, an actual net job was created. I'll break out the fine china, you call the specialty snooty foods store to see if they have a pallet of beluga caviar and toast points sitting in the back. Now I know 4,000 doesn't sound like a lot of jobs. But if you were to think of it in terms of Single A minor league baseball attendance, you'd be thrilled. Especially if you didn't have to throw a bobble head or fireworks night to get that many people through the turnstiles.

Unfortunately we at the These Bastards Economic Analysis and Financial Services Weapons Depot have talked to some of our sources in the Department of Labor and have been told that the 4,000 jobs created number will be revised downwards next month. There's still job creation, but it's being revised to only one actual job that was created. So we'd like to congratulate last month's lucky job recipient, one Phyllis Walden of Boise, Idaho who was hired as a cashier at the local CostCo. Congratulations on your achievement and please accept our solemn condolences in recognition of the fact that you lost that job this month.

Ah well Phyllis, maybe you'll get it back next month. Though, to be realistic, probably more like early 2011 if current economic predictions hold. Hope you can hold out until then.

Good news everyone!

The sadness monsters at the Fed have announced they're back again, hiding in your closet, waiting to spring out at the moment you're most vulnerable to scare you witless with some new grim economic prognostication. Take their actions today, the day before Thanksgiving. You know that awkward conversation you can't wait to have with the in-laws? You know, the one about how you haven't found a job and how tough the prospects are. Well....they're pretty sure you'll be having that conversation until at least 2012.

The unemployment rate will remain elevated for years to come, according to a forecast released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve that addresses for the first time economic conditions at the time of the next presidential election.

It paints a grim picture. Top Fed officials expect the unemployment rate to remain in the 6.8 to 7.5 percent range at the end of 2012 and said it could take "about five or six years" from now for economic activity to return to normal. The jobless rate was 10.2 percent in October.

But on the bright side: the stock market is over 10,000! Plus, GDP grew 3.5%! OK, they had to revise that down to 2.8%, but that's still growth! Why do you have to ruin all this good news with whining about how bad it is for you out there? Just go pick up your free charity turkey and shut up about not having a job. What's that? Demand for turkey's from charities is so high because of the recession that they're actually running out of them? *tugs at collar nervously* Ouch, tough room.

On the bright side, the job forecasts are so bad that even Democrats have taken notice, vowing action on a jobs bill...at some point. So hey, if they hurry on that, you can have something else to be immensely disappointed by for Christmas or New Years. Though, judging by the speed at which Congress acts, it'll be ready in time for St. Patty's. Luckily, by then no one will take your drinking problem for anything other than Irish holiday pride. See, the good news is piling up already!

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.11

Influential Players: How Six Big Stakeholders Shaped Health Care
In a follow up to today's big health care shocker, TPM looks at how several of the large health care stakeholders were able to shape the debate and get what they wanted. You know, to "help" the American people. Mostly it's a bunch of groups that got minor concessions in return for their support. Only PhRMA was able to weasel billions out of the government in return for slapping a $20 on the nightstand and promising to call tomorrow. Damn government and its low self esteem.

Falling Far Short of Reform
David Leonhardt of the New York Times decided to waste a good sized chunk of his day looking at the House health care bill and then analyzing where it falls short and providing suggestions for ways it could be made better. Oh bless his precious, dear, naive heart. He actually thinks there's a chance for improving this bill and that the best way to improve it is with reasoned analysis and serious, thoughtful suggestions. I don't have it in my heart to break it to him that any suggestion that doesn't start with killing/incapacitating at least 60% of the Legislative branch neuters any change of getting something intelligent passed.

Why Employment Might Not Fully Recover Until 2013
Happiness vampire Mark "Mr. Sunshine" Thoma of CBS Moneywatch doesn't want you to let all the recent great job news go to your head. He says that in addition to unemployment being 10.2% that it isn't likely to recover until 2013, around the time President Palin is sworn into office. The son of a bitch even backs it up with charts. Is there any reason to have hope? Well, the earth might explode in 2012, so there's always that. Try and tough it out until then.

Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died
America's dainty sweethearts, Blackwater, is being accused of handing out $1 million in secret payments to Iraqi officials in order to buy their silence over that whole shooting civilians thing. I think we should give them all a round of applause, bribing is much less nefarious behavior than indiscriminate civilian murder, weapons smuggling, murder conspiracies on US soil, and mob style hit squads. I think they've learned their lesson. Let's give them five or six more no-bid contracts.

Vanished Persian army said found in desert
You think we know how to stage an epic Middle Eastern quagmire, then you haven't heard about Persian King Cambyses II, who lost 50,000 soldiers in 525 B.C. in what was called an "cataclysmic sandstorm". Well duh, you don't lose 50k if it gets a little dusty out. This is a vindication of a story by historian Herodotus that many had thought was a fanciful myth because no evidence had ever been found. Finally I can take off my "Believe in Herodotus" shirt and put on my "Herodotus: Vindicated" shirt. Glad I had both made up.

10.2%

You're probably not going to hear this until sometime next week, what with a Muslim guy having shot up an army base shouting "Allahu ackbar" and all, but the jobless recovery is right on schedule. Your friendly reminder that despite all the hubbub about the stock market, Goldman-Sachs posting up $100 million if profits by the time I get to the next comma, various other businesses like Ford posting up profits, GDP growing, and the fact that a friend of yours found $5 bucks on the street last week (the 5th best economic news in the country), the economy is still pretty bad for the people that have to live in the economy. Ten point motherfucking two percent.

The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday in its monthly economic appraisal.
...
“There’s no doubt that the slashing and burning of jobs has abated quite a lot,” said Allen L. Sinai, the founder of Decision Economics, a research firm. “The economy is recovering, but it is a very soft recovery.”

The biggest losses came in the construction, manufacturing and retailing sectors. Health care companies added 29,000 jobs to their payrolls, and the number of temporary workers increased by 34,000 — a significant gain that could indicate employers are beginning to expand their businesses again.

The Labor Department also revised September’s losses to 219,000 from 263,000.

Sadly those health care sector job numbers are temporary, as those 29,000 jobs were all lobbyists who were hired to try and kill health care. Yet despite the fact that there are some horrifying records being set (like most months in a row shedding jobs and the highest number and percent of unemployed people who have been out of work for 6 months) economists are optimistic. Why? Because they have jobs. But also because there are several positive indicators, like the pace of jobs losses slowing, manufacturing stabilizing, and President Obama getting the larger part of the wishbone in an after dinner tugging match with Canadian PM Steven Harper. We can only hope he uses that wish on the economy.

But economists are also concerned that this increase in the jobless numbers might depress the economic recovery as consumer spending will stay flat. I'm no economic theorist, but I'd be more worried about the economy not doing well enough to benefit people without jobs than people without jobs not doing enough to benefit the economy. And they say unemployment is still going to go up, hitting 10.5% next year. So....uh...ooh...ouch, well...how..'bout..them Yankees? Yes, concentrate on baseball, focus on an upcoming weekend of football. Don't mind me, I'll just be getting a prime ass spot in the breadlines while you do that.

The bearer of bad news

Heartless killjoy and Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman is here to douse water on your dreams of a post-apocalyptic society brought on by an economic crash. That's not to say it couldn't still happen, Nouriel Roubini still thinks it could, and there's always the chance of some Porcine AIDS-based the Stand type scenario, some sort of teabagger type political uprising, a natural disaster catastrophe, hell filling up and the dead walking the earth, or the Mayan 2012 scenario could happen. But the numbers are the numbers, the trends are the trends, and it looks like we are no longer headed towards a Great Depression, economic collapse, or destabilized world economy. Whither the hobo council of elders?

Let Mr. Big Shit Nobel explain:

Basically, we started out with a year that matched the Great Depression, but have since pulled back a bit from the edge of the abyss.

Wonderful. Great, now we'll have to stop hoarding water and canned goods, practicing our hand to hand combat and survival skills, stockpiling weapons and copies of the Turner Diaries, and attempt to find jobs. Of course we won't find any and around 10% of us will be forced into a cardboard box 'neath the underpass. Oh sure, we'll be living the hobo lifestyle, but with out any of the prestige or power that the global financial apocalypse would have provided us with.

So sorry to bear this bad news for all you apocalypse fetishists, but it seems we're in a recovery. A jobless recovery, but a recovery nonetheless. The pillars of power, government, and society will stay intact, civil war will not break out, and you will not have to kill Garret Dillahunt because he wants to eat your son.

....fuckin' Paul Krugman.

Good news/bad news

The end of the recession has been signaled. Technically. In the smallest, most unimportant terms possible. Woo-hoo, break out the good tin of beans.

Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the three months ending in September, a significant spike from a relatively shrunken base. The economy had contracted at annual rates of 0.7 percent and 6.4 percent in the second and first quarters of this year, respectively.

Durable goods spending shot up 22.3%, spending on housing jumped 23.4%, and there were other numbers that indicated growth. Even the unemployment rate rose, hitting 9.8% as employers cut 263,000 jobs! Wait, that's bad. And sure first time jobless claims are still at over half a million and consumer spending on non-durable goods was flat, but....uh......GDP...stock market! Look, if you're going to whine about being unemployed and the predictions that unemployment is going to continue into next year, hitting 10.5%, then I don't know what to tell you. Yes, the economy is great....as long as you aren't one of the people in that economy, can't you miserable hobo wretches just be happy for that fact?

So everything's ok, everything's largely fixed, and we just have to wait for that pesky job market to....oh, what's that Dr. Nouriel Roubini, a guy best known for their prescient predictions of the financial market collapse, you have something to say?

“Markets have gone up too much, too soon, too fast.” Noting that stock markets have soared by around 50 percent since their lows last March, he added, “The real economy is barely recovering while markets are going this way.”

He warned that “easy money” had already created “asset bubbles in equities, commodities, credit and emerging markets,” and concluded, “… we may be planting the seeds of the next cycle of financial instability.”

Well, wonderful, even our sad recovery will be short lived. Thanks for the heads up, I know not throw out my man sized cardboard boxes and bindle just yet.

Get a job

The hits just keep on coming. Sure, the economy is super great, what with profits on the rise, GDP shrinkage stopped, and banks and financial institutions feeling free to return to deeply dangerous and arcane financial instruments that they don't understand and leverage them into economy killing ways in an attempt to gain short term profits again. But one tiny, niggling little indicator refuses to make any improvements, despite the economy being both being radical and tubular: the assholes in the economy. They're all still jobless.

The American economy lost 263,000 jobs in September — far more than expected — and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the government reported on Friday, dimming prospects of any meaningful job growth by the end of the year.

The Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of unemployment dashed hopes that the pace of job losses would continue to slow as the economy clawed its way back from a deep recession. Economists had expected 175,000 monthly job losses.

“People have been celebrating that we’re through the financial crisis, but the underlying issues are all still there,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “We’ve lost trillions of dollars in housing wealth, and consumption’s going to be weak. It’s not the ’30s, but there’s really nothing to boost the economy.”

What's that, the 900th straight month economists haven't predicted job losses/gains correctly? Don't make any trips to Vegas, fellas. But if that wasn't bad enough, it seems we're back to that problem we had earlier where America is trying to enjoy its lovely Victorian garden party and some asshole economists are trying to point out the corpse pile near the cucumber sandwiches. If Dean Baker's gainsaying wasn't bad enough, Paul Krugman's back at it again, wearing his Nobel around his neck and blabbing on an on about "don't get cocky kid", "mission not accomplished", "the wolves of complacency will feast on the guts of the lamb of recovery", and "isn't my beard so great." It is, but that's beside the point.

Their solution? More stimulus, because spending the money now will cost us less in the long run. Yeah, I'm sure the Congress that couldn't get it right the first time when things were worse will get around to forming a competent new stimulus plan any day now. Right. Besides, the first one took care of their corporate masters, why would they need to do one to shore up the job market? Everyone else just has to muddle through 10% unemployment, while pundits talk about no one having jobs as "the one black mark on an otherwise great recovery." Not even a black mark, light gray at worst.

Almost double digits

Remember the optimism of last month where four straight months of job loss improvements were causing some people to think that happy days were here again and bluebirds would imminently be alighting on some shoulders? About that.....do the terms "devastating", "crisis", "enormity", "extreme weakness", and "fucked to death pile of burning ca-ca" sound positive or negative to you?

The American economy shed 467,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Job losses were widespread among the construction, manufacturing, and business and professional services sectors.

The losses were sharply higher than economists’ expectations of 365,000 lost jobs.

Do economists ever actually nail the job loss expectations? Every month they seem to miss it by about 50,000-100,000 over or under. Now Paul Krugman's back on top of the table, pants off and squatting over our favorite punch bowl. He's saying things like "jobless recovery" and that was before this month's job numbers made him sound a little optimistic.

If I recall correctly, TB Industries' official advice was to hoard canned goods, steal MRE's, and to stash especially good killing rocks and jabbing sticks. We still hold by that advice and hope that the brief bit of positive economic news didn't cause you to start opening and eating those tins of Hobo-grade beans or burning those sharp sticks for warmth. In fact, double down. Hoard more, scale up to jagged branches and tree limbs, take a leather tanning course, and work on your more animalistic grunts and cries. It'll serve you well as the horrific financial apocalypse seems back on schedule. See you in the Thunderdome!

R.I.P. Newspapers

Wall Street Journal Only Top 25 Newspaper To Report Circulation Increase

Circulation at the nation's newspapers continues to fall.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations said Monday that average daily circulation declined 7.1 percent in the October-March period from the same six-month span in 2007-2008.

That was faster than the 4.6 percent fall recorded in the April-September period of 2008.

Sunday circulation fell 5.4 percent in the latest period.
...
Newspaper sales have been declining since the early 1990s, but the drop has accelerated in recent years. Circulation revenue has largely held up, though, because of price increases.

Good news. As long as you're a national paper that largely covers one sector of the country (say business/economy) and that sector goes into complete meltdown, then there will be increased interest in your reporting and your circulation numbers will go up.........0.61%. It also helps if you start to move from "right wing" into "crazy right wing" territory. Otherwise your paper drops like a stone as people decide they like reading your newspapers online for free. Maybe another round of price increases, firings of senior reporters, and sending a severed donkey head with a note that say "Thanks" to the guy who created Craigslist will make things all better. Better get that Plan B thing figured out pretty soon, I think things are starting to look dire.

In the small miracles department, the NY Post dropped 20%, the biggest drop in the top 25 papers. Proving that even in a freefalling industry, God does sometimes mete out extra punishment to those who deserve it.

Sorry newspapers, it was nice knowing you. Hopefully you get a business model worked out so we don't have to rely on *shudder* cable TV news *shudder* to break important stories or do investigative journalism. Forget your pig viruses and financial apocalypses, that's the end as we know it.

Difference of opinion

The Congressional Oversight Panel, who you might recognize as the panel that, despite a legal requirement to do so, no one in the Treasury Department, FED, Wall Street has deemed worthy enough to update as to the goings on and payments made out in the various bailouts and free cash grabs, had a few choice words on the plans enacted so far.

A congressional panel overseeing the U.S. financial rescue suggested that getting rid of top executives and liquidating problem banks may be a better way to solve the economic crisis.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a report released yesterday, also said the Treasury may be relying on too rosy an economic scenario to guide its $700 billion bailout, and declared that the success of the program after six months is “mixed.” Three of the group’s members disagreed with at least some of the findings.

“All successful efforts to address bank crises have involved the combination of moving aside failed management and getting control of the process of valuing bank balance sheets,” the panel, headed by Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren, said in its report.

Tim Geithner responded by screaming and pointing at a bear that he not only swore was totally behind the press and about to eat them all unless they ran, but that the press had to hire the bear on as a consultant so the bear could advise them on how not to get eaten by a bear.

Hey isn't it funny how the one government organization that doesn't have Wall Street insiders, Goldmann Sachs money fuckers, or political hacks that greased the skids for this crisis and is staffed by economists and number crunchers is the one advocating a fire and liquidate approach? Sorry, I wrote 'funny' when I meant to write 'a blindingly obvious result'.

But the report did also mention that things were getting better, albeit too slowly and in a 'not effective enough' manner. Perhaps the fact that things are getting a little better, combined with positive public perceptions of the status of the economy mean that good things...wait, no, Paul Krugman just dropped in to defecate on that notion in a Nobel laureate kind of way and sup on the sweet tears of your ignorance.

Oh lovely, 'things are terrible, but the speed at which things are getting worse has slowed, which is sort of good' is the most positive thing he can say. Yeah.....I'm going to go drink.

Because it's the end of the day and you need to feel bad

G.D.P. Revision Suggests a Long, Steep Downfall

The economy at the end of last year contracted at a far faster rate than initially estimated, a government report released Friday said, suggesting that the recession may be deeper and more severe than recent projections have indicated.

The country’s gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate 6.2 percent in the last quarter of 2008, the steepest decline since the 1982 recession. Economists are expecting a similar drop in the first quarter of 2009.

“What a ghastly report,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “This will almost certainly be the longest postwar recession, and now potentially the deepest one as well.”

Also: polar bears are dying, the Steelers resigned Willie Colon and Chris Kemoeatu, and stocks hit a 12 year low.

Horribly bleak assessment of the day

Paul Krugman: Worries about next year

I’ve been ruminating over economic prospects for next year, and I’m getting scared.

So here’s what I’m wondering: will it, in fact, even be possible to pull the economy out of its nosedive before unemployment goes into double digits? I’m starting to wonder.

Among the reasons he cites: hemorrhaging half a million jobs a month, tax rebates and cuts being unable to change consumer demand, stimulus not getting traction, and the inability to large scale infrastructure spending to get off the ground fast. He's not saying its time to start garroting and shanking your fellow man....but you should be pricing piano wire and putting a razor edge on the linoleum you pried up off the kitchen floor. He has a Nobel Prize, be afraid.