FedUpUSA

Hmmm….

In the week ending Feb. 5, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 383,000, a decrease of 36,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 419,000. The 4-week moving average was 415,500, a decrease of 16,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 431,500.

Ok, that’s positive.  But the last two weeks have seen the seasonally-adjusted and non-adjusted figures very close.  This week?  Uhhh….

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 438,548 in the week ending Feb. 5, a decrease of 25,928 from the previous week. There were 507,634 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

Well well…. more than 55,000 people were magically subtracted due to alleged seasonal factors.

Hmmmm….

Well, we got a few things here.  First, we now have a clean understanding of the crap number in the employment report, as there’s really no ”there” there.  Second, I don’t believe the seasonally-adjusted numbers.

The market doesn’t believe it either, judging from the futures reaction.

The Market-Ticker

The Survey Says!

In the week ending Jan. 8, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 445,000, an increase of 35,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 410,000. The 4-week moving average was 416,500, an increase of 5,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 411,000.

It’s worse….

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 770,413 in the week ending Jan. 8, an increase of 191,686 from the previous week. There were 815,593 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

770,000?!  Holy crap.

Now here’s reality folks – I said last week that I didn’t believe the “3 handle” folks nor that the problem was over, and that seasonal distortions and idiocy in the labor department was responsible.  Of course “idiocy” implies unknowing distortion, which is a damn hard argument to make when the “errors” are all in one direction – and they both are and have been.

How about intentional lies instead?

In any event this ought to take some hot air out of people’s BS-running lungs.

The other not-good thing is that the ranks of those going back into the extended programs was up for the week of the 25th too – by 195,000.

This is unambiguously bad – extended benefits AND initial benefits both up materially, and note that this was a week during which people said that the claims numbers were generally “good”.

Nope.

Wake up folks – the supposed “economic expansion” is complete crap and is all government blowing money they don’t have.

The end of that rope is approaching.

Fast.

And the floor of the canyon we’re rappelling down is 500′ below us.

Here’s the amusing spin machine!

In the week ending Dec. 25, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 388,000, a decrease of 34,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 422,000. The 4-week moving average was 414,000, a decrease of 12,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 426,500.

Yeah, ok.  Amusing number, really – the DOL invented 133,000 seasonal adjustment jobs!

That is, the unadjusted, actual number was 521,834.  That’s up 24,879 from the previous week.

This is particularly troublesome to me for a number of reasons – with the week shortened by Christmas Eve (offices closed to a large degree) we should have seen fewer unadjusted claims and the adjustment should have been upward, not downward, to account for the holiday closures.

Are we playing “Goebbels Media” again?  Sure looks like it to me.

The complete data table of the various programs to December 11th tells a tale of possible trouble, but the push-pull nature of the story is difficult to decipher:

Note the regular numbers – those are the original 26 week folks coming into the system.  That’s not a good number at all.  It is counter-balanced by 150,000 people departing the EUC programs.  What we don’t know is if those were people who rolled off the 99 weeks, or if they found jobs.  But with the incoming 26 week population rising, odds are rather high that it’s the former rather than the latter.

The futures moved up a bit on the original number release, but it appears that people were able to read beyond the headline this time around, and recognized the unadjusted number for what it was – dogcrap – and quickly discarded the “screaming harpy” nonsense from the media.

Of course it’s “better than expected”…..

In the week ending Oct. 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 434,000, a decrease of 21,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 455,000. The 4-week moving average was 453,250, a decrease of 5,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 458,750.

Meh.  Again, wake me up when we see a 35x,000 print or below.  That’s consistent with economic expansion and job growth.

That’s nice – another quarter-million people rolling off funemployment and now without any sort of income at all.

The market loved the report, of course, as CNBS and the rest of the media screamed “better than expected!” 

If you’re one of the 250,000 that is newly without funds I’m sure you see it differently.

And here we go!

In the week ending Sept. 11, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 450,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 453,000. The 4-week moving average was 464,750, a decrease of 13,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 478,250.

No movement of materiality in the futures on this one.  Blipped up, blipped down, settled back pretty much where it was.  (But, the ~4 handle drop before leads one to wonder if certain “favored people” got it early…. cough-Goldman-cough)

The market’s knee-jerk “if it’s not a disaster rally 10 handle” reaction seems to have faded off.  Perhaps some people have started to think about what I’ve talked about for months – you need a number around 350,000 before we see anything that represents actual job growth in the economy.  450k on a weekly basis won’t do it.

Neither will people rolling off the government cheese, as continues to happen – 400,000+ of them during the last week of August.  That’s 400,000 newly-impoverished who thought Obama would save their ass, now waking up to the reality that even 99 weeks of unemployment eventually runs out.

CNBS had the usual parade of people on this morning saying “the recovery is proceeding.”  Oh really?  Where are the jobs?  400,000 new potential rioters seems to be going the wrong way, don’t you think?

Everyone seems to understand (even if they don’t talk about it) that it’s the “government cheese” that has kept the “rabble” (that is all the Americans that have been consciously and intentionally screwed by all the offshoring, all the financial fraud and the scams) from rising up and saying “ok, jackass, this time you lose!”  That’s one of those “let them eat cake!” moments that nobody wants to see but everyone realizes in the back of their mind can happen – a man who has lost everything has nothing left to lose.  That, a gallon of gasoline and a pack of matches are a bad combination.

Today we also got the PPI report which showed an 0.4% increase in August, with most of it in energy – or so they say.  If you believe the government there was a decrease in food prices – something that I find amusing, seeing as I can’t find it in the grocery store (quite to the contrary; all I see there are gains!)  More ominously we have a 12-month run rate that is now well over The Fed’s claimed inflation target of 1-2% for every month since November of last year, with a lot of that being in the energy complex – the part that, of course, they all want to ignore but which every person in America has to consume if they want to keep warm in the winter and make it to work!

Larry Summers is flapping his gums on CNBS as I write this, with a claim that a “massive failure of regulation” led to the crisis.  Oh really Mr. Jackass?  Shall we talk about your record in that regard with Haaaarrrrrvvvvaaarrrrdddd?  Funny how that question is never asked by the so-called “mainstream media” – how Mr. “it was all someone else’s fault” doesn’t want to talk about his personal experience with derivatives abuse.

If we’re going to create an economic environment in which there is “confidence” the first step in doing it is to punish the people who did, and still are, intentionally lying about asset valuations and running various scams on the American people!

Now there’s something you won’t hear on the Tee Vee.