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November Nonfarm Payrolls: +146K vs. consensus +93K, October revised to +138K from...
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Friday, December 7, 2012, 8:30 AM ETNovember Nonfarm Payrolls: +146K vs. consensus +93K, October revised to +138K from +171K. Unemployment rate 7.7% vs. consensus 7.9%, 7.9% previous.
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Where do they go?
Worforce participation for those over 65 grown from 21.5% to 23.5% since 2009.
http://bit.ly/I8JC4K
liquidity may flood the markets higher, but at the end of the day any index reflects the profitability of the listed companies. Seen in a broader context, the well being of the listed company's aggregate is highly dependent on the economic fundamentals.
At present we have bucket loads of liquidity but poor fundamentals. A very risky environment to be invested, as you're even more at the mercy of the market makers and big players. Generally you can say: the more liquidity there is but the poorer the fundamentals, the easier it is to manipulate the markets, the more likely you'll lose money.
http://amzn.to/Xyv4HU
It can only go up, right?
On the positive side they can save the Sandy did it headline for next time in our "better than expected" news cycle. Should be good for a few hundred points today to the upside
This?:
"The manufacturing workweek edged up by 0.1 hour to 40.6 hours, and factory overtime was unchanged at 3.2 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged up 0.1 hour to 33.7 hours."
I would say based upon the trend in jobless claims we have seen that this report was much better than expected but I am scratching head on the shrinkage of the workforce.
They will probably turn into the 47%.....and no longer be a producer..but a taker...
The civilian labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 63.6 percent in November, offsetting an increase of the same amount in October. Total employment was about unchanged in November
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers), at 8.2 million in November, was little changed over the month.
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 146,000 in November. Since the beginning of this year, employment growth has averaged 151,000 per month,
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +148,000 to+132,000, and the change for October was revised from +171,000 to +138,000.
So am I missing some of the positives in the quotes above? They are all NEGATIVE.
By working longer, these relatively high-wage employees are contributing to higher unemployment among those just entering the workforce, who are relatively cheaper to employ. Rising food prices, loss of home equity, loss of retirement savings are all forcing the near-retirement age to postpone their plans and stay in the labor force.
Moreover, the average duration of unemployment (40 weeks) remains approximately double that of the previous record (21 weeks in 1983), and is a post-war high. The participation rate among those aged 16 to 19 is the lowest ever recorded in the post-war era, meaning that the current generation of future laborers has the least work experience of any generation in history. These are terrible precedents.
This very morning I was reading a brief article on a young lady who had won a violin competition. She said she's also pursuing a degree in "environmental sustainability." (I couldn't make this up.)
She better hope she can play the violin.
The sad reality is that people with degrees in "environmental sustainability" will find ample employment, either in the EPA itself, or in the compliance departments of any number of corporations and institutions.
You're likely right. The people that can actually do something will need to be "regulated," probably by four or five staff people each.
The mindset in this thread is truly idiotic.
Here is the winner of the Malthusian prize. More doom and gloomers predicting the end of the world, and as such advocating for a new tyranny but don't worry it will be a tyranny with good intentions (which of course all tyrants think they have good intentions).
The problem Malthus had was one of economics. People won't overpopulate and destroy the world for the same reason they won't over pollute and destroy the world. The simple reality is one of PRICES. People simply couldn't afford to destroy the world, and as such they won't. We can certainly pollute our neighbors yard and to that extent we need gov to protect property, but we don't need to legislate from the perspective that we need to install new plantation owners to control every aspect of our lives or else we are all gonna die.
Its amazing how these consipiracy theories and tin foil hat theories promulgate.
You can't love science when it comes to conclusions you like, then damn it when it tells you something you don't like. Arguing science with philosophy is like expecting your cat to actually like cheezburger.
The relentless focus on employment at the margin has very little to do with the overall performance of the economy. It really doesn't much matter if 92% or 93% of the people are employed nearly as much as it matters what the behavior is of the overwhelming majority that is employed. If people with jobs, capital and creditworthiness feel positive, the economy will advance; if that same group becomes fearful and restrain spending, the economy will stall.
While the media keeps the spotlight on the less fortunate, investors should be looking elsewhere for clues to the economy and their own investments.
The problem this leads to is, "well the markets are doing well, as such I guess we should continue with the gov policies that we are currently pursuing, after all NFP beat expectations, so that must mean the President is a genius." When what we should be saying is, "NFP can barely get above 100k, when in the past there were times it was over 1 million in a single month. This means we are stuck in a malaise, and think how much better my investments COULD BE doing were we not engaged in every kind of gov subsidy known to man"
The issue should never be to just be thankful for the crumbs gov policy is allowing you to experience. That's peasant thinking. We should be outraged that this malaise has been allowed to go on for so long with some many apologists for it. So while in the mean time I will use the system to protect myself and have more wealth transferred my way, I will still continue to advocate for more enlightened gov policies that will make people freer, which will make them even more prosperous, which will no longer require me to game the system of wealth transfer but be able to prosper even more in an economy that is even far stronger via everybody contributing.
As investors, we always have to remain objective and detached from our political leanings. I, too, am a capitalist and a conservative and would welcome Jeffersonian limited Federal government, but I'm not foolish enough to think we'll get it or that I should invest on such expectations.
Also, I want to make one observation and challenge what seems to be the universally accepted maxim in populist circles these days:
Per your remark: "Granted gov policy that is basically wealth transfer to financial markets ...."
I'm someone who has specialized for years in making investments in financial issues, e.g., banks, insurers, BDC's, REITs, etc. I don't see this massive transfer that everybody else seems to take for granted. The financial community has lost trillions (with a "T") of dollars in asset value, market caps, etc. in the last few years. Since 2008, they're hardly getting rich quick, and it's seen in their relatively lackluster earnings and still-suppressed market values.
At the same time, they have been subject to relentless media bashing, harassment by the Government (Federal and State), regulators, lawyers, etc. and forced to disgorge further fines, penalties and legal settlements, as well as tolerate increasing strictures on their ability to conduct business. Not a day goes by that they aren't supposed to engage on further "forgiveness" of delinquent loans from nonperforming borrowers or offer other do-gooder deals to provide windfall largesse to people who made irresponsible purchases that they could not afford nor subsequently service.
Even at this late date, and with the economy growing for four consecutive years, albeit more slowly than some would like, there remains a prevalent view among many that the entire financial system should have been allowed to collapse and not been "bailed out." Of course, it's completely overlooked, conveniently, that the vast majority of those bailouts have now been fully repaid, with interest, and that the Government (taxpayers) has actually made money on the rescue program.
Lastly, banks are not major beneficiaries from the current suppressed interest rates. They find it difficult to justify the risks associated with commercial lending at present artificially-low rates. That's why we see vast sums piled up in excess reserves, rather than committed to multiyear loans at rock-bottom rates. They'd perform much better in a higher-rate environment.
I'd like to see rates gradually rise and see Government spending contained, allowing more growth in the private sector. But, I don't blame the banks for this state of affairs nor do I see them as some sort of major beneficiaries to the current policy. The real big winner of current policy is Federal spending, which is occurring at the expense of private-sector expansion, banks and other financial institutions included.
Allow me to add one other thought: To whom did the wealth really get transferred in this last subprime debacle, caused almost exclusively by Government policies?
It sure appears to me that the biggest winners were those that sold overpriced residences, and didn't leverage or otherwise squander the proceeds, in the subprime-fueled bubble. The losers were the banks and those that bought overpriced, unaffordable houses, or those buying RMBS. Now, amongst the loser groups, there's been unending populist calls to transfer even more of the losses to the banks by forgiving loans to irresponsible purchasers. And, the banks have had to buy back hundreds of billions in supposedly-syndicated RMBS, too.
If you ask me, it looks more like the wealth has been transferred from banks than to them, or looked at another way, from responsible citizens and homeowners to bubble sellers and those buyers with forgiven or defaulted loans, via the banks provision of cheap capital provided by the Fed to support misguided Government policies in effect prior to 2008 and via various Government programs for homeowners since then.
This sets my explanation up pretty well. The wealth transfer I speak of is not just the intentional kind (as in tax the "rich" to give to the "poor"), but also more of the inadvertent kind. Barney Frank once complained that he received too much criticism for the failures of his policies and that he should have gotten more praise for his good intentions.
We live in a world where rhetoric replaces reality and good intentions are a shield from actual results. The wealth transfer that needs to be watched most closely is the overall general erosion of everyone's standard of living that is used to inflate certain asset classes. We saw this in 1905 to 1907, when Treas Sec Shaw attempted to use the Treas as a central bank, and the panic of 1907 followed. We saw it in 1920 to 1922 when the inflationary polices from WWI were ending and a recession followed. This was met with massive cuts in the top marginal tax rate and a lowering of the FF rate and other accommodations by the Fed. We also saw this in the late 20s when the Fed caused the stock market crash, and then Hoover and FDR created the great depression. We saw it in 1946 when gov spending nosedived as a % of GDP and the top marginal rates were cut again after FDR increased them. We saw it in the 1970s and the markets moved up and down based on the Fed funds rate. We saw it in the early 1980s as the Fed brought on a recession, and how lower tax rates ended it. We saw it again in 1986 when tax reform collapsed real estate, and again in 1991 when higher taxes brought on a recession. We also saw it again in 2006 when BB raised the FF rates and collapsed the housing bubble. We then saw minnie examples in each of the QEs and the stimulus.
What I am getting at is the amateurs in Washington wield the creation and destruction of Fed Res notes the way a toddler would fly a commercial aircraft. The power of gov guns (coercion) has far more power than any of these guys realize. It is a power that can be measured to some degree and timed to some degree as it moves wealth from sector to sector based on political winds. Just because they say they want to do something is irrelevant to what will happen based on the very real actions they will take.
So my comments about wealth transfer are not so much about the immorality of it all (which is still an important aspect), but rather as a "heads up" approach to seeing and using their bungling as a way to protect yourself. For those that can't time this, I would say staying in equities and dividend stocks regardless of the ups and downs is one way to go. The effects of the coercive policies they wield will ultimately transfer wealth to equities and thereby provide bidders to keep those asset prices up. For me, my full time job is timing these shifts, so when I see policies that will destroy the existence of Fed Res notes (like tax increases and spending decreases), I know deflationary pressures are coming and thus lower interest rates. When I see policies that will lead to the creation of Fed notes (like lower taxes and increased spending [though this doesn't need to be from gov - lower taxes will lead to more private spending]), then I know inflationary (not necessarily CPI inflation) pressures are coming. This means higher equity prices and higher interest rates.
So while I recognize the greater prosperity that a Jeffersonian model would provide, I recognize that I will never see this in my lifetime, so the best I can do is recognize the world for what it really is rather than what the rhetoric is trying to tell me it is. To this end I can boil it down to this.
Gov policies via their coercive powers whether intentional or not can transfer wealth from one part of the economy to another, and I want to figure out where that wealth is being there when it gets there. As such, evaluating these coercive policies in the light of whether they will lead to more productivity and more Fed Res notes or less productivity and fewer Fed Res notes will tell you the direction of equity prices and interest rates. You can see the pattern quite nicely over the last one hundred and twenty years, give or take, and even longer if you know what to look for (aka John Law).
Toyota, Honda, General Motors, and Siemens are reshoring jobs. http://fxn.ws/TTpUk8
So are Apple, Google, GE, Ford, and Whirlpool. http://bit.ly/RMCkhE
And don't worry too much. That Meztizo look you see in the face of your Mexican gardener? He's descended from Indians. They were here long before your relatives. In continental terms, Limbaugh's the wetback.
http://bit.ly/YR6Z0u
"GLENN: I’ve got to tell you something. I said on the program a couple of weeks ago, you know, that nobody hates the environment. I’ve been thinking about that. I think we should hate the environment. I’m changing my stance on hating the environment. I mean, I think it’s a cop — "I don’t hate the environment, nobody hates the…" that’s a copout. I know it’s the popular viewpoint. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Don’t worry about what happens to the environment. It doesn’t worry about what happens to you, does it? Think about it. Hurricanes? Part of the environment. They roll in. What’s the environment’s role? It creates the hurricanes! Does it give somebody, you know, some place to hide? No. Only human-made buildings, strong buildings protect us from the environment’s brutal attempted murder. There, I said it. I’m not for environmental murders. In fact, nature only provides us with trees which basically lure humans to stand under them and then it provides lightning to kill us underneath the tree. Now that humans can do a good job, you know, predicting hurricanes, what does the cute little warm and fuzzy squeezably soft environment do? It unleashes 200 mile an hour winds in the form of tornadoes instead. So focused and so instant that you can’t even predict them. Oh, yeah, that sounds like something I want to predict. Oh, yeah, the ones that just suck up my whole family in Nebraska last year, that was great. I just love that environment. It lures us to our coastlines. "Come, come to the coastline." We build our most important and expensive buildings only so the environment can cause flooding and beach erosion, stealing millions of dollars from honest citizens like you. "Come to the coastline." The environment could provide temperatures that are mild and consistent. Oh, no, no, no, but that’s not the style, oh, no. The environment isn’t all that way. Why not instead give us three months where it’s zero and six months later make it 90 or 110 with 100% humidity, that way we waste money on insulation and two sets of clothing that we have to cart upstairs and then back downstairs twice a year! I hate the environment.
Do you like to visit the forest? "Yeah, I love the forest, Glenn. Who doesn’t love forests? Oh, they’re great." Yeah, that’s when I used to think until I saw… who hides in forests? Bears, killer bears. Bears, part of the environment. More than happy to rip your torso from your extremities without a second thought. "Gee, I don’t know, maybe we should have a cap in trade on these humans there, Bill. You’ve already ripped four apart." No, they don’t do that! The innocent little environment. Giving us snakes, hairy rats, crunchy cockroaches. These are the facts on the environment.
Environmentalists will tell us, "The most important thing we can do is stop using oil." Well, really? If these true, I propose immediate sanctions on the environment for creating oil in the first place. I didn’t create it. I just pumped it out of the ground! It’s the environment’s effects on dinosaurs, former members of the environment murdered by the environment which create oil in the first place. Leave Exxon alone. Find mother nature until she’s broke. You know what? Someday they will be pumping us out of the ground if mother nature has her way. And then giant thinking cockroaches, some professor cockroach will say, "I don’t know. We shouldn’t pump those ex-people out of the ground. It’s bad for the environment." And then nature will come and kill the cockroaches! Wildfires. They’re wild to you and me. Part of the status quo to that oh, so innocent environment. Does the environment care if it burns down your house? Nope. Burns whatever it wants. How about volume contain owes? Does the environment care when it soaks an entire community in molten rock? Nope, uh-uh. Doesn’t go to bed at night going, gee, I don’t know, I think that might have been a mistake."
Plus, when a volcano blows, it dumps gigantic amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Does it have a cap in trade on its eruptions? No! Totally unregulated! Was it man who created all the diseases that have wiped out millions? The plague. No, it was natural. I guess we could just accept the whole wiping out 1/3 of the human race thing. Sorry, don’t need another Holocaust but thanks for chiming in, nature. And while I’m at it, thanks for making Antarctica completely uninhabitable. It’s not like we need more land or more resources. Don’t worry about all the people starving up here. You know, don’t worry about. Just cover the whole continent in ice. Why don’t you do that. Who needs it? Just ice. And penguins, birds that don’t fly and you can eat! Thank you. No, I appreciate it.
Let me tell you something. Thank God for us people who are supposedly melting that pointless piece of ice so someone can put the land to good news. No thanks to you, Mr. Environment."